Market Caps: Google Leads Apple Again
News Brief. Apple's market capitalization lead over Google was short lived. |
This morning one of my editors sent a link to a Guardian UK story on Apple's market cap lead over Apple; the dateline is today. The editor's e-mail reminded me that I had planned to check Apple and Google market caps yesterday. My bad, I got distracted with other blogging. So I checked this morning.
Apple's market cap on Wednesday after stock market close was $158.46 billion and this morning, at 11:48 a.m. EDT, it was $158.29 billion. Google's market cap was $157.23 billion on Wednesday and $159.61 billion today.
Market caps can wildly fluctuate as share prices rise or fall and trading volumes change. Over the course of a minute today, I watched Google's market cap fluctuate between $159.40 billion and $159.64 billion. Apple closed at $179.30 on Wednesday, Google at $500.03. This morning, at 11:48 a.m. EDT, Apple's share price was $177.87 and Google's was $507.60. Apple's trading volume was over 11,000 this morning, compared to more than 1,500 for Google. Both stocks are active today.
Both companies have big phone news today. Users of iPhone 3G, me among them, are complaining about 3G speeds and dropped or failed calls. Google has better news: T-Mobile USA will carry an Android-based smart phone, presumably in time for the holidays.
As for the market cap battle between Apple and Google, it's going to be up and down, methinks, but mostly up for Google. But the rising and falling market caps will be fun watching. Apple (with iPhone) and Google (with search and advertising) are the strongest platform challengers to Microsoft since the 1980s. Microsoft's market cap is bigger, but declining—down from about $314 billion in November to $254 billion this morning.
[Please send your tips or rumors to watchtips at live.com].
Comments (1)
Here's a question nobody has been able to answer for me:
At what point did Google's market cap exceed Apple's in the first place?
Was it just after Google's IPO in 2004, or did it take some time for Google to surpass Apple?
After all, Google is quite young and Apple has been around since the 1970s.
Posted by Wheat Williams | August 18, 2008 9:47 AM