Microsoft Pulls Ahead (Again) in Long Rivalry With Apple

In a rivalry dating back to the pioneering days of personal computers, including parents’ garages, scruffy beards and nerdy glasses, Microsoft once again pulled ahead of Apple, re-claiming the title of the world’s most valuable public company. Following a less-than-stellar start of the year, with weak iPhone demand in China and the Apple Watch ban in the U.S. making negative headlines, Apple saw its share price slip 3.4 percent so far this year, while Microsoft has so far continued where it left off in 2023. As a result, Microsoft’s market capitalization surpassed Apple’s on Friday, marking the first time since November 2021 that the Windows maker overtook its Cupertino-based rival at market close.

Apple had overtaken its old foe in terms of market capitalization in 2010, when Microsoft was struggling with slow PC sales and Apple was riding a wave of success in the wake of the iPhone’s launch in 2007. In recent years however, under the leadership of Satya Nadella, Microsoft successfully pivoted, reducing its dependency on Windows and becoming a leading player in the growing market for cloud-based enterprise applications. As of market close on January 12, Microsoft’s market capitalization stood at a record high of $2,887 billion, while Apple’s amounted to $2,875 billion.

As the following chart shows, both companies saw their share price and market capitalization skyrocket in the past few years. After Apple became the first trillion-dollar company in August 2018, it only took the company two more years to pass the $2-trillion milestone in August 2020. On June 30, 2023, Apple's market cap even surpassed $3 trillion - a milestone that no longer seems out of sight for Microsoft either.