In the turmoil that beset the world's markets last week the once maverick upstart Apple overtook Exxon Mobil to become the world's biggest company by stock market capitalisation. It was a brief victory, and by Friday night Exxon was back on top, though only just, with market cap of US$350.07 billion against Apple's US$349.5 billion.
The Apple story has lessons far beyond its headquarters in Cupertino, California, or New York, where it and Exxon are quoted, the oil major on the New York Stock Exchange and Apple on Nasdaq. Some bullish analysts see Apple continuing to soar, in spite of the fragile health of its chief executive Steve Jobs, and predict a US$1 trillion company before too long. What marks Apple out from the crowd is that its sales growth is almost 10 times as fast as the average company and it sits on a US$76 billion pile of cash and investments.
But the rise and rise of Apple also raises important questions about the role of markets and the shaping of modern capitalism, particularly in the hitherto most powerful economy of the world.
Such is the special status of Apple that its major products, not just its computers but its iPod, iPhone and iPad, have become ubiquitous globally, and the iPod has become the subject of academic study into how the device is an exemplar of trends in globalisation.
Three Americans, Greg Linden, Jason Dedrick and Kenneth Kraemer, all associated with the Personal Computing Industry Centre of the University of California, Irvine, writing in the Journal of International Commerce and Economics, use the iPod to examine the view of sceptics of globalisation that the benefits of lower consumer prices are offset by job losses, lower earnings for US workers and a potential loss of technology to foreign rivals.
Their conclusion is that analysis of the manufacturing of the iPod, 'provides evidence that innovation by a US company at the head of a global value chain can benefit both the company and US workers.'