This statistic presents a ranking of the market capitalization of selected US tech and internet companies in 2006, and 2014 to 2016. Apple's market cap soared from 461.41 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 to 750.03 billion dollars in 2015, before declining towards 521 billion U.S. dollars in May 2016.
Public offerings of tech and internet companies
A public offering is the offering of securities of a company or a similar corporation to the public. Generally, the securities are to be listed on a stock exchange. The initial public offering (IPO) of a company occurs when a company offers its shares for the first time for public ownership and trading.
Hardware companies such as Apple or IBM have been traded publicly for a while but younger, online-based companies such as Google or most notably Facebook have been generating a lot of buzz surrounding their IPOs and subsequent stock prices. Facebook’s initial public offering was intensely hyped over months with projections of a 100 billion US dollar valuation but it dwindled down to a range of 60 to 75 billion US dollars prior to the listing. The social network’s stock initially dropped almost half its price before finally recuperating more than 14 months later.
Other tech stock performances have been more stable – both online retailer Amazon and search and digital advertising giant Google’s shares have been on a more upwards trend. The most impressive development however came from Apple which totally changed its stock performance after the 2008 introduction of the iPhone. Since then, the company has been catapulted to the top of the smartphone market, multiplying its market capitalization as well as regularly being ranked as one of the most valuable brands worldwide.
