After surpassing Alphabet in market valuation earlier this year, Microsoft has now replaced Apple as the world’s most valuable company.
The Redmond-based company debuted on stock market in 1986, and have been quite profitable over the years. But, the company kept failing and trailing in the emerging markets.
The market valuation of Microsoft significantly increased since Satya Nadella took over as the CEO in 2014. He shifted the focus of Microsoft from failed Windows Phone efforts to modern technologies like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and mixed reality.
“The essence of what Satya Nadella did was the dramatic shift to the cloud. He put Microsoft back into a high-growth business,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School.
The iPhone maker has been leading the market since 2012. On Friday, Microsoft’s market value was found to be higher than Apple, for the first time in last 8 years.
The market value of Microsoft was reported $851.22 billion on Friday. On the other hand, Apple closed its market value at $847.43 billion. The stock price of Microsoft has increased by 30% in last 12 months, whereas, Apple’s stock price has slowed down in last few weeks. Before this, Microsoft owned the crown of the most valuable company in 2002.
Apple is the only company to hit $1 trillion mark in market value. But the decline in iPhone sales over the last few weeks have worried the investors.
Microsoft is continuously pushing forward, focusing majorly on cloud computing. Along with shifting the focus of company to cloud, Satya Nadella has also renovated the Office applications. Today, the company provides on-premise, as well as cloud version of these applications. More and more enterprises are adopting Office 365 as the ideal productivity suite.
Since the time Satya Nadella started leading, Microsoft has bought several big platforms, like LinkedIn and GitHub.
Further, the Redmond company had beaten the expectations of analysts in the fourth quarter of 2018, posting a revenue of $30.1 billion, up 17% from a year ago.
Also read: Microsoft updates Office 365 app icons to match pace with modern work life
“We had an incredible year, surpassing $100 billion in revenue as a result of our teams’ relentless focus on customer success and the trust customers are placing in Microsoft,” said Satya Nadella.
“Our early investments in the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge are paying off, and we will continue to expand our reach in large and growing markets with differentiated innovation.”
