What you need to know
- Apple is no longer the world's most valuable company.
- That honor now falls to Microsoft following the opening of today's markets.
- Microsoft is now worth $2.44 trillion.
As the markets opened today, Microsoft passed Apple as the world's largest company, the first time in 16 months that Apple hasn't held the top spot.
Apple shares slid at the open this morning despite record Q4 revenues, as Tim Cook warned that the global chip shortage would impact the company into the holiday season. Microsoft's shares are up slightly, giving it a market cap of $2.45 trillion at the time of publication, compared to just $2.44 for Apple. Of course, there's plenty of trading left in the day, so the standings might not finish like this, but it's still a momentous day nonetheless.
Apple reported $83.4 billion in revenue for Q4 2021 but says it lost out on some $6 billion because of COVID supply chain disruption and the global chip shortage. A shortage Cook and Apple say will continue to squeeze through the end of the year. From our report earlier today:
As Cook noted, the COVID factor has improved significantly in October, but said that looking forward "we think that the primary cause of supply-chain-related shortages will be the chip shortage." Cook went on to say this would affect "pretty much most of our product" including its best iPhones, Macs, iPads, and more. Cook did however note that the chip shortage was happening on legacy nodes for older devices like the iPhone 12, as opposed to devices like iPhone 13. Constraints are expected to continue, however, as noted by CFO Luca Maestri:"As we mentioned earlier, during the September quarter, supply constraints impacted our revenue by around $6 billion. We estimate the impact from supply constraints will be larger during the December quarter. Despite this challenge, we are seeing high demands for our products and expect to achieve very solid year-over-year revenue growth and to set a new revenue record during the December quarter."
