Apple has become the world's most valuable company of all time. Its market value has passed $620bn/£397bn overtaking a milestone set by Microsoft more than a decade ago.
Its shares have increased by more than 8% this month alone in anticipation of the next-generation iPhone and a smaller version of the iPad.
(Source: Reuters)Apple shares reached a high of $664.74 in the morning, giving them a value of $623.14 billion. They edged past the record of $620.58 billion set by Microsoft in 1999 at the height of the tech bubble, according to data provided by S&P Dow Jones Indices. The data, however, did not take into account the impact of inflation.Apple's climb came at the same time fellow technology heavyweight Facebook Inc plumbed new depths. The No. 1 social network slid to a record intraday low of $18.75 in the morning before bouncing back to trade around $20 after Capstone upgraded the company's stock to buy from hold on Monday.Apple's stock usually rallies in the runup to major product launches, among the most heavily watched events on the annual tech calendar. The iPhone is the company's biggest product, yielding half or more of its sales.Sources have said the company will take the wraps off a larger version of its iPhone on September 12. Some analysts also think it intends to announce a smaller version of its iPad, to safeguard its market share, as rivals from Google Inc to Amazon.com Inc begin selling cheaper, seven-inch tablets.But Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi warned that questions remained about the availability of components for both the iPhone and the iPad, which in the past has constrained Apple's product shipments.
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