Big Tech rakes it in during the pandemic, and Apple is on top in the world

Apple is now the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, passing Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco. According to CNBC, as of close of business Friday, Apple has a market valuation of $1.84 trillion, while Saudi Aramco’s is $1.76 trillion. Apple’s stock, which has been on a largely-steady climb since the end of March, closed up more than 10 percent on Friday following the company’s record-breaking third-quarter earnings on Thursday, ending the day at $425.04.

Apple’s total revenue for Q3 hit $59.7 billion, up 11 percent from last year. Strong Mac and iPad sales were a highlight, and the company likely saw increased demand for the devices while people have been sheltering in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Apple also announced a four-for-one stock split as part of its third quarter earnings, which will lower the price of an individual stock.

The Verge reported that Amazon, Facebook, and Google all announced earnings Friday as well, and for the most part, they had pretty good quarters. Amazon doubled its profits, and that’s during a pandemic. Facebook saw a daily user increase of 12 percent year over year to 1.79 billion. And combined, the four companies netted $28.6 billion in profits.

It’s also worth mentioning that tech companies — including ones that didn’t report earnings on Friday, such as Microsoft, which is also having a profitable pandemic — responded quickly to COVID-19 by closing offices and stores. Google said Monday it doesn’t expect its workers back in the office until July 2021 at the earliest; while Facebook said in May it expected to have a larger remote staff as a permanent feature. Most Apple employees will work from home until 2021, CEO Tim Cook told Bloomberg.

If other workplaces follow this trend, Big Tech is composed of precisely the companies that stand to benefit from remote work. Amazon, for instance, was buoyed by the video chat client Zoom, since its cloud services division AWS hosts a chunk of Zoom.

Americans are simultaneously more reliant than ever on Big Tech — and less trusting of it. The newly-released emails from Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, show Facebook trying to kneecap its competitors any way it can. Another batch of hearing-related emails, from Jeff Bezos this time, suggest Amazon bought Ring for “market position.”

As more people become more dependent on the web for work, school, and social contact, it seems likely that scrutiny over the tech giants’ anti-competitive practices will increase. But not, as this quarter shows, before these companies make a hefty chunk of change.

—
Photo Credit:  Uladzik Kryhin / Shutterstock.com