Apple becomes the most valuable company in history

hit another milestone on Monday by becoming the most valuable company in history, in advance of the launch of a new iPhone. In nominal terms, at $665.15 a share, Apple’s $623.5bn market capitalisation overtook Microsoft’s record of $620.6bn, held since December 1999. In real terms (inflation-adjusted), Microsoft still holds the record.

Apple overtook Microsoft in stock market value in May 2010 as the two co-founders of the PC industry, switched roles as the world's most valuable technology company, after decades of intense rivalry and cooperation.
Apple was worth $222bn, just behind oil giant ExxonMobil and Microsoft was worth $219bn.
In 1997, shortly after Jobs returned to Apple, which he had co-founded in 1976, Dell's founder and chairman, Michael Dell, was asked at a technology conference what might be done to fix Apple, then encountering serious financial troubles.
"What would I do?" Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
Bill Gates of Microsoft provided a loan of $150m to help Apple.
Microsoft is today valued at $258bn, while Sony of Japan, a rival with which Steve Jobs once considered merging with his company, has a $12bn valuation.
In January 2006, a rise in Apple's stock price, pushed the company's market capitalisation to $72.13bn, passing Dell's value of $71.97bn.
Jobs sent a brief e-mail message to Apple staff which read: "Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve."
Apple was co-founded by Steve Jobs and fellow college dropout Steve Wozniak on April Fool's Day in 1976. They had both spent some time working at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto.
Their first product was a build-it-yourself computer kit and in the following year, the Apple II was launched. It is credited with popularising the home computer.
In the early 1980s, Bill Gates and Microsoft, which was founded in 1975, pulled off a coup with a licensing deal with IBM for the DOS operating system that it had acquired for $50,000.
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