Apple’s Market Value Doubles Alphabet’s

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 15, 9:27AM EST · Published Jan 15, 7:21AM EST

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Apple’s Market Value Doubles Alphabet’s — © Eric Thayer / Getty Images

Four American companies have market values over $1 trillion: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) stock has surged so much that the company’s market capitalization is double that of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL).

On a price surge of 64% over the past year, Apple’s market cap has hit $2.20 trillion. In the same time, Alphabet, owner of Google, YouTube and Android, has risen $21% to $1.17 trillion.

Apple has performed better as a company. iPhone sales have hit a resurgence with the introduction of the iPhone 12. It is expected the phone could sell 200 million units this year on the strength of its 5G capacity. The superfast wireless service already has begun to become the world’s standard.

iPad and Mac sales have done better than hold their own against an onslaught of personal computers and tablets from companies like Microsoft and Lenovo.
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Apple’s Services business has become its second largest and fastest growing. The unit includes the App Store, Apple TV and the company’s music and storage offerings.

Apple’s revenue could easily rise this year to over $300 billion.

Alphabet, on the other hand, has had its share of trouble. Its primary online ad business struggled midyear as advertising overall was hit by the pandemic. Both Google and YouTube are driven almost completely by the ad revenue market. Alphabet, unlike Apple, does not have several large money-making divisions, which means its business is not terribly diverse.

Google also faces the government’s wrath, but in the United States and the European Union. It has been accused of having a monopoly in the online ad sales business. It and Facebook have such a dominant position together that the charge is at least believable.

The success of Google’s hardware business has been very modest. Its PC and tablet operations have picked up little market share. Its home electronics devices have been dominated by the market share of Amazon and its Alexa-driven products.

Alphabet has tried to get into streaming via its large YouTube user footprint. It would need to do well against Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ to do well. There is no evidence that has happened.

Alphabet also has tried to become a dominant player in the hot cloud computing markets. By most measures, it is well behind market leaders Amazon and Microsoft.

The spread in the market share between the two companies is justified by their current business prospects, and perhaps more justified by their likely futures.

These are Apple’s best-selling products.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.