News is quickly spreading around the Internet today that Apple has passed Microsoft in market cap. The only problem? It’s not true.
We’ve been following this trend closely in recent weeks. Apple is indeed quickly closing in on Microsoft’s market cap, and we believe will pass it, but it won’t be today. Apple’s stock is at $266, giving it a market cap of around $241 billion. Microsoft’s stock is at $31, giving it a market cap of around $275 billion. Microsoft has just announced its earnings, and the stock is tanking (down almost 5% right now), but that still puts its market cap around $263 billion, over $20 billion ahead of Apple.
It looks like the source of the bad information is MarketWatch, which posted the headline, “Apple passes Microsoft for second place in S&P 500″ about 30 minutes ago (which is, technically, true — more on that in the update). Digital Daily then ran with the market cap story (post since deleted), then so did VentureBeat. With such a headline, obviously, the retweets spread quickly.
MarketWatch also humorously first stated that Apple’s market cap was $242 million (cue Dr. Evil).
If the stock price trends continue, Apple could pass Microsoft in value soon, but again, it hasn’t happened yet.
Update: MarketWatch has updated their story to say that Apple has passed Microsoft on the S&P 500 because it uses float-adjusted numbers. This method of running the numbers puts Apple’s cap at $241.5 billion while Microsoft’s is at $239.5 billion. But overall, Microsoft is still ahead of Apple.
Update 2: Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski tells me he only pulled the post down to correct it, which he did. You can find it here.
Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook Air) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod, the...
Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...
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