Apple moves up one spot to No. 5 in 2014 Fortune 500 rankings
Apple's meteoric rise in the prestigious Fortune 500 corporate rankings continued this year as the iPhone maker moved past Texas oil and gas giant Phillips 66 to take the fifth slot in the 2014 edition.
Apple was the only technology company to crack the top 15, with Hewlett-Packard's 17th-place showing the next best for a Silicon Valley firm. Joining Apple in the top five are retail monolith Wal-Mart, petrochemical behemoths Exxon Mobil and Chevron, and Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate.
Apple's stratospheric ranking is a marked change from its position just 10 years ago, when it ranked a relatively lowly 301st. Much of that improvement is owed to the blockbuster success of the iPhone and iPad, which have collectively sold more than half a billion units in the last seven years.
Those sales have translated into immense financial success. Apple's $170 billion in total revenue for 2013 -- up nearly 10 percent year-over-year -- is more than the revenue booked by fellow corporate icons Microsoft and Boeing combined.
At press time, Apple shares were trading at more than $630 in advance of a 7-for-1 stock split that the company says is designed to make it more accessible to independent investors. Apple is also in the midst of a $90 billion share buyback program and recently bumped its quarterly dividend to $3.29 per share.
Apple was the only technology company to crack the top 15, with Hewlett-Packard's 17th-place showing the next best for a Silicon Valley firm. Joining Apple in the top five are retail monolith Wal-Mart, petrochemical behemoths Exxon Mobil and Chevron, and Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate.
Apple's stratospheric ranking is a marked change from its position just 10 years ago, when it ranked a relatively lowly 301st. Much of that improvement is owed to the blockbuster success of the iPhone and iPad, which have collectively sold more than half a billion units in the last seven years.
Those sales have translated into immense financial success. Apple's $170 billion in total revenue for 2013 -- up nearly 10 percent year-over-year -- is more than the revenue booked by fellow corporate icons Microsoft and Boeing combined.
At press time, Apple shares were trading at more than $630 in advance of a 7-for-1 stock split that the company says is designed to make it more accessible to independent investors. Apple is also in the midst of a $90 billion share buyback program and recently bumped its quarterly dividend to $3.29 per share.
Comments
Very impressive, but not huge or particularly important news. It is based solely on revenues.
Fortunes new website is horrible.
It didn't even work for me, not sure if that's a AdBlockPlus issue or because I'm still running FailPlayer 12.
That or they don't comply with webstandards and still require IE.
They've made it so any current ad blocking causes it up be mostly blank. I assume the makers of these plugins will find ways around it.
Annoying as it is I can't blame them for wanting to protect their revenue stream.
That explains why Steve Ballmer is not any longer Microsoft's CEO and widely viewed as a figure of fun. And thinking this guy was the CEO of major global company?
What seven posts in and no mention of doom?
Yep. I paused Ghostery and the page loaded. I looked at the source and there is almost no html in there. The entire site is comprised of Javascript frameworks and external content. I really dislike this new liquid layout style where everything is made of blocks that re-stack depending on the width of the window. They always look like crap.
Increasingly I have to disable Ghostery and/or other ad-blockers I run to use various websites. IMO site owners will either find a way to get around the blockers or alternatively make it difficult if not impossible for those users to get any value from their site. They aren't going to take a loss on providing services.
You know that purple box that Ghostery puts on the screen for 10 seconds? A website can run a script that detects that box and thus knows you are running Ghostery. If the box is detected they can break the page. It all depends on how compelling the content is expected to be which might influence the user's decision to turn off Ghostery and that would allow them to track you and develop a fingerprint of your device. This is equivalent to setting a third party cookie which is usually blocked by default. It is not about selling you stuff with random ads, it is about profiling you so the ads they deliver are targeted. But, since I don't give a rat's ass about Fortune, I won't bother retuning anyway.
That’s disgusting. But there’s a simple solution: turn the box off. No idea why anyone would want it to show up in the first place.
Considering how many pundits are still claiming how Apple is struggling for survival and the Apple is doomed meme is still in full force that Apple was able to climb up one more spot on the Fortune 500 list. Maybe Apple should be on the Misfortune 500 list because investors are so afraid that Apple is falling further and further behind Google and Android. I wonder where Google is on that Fortune 500 list since everyone says that Google is such a better company than Apple and has a far brighter future. It's hard to separate the truth from the BS but I think Apple is closer to the top than the bottom of corporations on this planet. I feel pretty sure that Apple will continue to move up in ranking on the Fortune 500 list if it means anything in showing how well a company is doing. I think Apple only needs to add a little more diversity to its product portfolio to increase its P/E.
I wonder where Google is on that Fortune 500 list since everyone says that Google is such a better company than Apple and has a far brighter future.
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Where's Microsoft, 495?
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