Apple is apparently losing its title of the No.1 valued company, having surrendered to Exxon Mobil, an American multinational oil and gas corporation in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The company’s shares have been reported by Bloomberg to slump 17 percent this year, and its market capitalization is now estimated $413 billion, while Exxon Mobil has $418 billion. Things were better for Apple in 2012, when the company managed to become the most valuable company ever. The source also reports that the company’s shares have fallen by 37 percent from a record in September.
Photo: An Apple store in Munich, Germany, Lukas Barth/DAPD via AP Photo
Apple’s winning race was based primarily on innovative iPad and iPhone products, but it doesn’t seem that the company will manage to continue the legendary success developing more hit devices in the coming months. Other companies, including Samsung and Google, are developing the more affordable mobile products which are able to compete with Apple’s i-range on the global market. The first step behind was made by Apple last week, when it sank 12 percent on January 24 after the company revealed the slowest quarterly profit growth since 2003. “Analysts [are] projecting a 14 percent drop… in the current quarter,” notes Bloomberg.
Still, experts are quite optimistic about Apple’s stock future. According to analysts’ projections compiled by Bloomberg, “shares of Apple will climb to $627.79 (AAP) over the next 12 months, implying a market value of about $589.5 billion.”
These days, Apple is also in the spotlight thanks to the world premiere of Steve Jobs biopic, jOBS. The long-awaited film, directed by Josh Stern, was screened at Sundance Film Festival 2013 this weekend. The film, which has been already widely criticized, is slated for an April release in the USA. The Telegraph writes that “it’s a heroic story, but Matthew Whiteley’s episodic, superficial script makes an almighty mess of it,” noting that “where the film completely falls down is in director Joshua Michael Stern’s disastrous decision to cast Ashton Kutcher in the central role.” Read the review piece here.