“With Apple shares having recently topped $500, how soon might they hit $1,000?” Jack Hough wonders for SmartMoney.
“That is an impatient thought for an investor, perhaps. But Apple shareholders have gotten used to fast gratification: The share price has doubled five times in the past decade,” Hough explains. “A doubling of the stock price from Friday’s $522.41 would put Apple’s market value at over $900 billion. No U.S. company has ever been that large.”
Hough writes, “Such a value seems plausible, however. Microsoft reached a value of around $600 billion in late 1999, which is more than $800 billion in today’s dollars. It was helped by a tech-stock boom, but Apple today produces more than triple the profit that Microsoft did back then, not adjusted for inflation. Another important difference: Microsoft in late 1999 controlled more than 90% of the market for personal-computer operating systems, according to some estimates. Apple controlled 26.6% of the mobile-computing market in the fourth quarter of 2011, including notebooks and tablets, according to NPD DisplaySearch, which provides research for the display industry. Its smartphone market share was 23.9% in the fourth quarter, according to Strategy Analytics, a technology consultant. ‘Apple has plenty of room to gain market share in the U.S., and even more in emerging markets like China,” says Michael Walkley, who covers Apple for Toronto investment bank Canaccord Genuity.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we just wrote on Friday: “[What] matters is Apple’s headroom (TAM) and there is plenty of that. How many people are still suffering with Windows PCs and do not own Macs? How many people do not own iPads? Or iPhones? Or Apple TVs? Or possible Apple televisions? Or, yes, even iPods? Billions. In fact, there must be over a billion people that have the means to buy an Apple product that do not have one yet. Until Apple saturates all of its markets and/or stops opening new markets, the only limit is the sky.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Joe Architect” for the heads up.]
1 MDN 🙂
“This Jack Hough – Hough’s on first?” “That’s right.” “So what’s the name of the guy on first?” “Hough.” “That’s what I want to know!”
Windows 8 may change the gravity of things…. Maybe for the better maybe for the … ummm… competition. It only has to be barely useable for Windblows people to love it. They aren’t real picky about much.
However if it’s a total flop, there will be another mass exodus to iOS. Should be an interesting ride!
Windows 8 has already been a flop.
The title interface has been said that even cosmetically it is not useful and the underlining integration with other applications has yet to be resolved. The duration to get this far in such a long time period people have still held out for XP and Vista because they are unwilling to upgrade their PCs. This comes as the main problem how Microsoft tied the licensing to the chip of your PC hence strangling the need to upgrade either OS or PC int the mid-run of things.
When? Exponentially sooner then any analyst can dream.
Actually, four years should do it. According to the law of 72, a unit of value will double when its’ growth rate factors into 72. If Apple ONLY grows at 20 percent a year, the stock price will double in about three and a half years.
Apple closed at $250.33 on Wednesday, September 01, 2010;
so not even a year and a half. Wow! Thanks Steve.
Aren’t we being just a bit ahead of ourselves or being presumptuous? Let’s find out when AAPL will hit $600, nevermind $1,000. Between future market uncertainty and doomsday coming in December 2012, let’s just take the markets one day at a time.
I’m thinking Shore House with a Hydrasports 25′ center console with twin 275’s parked in the lagoon.
AAPL will roughly double its share price every two years over the next 4 years. This is my prediction. So this would mean AAPL will hit $1,000 in about two years. And in 2016 a single AAPL share will be worth $2,000. Does this sound impossible? Maybe, but there are many things that sounded impossible for Apple.