Apple at $2 trillion market cap tops GDP of Italy, Brazil, Canada, Russia and more!

Mumbai: As the market capitalization of Apple Inc rose past the $2 trillion mark on Wednesday, and the company’s value soared to more than the GDP of a host of countries including Italy, Brazil, Canada and Russia.

The Cupertino, California-based company's shares briefly rose as high as $468.65 on Wednesday, giving it a market capitalisation of $2.004 trillion, and surpassed the GDP of countries such as South Korea, Spain, Australia, Mexico, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Switzerland, Taiwan, UAE and Norway, among many others.

Apple, now the most valuable company in the world, has seen its shares more than double from March lows.

It is followed by Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp in the second and third places, with market-caps below $1.7 trillion.

Apple was also the first publicly traded US company to reach a $1 trillion market cap in August 2018.

The stock is up around 57 per cent so far in 2020 on booster from the strong forecast-beating earnings despite the Covid-19 pandemic and optimism over its forthcoming 5G iPhone. In the past year, shares have risen more than 120 per cent.

Last month, the iPhone maker reported revenue gains across categories and geographies as consumers working and learning from home during the Covid-19 pandemic turned to its products and services, Reuters reported.

Apple is not the first company to hit the $2 trillion mark. Saudi Arabia's state-owned Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest producer of oil, reached the $2 trillion mark in December 2019 stock debut, but subsequent global economic slowdown and a plunge in oil prices later caused the stock to tumble.