Apple’s titanic earnings report yesterday is driving its shares sharply higher today, padding the Cupertino, Calif. behemoth’s lead as the world’s largest company by market capitalization.
In nominal terms, Apple’s nearly $700 billion market cap is the largest ever seen on planet earth. But adjusted for inflation, it’s not.
We’ve already told you that at its peak, Microsoft’s market cap would have been roughly $900 billion in 2014 dollars. (December 2014 is the last inflation-adjustment data we have.) But others would have seen larger market capitalizations as well.
GE, Cisco and Japanese telecom giant, NTT, have all topped Apple’s market cap, once their valuations are tallied in today’s dollars.
This doesn’t take anything away from Apple’s giant achievements. But it does add a bit of context.