Apple Bigger than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook

By Jason Middleton

| Wednesday, Aug 29, 2012 | Updated 7:11 AM PDT

View Comments (

)

Apple = Google + Facebook + Microsoft + Amazon

Apple's market cap is astonishing, given where it was just about a decade ago.

After last week's body blow to mobile device competition (via Apple vs Samsung verdict), and with a pending release of yet another must-have iPhone and, possibly, iPad, Apple is poised to only grow -- grow closer to a $1 trillion valuation.

At the time of this post, Apple's maket capitalization is $634,017,000,000 (that's billions) with a share price of $676.31 (AAPL). Market cap in 1999 (and with full, regrettable hindsight by this writer)? $9.29 billion.

It's great to fly high, but natural forces return all share prices to a more normal range. Just look at four main Apple competitors:

Microsoft: $256.99 billion
Facebook: $41.22 billion
Amazon: $111.06 billion
Google: $223.32 billion

------------

Total: $632.59

For all of Apple's wins in so many aspects of consumption, they never really have addressed social media. The separation between its four competitors and itself is $43.72 billion.

So, you know, just buy Facebook. All of it.