Apple now the most valuable company of all time?

Technology giant Apple set another record on August 20: It became the most valuable public company in history. Apple’s market value — the price of its stock multiplied by the number of outstanding shares — hit $623 billion in intraday trading, eclipsing the previous record of $618.9 billion set by Microsoft on December 30, 1999. If adjusted for inflation, however, “Microsoft’s peak market cap in 1999 was actually about $856 billion in constant dollars, $235 billion more than Apple’s current market cap,” wrote Ryan Chittum, a media critic at the Columbia School of Journalism. Nonetheless, the anticipated September launch of the new iPhone, coupled with rumors of a smaller iPad and a more feature-rich Apple TV have lifted the Apple stock in recent weeks. Apple is on pace to be the world’s largest technology company in terms of sales by the end of the year, and it’s among the most profitable companies in the world. In the last 3 months of 2011, Apple made $13 billion — second only to ExxonMobil’s record-setting $14.8 billion quarter from the fall of 2008.

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