Microsoft and Apple: Market Aggregation and the Fight for Title of “Most Valuable Company”
On Tuesday it was reported by Refinitiv, a global provider of financial markets data and infrastructure, that Microsoft had briefly overtook Apple to become the world’s most valuable company. As reported by Seth Fiegerman in his article “Microsoft and Apple are fighting to be world’s most valuable company” on November 27, 2018, this has been part of a larger competition for the title of most valuable company since 2010, when Apple first passed Microsoft in market cap, when Apple’s consumer hardware business was thriving and Microsoft was flopping. However, with the new changes made under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has been pioneering the space of cloud computing versus Amazon and has seen its first-ever $100 billion sales year. Meanwhile a depression in Apple demand for an increasingly-more expensive line-up of iPhones and other devices has weakened consumer confidence. Microsoft’s success can be attributed to its exit from the “flat-lining” market for smartphones or the social media purge that has effected other companies such as Facebook and Google over privacy concerns, and has pivoted to a more enterprise-focused direction with its position in the “Cloud space”, according to Dan Morgan, a senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust. These factors combined with its lack of regulatory issues (due to issues 20 years prior with the United States for its anticompetitive behavior) have all played its part in creating the success Microsoft now sees.
Article: “Microsoft and Apple are fighting to be world’s most valuable company”