Today Alphabet announced their quarterly earnings and the big news in all of it was that the is now more valuable than the once untouchable Apple.
In their financial report, Alphabet market cap value is $570 billion while Apple’s cap is $535 billion. This is the first time since 2010, before the iPad, that Google has been more valuable than their Silicon Valley competitors.
What is helping Alphabet long term is the diversity of their portfolio which includes of course Google. They have multiple initiatives that bring in revenue while Apple, fundamentally, has been riding the iPhone wave
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for years. Based on their last quarterly numbers, Apple may need to start looking elsewhere as iPhone sales have been flat (actually for the last now). Apple has also seen declines in sales of Macs and iPad during the same period.
While Google fanboys will tout this as victory, a bit of restraint is required. The companies between 2008 and 2010 flipped the most valuable title back and forth multiple times and the 2016 edition could well flip back and forth too. Ultimately however it is good for Google and Alphabet as a whole given that in 2012 they were $400 billion behind Apple.
Equally, the news is not signalling the beginning of the end for Apple. Yes they are going through a rough patch and that is likely to continue unless they change the game again – something they clearly did with the iPad. The question really is does Apple have another game changer like that in the mix? All indications are no but nobody saw the iPad coming either.
