It’s an insanely big number. A one followed by 12 zeroes. In fact, it is so big that most of us can’t even conceive of it. To give you an idea, if you could count at the phenomenally fast rate of 10 per second it would still take you more than three millennia(!) to count that high. And that’s if you don’t lose count, of course (imagine if that happened when you were half way through. You’d be tempted to give up, I would think). rnAnd yet it’s going to happen. Already, Apply (The front runner) is worth
900 billion dollars. That’s only hop, skip and a jump away from that phenomenally big number. But will they be the first? It’s not a done deal. There are a number of other companies which stand a serious chance and are going for the big number pell nell. rnAnd it’s not just about how close you are, it’s also about how quickly you can grow. And as things stand right now, Apple isn’t growing that quickly (mainly because it’s paying big dividends right now and buying back stock). rnAnd according to a lot of commentators, there are a bunch of companies out there which have far more growth potential than Apple does. What company am I talking about? Well, for one there is:
Amazon
Sure, the company might currently only be worth only about
half as much as Apple is, but that doesn’t mean they’re out of the running. You see, they’ve got one incredible thing going for them right now and that is some absolutely amazing growth. rnIn the last year alone they’ve managed to grow by a stunning 48%. Yeah, that’s right, they’ve gained about half as much in value. They only need to do that for two more years and they’ll have shot past Apple to take the crown.rnI imagine that Steve Jobs will roll over in his grave if he found out, no? rnOf course, that doesn’t mean it will happen. After all, 140% growth is a heck of a lot. That means there’s a good chance some unseen landmine is waiting out there for either the company or the world economy.
Alphabet
Another contender you hear people talk about a lot as well is Alphabet, the parent company of Google and a whole host of other companies like YouTube, Calico and DeepMind (though not
MyBestEssays.org). They are more valuable than Amazon (though some distance behind Apple) at 581 billion dollars. That’s nothing to be sneezed at. rnAt the same time, they’d still need to almost double in value (about 72%) and that is a hard thing to achieve. To give you some kind of an idea, in the last year they managed to grow by 11%. At that rate they’ll need another six years to get there. It’s possible that nobody will hit the mark that quickly, but then it’s also equally possible that Alphabet’s growth will slow down and they’ll need longer.rnSo yes, they’re definitely still in the running, but there half a horse-length behind.
Facebookrn rnA company with an equally good shot is Facebook, which might not be worth as much as the other three we’ve mentioned so far, but they’ve been booking some pretty serious growth recently, with them doing about
23% this year alone.rnWhat’s more, they still don’t have any serious competitor in the field of social media. I mean, sure Snapchat may make a play for the crown, but they’re still a very long way behind. Twitter is bigger and getting a lot of press lately, but their growth rates are stagnant. And all that matters, as Social media is still a field that’s evolving steadly, who knows what further financial streams they’ll manage to come up with. rnDoes that mean Facebook has a serious shot? Well, they still have a long way to go. Currently they’re valued at about 407 billion. At their current growth rate that means they’d need 5 more years before they get there. Of course, the higher the growth rate a company has, the harder it is to keep it up.rnSo yes, they’re very much still in the running. They might even have a better shot that Alphabet. But the better bets, it would seem, are still Apple for being closer and Amazon for being about the same size but growing even faster.
Microsoftrn rnAnother company that’s seen as a contender is Microsoft. After all, they’re worth about the same as Facebook and Amazon and they do have a good track record. But are they in the running? Well, their cloud computing efforts are certainly growing well and they did report at year on year growth of 12% in terms of revenue (mostly, it turns out, because of their cloud computing).rnStill, if I were a betting man I might go with one of the other ones. After all, Microsoft has been outgrown by them steadily over the last few decades and though it’s certainly possible that Microsoft has turned a corner and can once again compete on equal terms, whether that is actually true or not waits to be seen.
Last wordsrn rnSo it would appear to be a tight race with a lot of contenders. Apple is in front – by quite a lot. And yet they are not a shoe in. That’s because they’ve had a bit of a spotty growth record off late, with it dipping throughout 2015. Of course, it has been
doing a lot better this year, so perhaps they’ll manage to keep it up.rnStill, they’ve got some serious competition from the lickes of Amazon and Facebook and even Alphabet and Microsoft are in the running. It’s going to be fascinating to see who manages to get to the 13 digit number first. rnAnd of course, if you manage to own some shares of the winning company, then obviously that will be a nice thing as well.