Apple becomes the first US company to hit a $1,000,000,000,000 valuation

Tech giant Apple has become the first US company to top $1 trillion in market value.

The iPhone-maker's shares struck an all-time high of $207.05 during trading in New York, pushing its market capitalisation past the landmark trillion-dollar level to $1.02 trillion.

Apple has won the race to a $1 trillion valuation ahead of its so-called FAANG rivals (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google), and now accounts for 4 per cent of the S&P 500 index.

Amazon is currently valued at $866bn, followed by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, at $843bn.

Apple's share rise was bolstered by positive quarterly results for the Cupertino company in which it smashed analyst expectations.

Apple sold 43.1m iPhones in the June quarter, as customers flocked to its more expensive models like the iPhone X which was a weekly best-seller for the company.

The average iPhone selling price hit $724, beating analyst expectations of $694, according to data from FactSet. Apple's revenue for the quarter increased 20 per cent year-on-year to $53.3bn, leading the company as a whole to grow by 17 per cent in the same period.

Earlier today the Nasdaq's website showed Apple's value passing $1 trillion. Apple's own "Stocks" app, which is based on Yahoo Finance data, also put the company's value at $1.01 trillion. However, analysts pointed out that, at the time, celebrations were premature.

A filing with the SEC yesterday showed Apple had revised its share count at 4,829,926,000 on 20 July, less than the 4,842,917,000 it reported on Tuesday for the end of the June quarter due to share buybacks.

This meant that Apple shares had to reach $207.04 per share before breaking $1 trillion.

Co-founded in 1976 by university drop-out Steve Jobs, Apple's market value is now greater than the combined capitalisations of major US companies Exxon Mobil, Procter & Gamble and AT&T.

The tech giant has experienced its own trials and tribulations over the years, once nearing bankruptcy in the mid-1990s after a series of major product flops.

Since it went public in 1980, its stock has surged more than 50,000 per cent, dwarfing the S&P 500's roughly 2,000 per cent increase in that time.

Apple became the most profitable publicly-listed US company last year when its net income ballooned to $48.4bn. In 2006, a year before the iPhone, Apples net profit was just below $2bn. Despite revenue having doubled under his tenure, Apples chief executive Tim Cook has yet to replicate the astounding success of Jobs iPhone with a new product. With the likes of Amazon and Google not far behind, Cook will be feeling the heat to maintain his company's lead.

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