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Apple takes the title as first $1 trillion U.S. company

Apple is officially the first publicly traded United States company to be valued at $1 trillion. The news comes only a couple days after revealing its strong third-quarter earnings.

The company specifically reached $1 trillion early on Thursday, August 2, when its stock rose almost 3 percent — reaching a high of $207.05 per share.

Predictions that Apple would hit the $1 trillion mark started surfacing in January. If its share prices continued increase at the same percentage as they did in 2017, it was only a matter of time before the company would end up at the top spot. The company’s valuation of $869 billion at the time, put it $140 billion ahead of Google parent company Alphabet, and $200 billion ahead of Microsoft.

While Apple is the first to reach $1 trillion, it likely won’t be the last. Amazon is trailing closely behind following its third-quarter earnings. The company revealed that in July, it exceeded $900 billion in market value.

As for Apple, the company said during its earnings call that it expected revenue next quarter to be between $60 billion and $62 billion. To reach that estimate — which is ahead of Wall Street expectations that come in at $58.47 billion — Apple would need to see a 15 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

A majority of the company’s growth could be credited to its “services” category — such as Apple Music, Apple Pay, iTunes, iCloud, and more. Apple saw $9.55 billion in revenue for the category, bringing it up 28 percent from the same quarter last year. Apple says the increase in revenue is attributed to high Apple Pay usage, along with an increase in paid subscribers through the App Store.

When it comes to actual units, Apple also sold 41.3 million — the same amount of iPhones as did during the same quarter laster year. It’s also doing well in the wearables market, with a 60 percent growth in the category which includes the Apple Watch, AirPods, and Beats headphones.

The company will continue to see even more growth in revenue in the near future. At its upcoming event this fall, it’s out with the old and in with the new — Apple will unveil its next-generation iPhones, among a variety of other new hardware.

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