Apple Now Worth more than IBM
After the good news today Apple's stock price is going up, up, up into the $186 range - putting its market cap($161 Billion) above IBM ($156.45 Billion) for the first time in history. — Not bad Apple. Not bad.
Context & Ripple Effects
The crossover lands five months after BloggingStocks flagged that Apple would be bigger than IBM, making today less a surprise than a prophecy fulfilled on schedule.
What closed the gap was the fiscal 2007 fourth quarter reported alongside the milestone: $6.22 billion in revenue, roughly 1.39 million iPhones sold in the quarter, a new operating system announced as coming, and continued signs the Mac is gaining ground on the rest of the PC industry. Investors are pricing Apple as a growth story with three product engines, while IBM remains valued as an enterprise incumbent.
First-order effects
- Apple enters its next earnings cycle carrying the psychological weight of a top-tier valuation — a $161 billion market cap that makes it harder for Wall Street to treat it as a niche computer maker.
- IBM loses the standing of being unambiguously the larger company; its valuation now sits below a firm whose flagship products are a phone released barely three months ago and a PC line.
Second-order effects
- Rival handset makers and PC vendors face a competitor whose rising stock gives it cheaper currency for acquisitions and talent, compounding the iPhone and Mac momentum already showing in quarterly numbers.
- Enterprise-focused peers like IBM come under investor pressure to demonstrate comparable growth narratives, since the market is visibly paying up for consumer product cycles over legacy business computing.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, market-cap rankings become a leading indicator of industry hierarchy shifting from enterprise computing to consumer platforms — a reorder where whoever owns the pocket device sets the terms.
- The episode strengthens the case that a single successful consumer platform launch can reprice an entire company faster than decades of enterprise relationships, changing how boards weigh platform bets against installed-base defense.
The trend: Consumer platform builders led by Apple are overtaking enterprise computing incumbents in market value, with the iPhone turning device momentum directly into balance-sheet rank.