In 2010, with the strong performance of the iPhone in the market, Apple's market value surpassed the former market hegemon Microsoft for the first time, and successfully reached the first place in the market value of listed companies in the world. Since then, Apple's market value has ranked first in the world for many years, becoming an important vane for the development of the technology industry.
On January 4, 2022, Beijing time, Apple's market value hit a record high, the stock price rose nearly 3% intraday, and the market value briefly exceeded $3 trillion (and then fell back to $2.99 trillion), symbolically becoming the first listed company with a market value of more than $3 trillion. What is the concept of $3 trillion? It is equivalent to about 5 Tencents, and it is 7.43 times the market value of the domestic A-share "top", Moutai Moutai.
Although the rise in Apple's market value has the suspicion of "Fed currency release" gushing into the stock market, there is a certain bubble, but at this time Apple's market value has opened up a gap with Microsoft, Alphabet (Google's parent company), even the radical renaming of Meta embraces the meta-universe of Facebook, the market value is not more than trillion US dollars, indicating that among the several major technology giants in the United States, investors are more optimistic about Apple's future development.
Apple's market value exceeded $3 trillion
In recent years, Apple's market value has been rising rapidly, and in a number of nodes where the "trillion-dollar market value" has broken through, there are basically historical marks left by Apple. It is easier to ignore that at the product update level, although many users are complaining about Apple's lack of innovation and product updates squeezing toothpaste, several major nodes of Apple's market value rise have corresponding innovative technologies and industry-leading products, that is, Apple's "arrogance" is based on innovation.
In 2010, when Apple's market value surpassed Microsoft,000, it was the year that the iPhone 4 and iPad led the market, and smartphones and tablets were redefined" by Apple, driving the arrival of the mobile Internet era. In 2018, when Apple's market value first exceeded the $1 trillion mark, it was the year after the release of the iPhone X that shocked the market, Apple finally bid farewell to the nesting doll upgrade of the iPhone 6 to iPhone 8, and used innovative innovations such as Face ID and full-screen gestures to "educate" users and the market, and then the breakthrough of the $2 trillion market value was stuck at the key point of the epidemic and the release of the M1 chip.
It can be seen that the rise in Apple's market value is closely related to its technological innovation, and each node where the market value rises has a corresponding new product or new technology. However, compared with previous innovations, many voices in the market have pointed out that Apple's breakthrough in the market value of $3 trillion is related to the eye-catching performance of the iPhone 13 series and AirPods 3 market, which promotes the overall growth of the company's performance.
In the F&B industry, one of the keys to a new brand's ability to gain investment and high valuation is standardization, which emphasizes that the central kitchen concept does not rely on chefs to improve store reproducibility. In the technology industry, the important indicator of market value improvement is technology, The Windows computer industry has the highest market value of Microsoft, NVIDIA and Intel, and the smartphone industry is Apple and Samsung, each of which has its own strengths in the industry. It can be said that the market value of every technology company with the ability to lead the market will not be low, and the ability of scientific and technological innovation is an important cornerstone of the rise in the market value of a technology company.
On the other hand, Apple's main business this year has achieved rapid growth, directly igniting the engine of market value growth. According to Apple's third and fourth quarter financial reports of fiscal 2021, revenue increased by 36.44% and 29% year-on-year, iPhone, iPad, Mac and wearable business revenue growth across the board, of which the iPhone business performed the strongest, up 49.8% and 47% year-on-year, respectively, the fourth quarter of the slowdown is mainly due to the shortage of supply chain components, iPhone 13 Pro/Pro Max delivery dates were forced to extend.
Personally, I believe that the rapid growth of Apple's market value is the result of the joint outbreak of "long-term and short-term". At the long-term end, the release of M1 Pro/Max highlights Apple's ambition to close the loop of ecology, proving its technical strength to the market and investors, and the short-term mainly focuses on the market feedback after the iPhone 13 price increase and the Pro series add 120Hz variable refresh rate, which has enhanced the interest of old users in changing machines. Secondly, the further growth of Apple's market value is also related to the "unexpected link" of the market, after Huawei faded out of the smartphone market, the iPhone ushered in its second spring in the Chinese mobile phone market.
