Apple becomes first ever company to be worth $2 trillion as iPhone maker share price surges amid pandemic

The Apple logo outside a newly opened store in Bangkok (AFP/Getty)

Apple has become the first ever company to be worth more than $2 trillion (£1.5 trillion), as its share price continues to surge amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Its shares have gained almost 60 per cent over 2020, even despite production problems caused by lockdowns around the world. Those problems have already forced the company to delay the release of the iPhone 12, for example.

Apple is also facing increasing questions about whether it is unfairly using its dominance of markets, particularly through the App Store, to benefit itself. Those came to a head last week when the game Fortnite was kicked out of the App Store, and developers Epic Games publicly accused Apple of using its size to discourage competition.

The milestone comes almost exactly two years after Apple became the first company to be worth $1 trillion, in early August 2018.

Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, said then that the record was ”not the most important measure” of the company’s success.

The company’s shares have surged following quarterly results in July that saw the iPhone maker eclipse Saudi Aramco as the world’s most valuable listed company, up about 57 per cent in value so far in 2020.

Apple’s fortunes reflect growing investor confidence in its shift away from reliance on sales of iPhones and other gadgets, and towards services for its users, as well as a broad shift by big institutional investors during the coronavirus crisis.

With Amazon, Microsoft and Google-owner Alphabet all now worth around $1 trillion or more, the big US tech companies are together worth more than $6 trillion.

California-based Apple surprised Wall Street, with loyal shoppers buying iPhones, iPads and Macs online even as several brick-and-mortar stores remained closed because of lockdown.

Apple’s revenue grew across every category and all of its geographical regions in its fiscal third quarter, ending on 27 June, even as the coronavirus crisis caused the US economy to collapse at its worst rate since the Great Depression.

Started in the garage of co-founder Steve Jobs in 1976, Apple has pushed its revenue beyond the economic outputs of Portugal, Peru and other countries.

Apple’s shares rose as much as 1.4 per cent to $468.63 at one point on Wednesday.

Additional reporting by agencies