Exxon regains title of world's most valuable company after Apple debacle

Last February, Apple's market cap of $470 billion made it the most valuable company in the world, ahead of the former leader, international oil and gas firm ExxonMobil. And  Apple kept going. By August, the stock was worth $621 billion making Apple the most valuable company of all-time and giving it a value 53% higher than the New York based runner-up. Apple even rose higher before peaking on the day that the Apple iPhone 5 launched.

But a decline of 38% since then has taken Apple's market cap below Exxon's allowing the latter to regain the top spot as the world's most valuable company. Exxon now has a market cap of $418.23 billion versus Apple's $413.06 billion. The company seems to have lost the backing of Wall Street and main street. During its run up to all time highs, both good news and bad news were equally rewarded. Now, good news and bad news are equally met with selling. While Apple CEO Tim Cook might say that the product pipeline is "chock full,"  the cycle that Apple is currently in cannot easily be broken.

About a half dozen U.S. companies in history have hit the $500 billion value mark including Apple, Microsoft and Exxon. Only Apple and Microsoft have ever hit $600 billion.

In other Apple news the company has started pushing out iOS 6.1 beta 5 to registered developers. The update will allow Siri to buy movie tickets, and should improve Apple Maps, Passbook and a fix a few bugs. Beta 4 expires on Tuesday, so registered developers need to update to beta 5 ASAP!

source: TheGuardian, RedmondPie (1), (2)