Apple overtakes Microsoft and widens the gap

Apple and Microsoft leada somewhat special duel. This concerns themarket capitalizationtotal of the two companies. For years, Microsoft has been hot on Apple's heels in this little squabble over who is worth more on the stock market.As a reminder, market capitalization, or market cap, is a measure used to assess the total value of a company listed on the stock exchange. It is calculated by multiplying the current share price by the number of shares outstanding.

In January 2024, Microsoft overtook Apple taking first placeof the company with the largest market capitalization in the world. At that time, that ofMicrosoft was worth $2.888 trillion, while that ofApple was worth $2.887 trillion. This has been attributed to Microsoft's innovation, notably with the launch of Copilot. Copilot is, as a reminder, Microsoft's suite of AI tools, which is based on OpenAI AI. It is a direct competitor to Apple, even if in reality Microsoft struggles to convert Apple users.

While Microsoft held onto the top spot for almost half the year, Apple regained its leadership position in June. After Microsoft peaked at $3.37 trillion in April,Tim Cook's competitor returned to his usual second place in June 2024, when Apple introduced Apple Intelligence, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. At that time, Apple's capitalization amounted to 3.336 trillion dollars, compared to 3.31 for Microsoft. Some argue that the only reason Microsoft was able to overtake Apple is because ofits announcements regarding the Snapdragon X Elite chips. Microsoft has in fact announced that they would do better than Apple's M3 by showing tests carried out internally, but real user benchmarks show other results.

Apple widens the gap

In July 2024, Apple is once again widening the gap with Microsoft. In general, the month of July is a good month for Apple's share price on the stock market, because it is preceded by WWDC 2024. JP Morgan had also announced that it was optimistic about Apple's share price last March.The prediction was right.