Apple Stock: $500 And Climbing?

Published on Wednesday, 22 February 2012 21:15 Written by Chris Dumont

Already the most valuable company in the world, Apple hit the $500 mark, just $40 billion shy from breaking the $500 billion market cap. So what does this mean to investors and what does this mean to the public, now that Steve Jobs isn't at the helm? There are pundits on both sides of the table arguing that it is overpriced, and others saying it still has room to move up. To determine this, many factors are in play and the question is what catalyst is left to drive the stock. But before looking into what could provide a catalyst for the stock, let's see a brief history of Apple's market cap based on the last trading day of the year:

SEE: Steve Jobs And The Apple Story

One way to look at it, investing $10,000 into Apple in 2000 would be worth about $966,667 today. Even since December 2010, just a little over a year ago, Apple has increased by $230 billion, almost 98%. Everyone has probably heard by now that Apple is larger than Google and Microsoft combined, or that the iPhone alone is a bigger business than Microsoft.

Hindsight is 20/20. So instead, looking forward can Apple continue to grow? The iPhone consisted of over half of Apple's revenue in the previous quarter, and that was without sales in China. If the iPad is included, those two product lines consist of 72% of Apple's revenues, products that did not exist even five years ago.

So What's Next?

The cellphone market, including smartphones is expected to increase to 2 billion units for 2012, up from approximately 1.5 billion in 2011.

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