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"Market cap" — short for "market capitalization" — is the total value of a public company's outstanding shares, which are those owned by stockholders, not by the company itself. Outstanding shares can be owned by employees and board members — just not the actual corporation.
A way to think about a market cap is that it's a company's value in good faith; after all, shares are an intangible asset, not a physical item, so they are worth nothing if no one wants them.
Through that lens, Apple is doing very well based on its market cap, which ranks it among the world's most valuable companies. And it looks like the company's best days may well be ahead.
What is Apple's highest-ever market cap?
Publicly traded companies are generally categorized into small-cap, mid-cap, and large-cap. A small-cap company has a market cap of $3 billion or less. Midcap companies have a market capitalization value between $3-10 billion. And large-cap companies have a market cap of $10 billion or more.
In late July 2023, Apple hit its highest market cap of $3.1 trillion. That is 310 times more than the figure required to be considered a large-cap company and greater than the entire GDP of the United Kingdom in the year 2022, per Worldometer.
How much is Apple worth now?
After that stunning peak in the late summer, Apple's value slumped. By September 2023, Apple's market cap fell to $2.8 trillion. But don't feel too bad for the California-based tech giant. Apple's stock has since recovered.
As of the time of writing, Apple's valuation was $3.03 trillion, with the stock near a recovery high. That makes Apple the most valuable company in the world. It is followed — rather closely — by another tech juggernaut: Microsoft.
Why is Apple's market cap so high?
Market cap is determined by multiplying the value of a company's share price by the number of outstanding shares in existence. A company with a $10 share price that had sold 1,000 shares would be worth $10,000, for example — decidedly small-cap.
Apple's market cap is high because its stock price is high. And with approximately 15.5 billion shares outstanding, a high Apple share price equates to a massive market cap.
But why is the stock price so high? The company has proven over a long period that it can stay at the forefront of innovation and generate the earnings growth sought after by stock investors. Despite its sensitivity to economic growth slowdowns and interest-rate fluctuations, it is largely viewed as a safe investment within the tech sector. Apple products are ubiquitous, and the company has been around long enough that people trust its staying power.
Apple's market cap history
To see the growth trend, let's first look back 20 years.
In 2003, Apple had an approximate market cap value of $7.88 billion. In 2013, that figure had grown to $500.7 billion. Five years on, in 2018, it was $746.07 billion.
Then it crossed the trillion-dollar line in 2019, setting up the trajectory toward the $3 trillion ballpark.
Apple trades under the stock ticker name AAPL and went public on December 12th, 1980, with a valuation of $22 per share, according to Apple's investor site.