The iPhone once again won the first place in china's mobile phone market sales
Affected by the chip foundry problem, Huawei began to adjust its operational thinking in the first half of 2020, and after the release of the Mate 40 series in the fourth quarter of 2020, the smartphone business began to shrink, and the models equipped with Kirin 9000 chips adopted a limited supply strategy to extend the market vitality and heat of the Kirin models as much as possible.
In the case of tightening chip inventory, according to IDC data, Huawei can still compete with Apple in the high-end machine market in the first half of 2020, but after the Kirin 9000 inventory gradually bottomed out in the second half of 2021, Apple completely entered a "no-match state" in China's high-end mobile phone market. Reflected in the financial report, as shown in the above iPhone revenue growth rate, the subsequent iPhone in the Chinese mobile phone market is like a wild horse, competing for more market share.
In addition to Huawei, in the current market, other domestic mobile phone brands have not been able to compete for Huawei's original market share, and the performance of the iPhone in the Chinese market has raised the expectations of the capital market for Apple. According to market research firm Counterpoint Research, Apple won the sales championship in China's mobile phone market for two consecutive months (october and November last year), with an 23.6% market share in 11 markets. iPhone is a high-priced product, iPhone sales for two consecutive months of popularity, indicating that domestic users have a strong demand for high-end machines, but there are not many high-end domestic models that can directly compete with the iPhone, and consumers are very "realistic" to choose the iPhone.
Referring to Tesla's development history, you will know that the Chinese market with more than one billion users is a market capitalization multiplier for many companies. With the completion of Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory, Tesla's stock price has also begun to soar, which not only expands Tesla's future market space, but also solves the most intractable production capacity problems to a certain extent.
Something similar happened to Apple, which reported $83.36 billion in total revenue for the quarter of $83.36 billion, an increase of 83 percent compared to $7.946 billion in the same period in 2020. Excellent market performance and the lack of major competitors, pulled up the market's expectations for the future development of the iPhone, to know that the last time the iPhone won the crown of China's mobile phone sales was in 2015, when Huawei has not yet conquered the high-end mobile phone market, Xiaomi is still exploring offline sales channels, OPPO and vivo have not yet made efforts in the online mobile phone market.
2020 and 2021 are two years full of changes, on the one hand, the arrival of the epidemic affects the development of some industries, and the discipline education and training and community group buying industry is rising, but the pathological expansion rate ignores the objective needs of users and the market, and is eventually subject to regulatory rectification; on the other hand, the domestic smart phone market that has been solidified has ushered in a reshuffle period, the high-end mobile phone market has changed from a double male to the current "unipolar" pattern, and Apple has become the biggest beneficiary of this change.
Apple needs Cook
Since Cook succeeded Jobs as Apple's new CEO in 2011, Apple's market value has gradually begun to rise rapidly. It can be expected that under the multi-scenario application of 5G technology and the market wave of the meta-universe, $3 trillion will not be the end of Apple's market value, but a new starting point.
Apple in the Cook era is proud in the capital market, and the sales of the iPhone are also steadily increasing, but for some old fruit fans, the Apple innovation in the Cook era is weak, and many products are becoming more and more mediocre. In fact, 2011 is a key year for Apple's development, and apple has gradually catered to users, making the iPhone that was originally "cold in the high place" more accessible to the people.
From a business perspective alone, Cook was undoubtedly successful, leading Apple to set new records again and again. You can say that the current Apple products are less flavorful of the Jobs era, but in the history of Apple's development, a role like Cook is needed to promote the development of Apple products in the direction of diversified popularization, reduce the cost of users to obtain various Apple products, expand the platform software and hardware ecosystem as much as possible, and attract more users to the Apple ecosystem.
The market value of 3 trillion yuan proves the value of Cook, and commercial success has enabled Apple to have more resources to develop new technologies, but whether Apple can continue to lead the development of the industry in the future needs to find the innovative spirit of the Jobs era. Nokia's past is the best example, the emergence of new technologies and new trends or will quickly detonate the market, those players who are too late to turn around will only disappear in the market torrent, innovation ability is always the key to the development of a technology company, only those who dare to "raise" and "define the problem" of the technology company can lead the development of the industry.