Apple stock closes at record high, Microsoft unseated for top valuation
Apple shares have hit a record high amid new "Apple Car" rumors, with Microsoft tumbling from its position as the world's most valuable company.
Credit: Laurenz Heymann/Unsplash
The Cupertino company's share prices hit a record high on Friday following a report Thursday that the company was accelerating efforts to launch a vehicle.
Apple shares surged more than 1% Friday afternoon to above $160. After the "Apple Car" report was published Thursday, Apple's share price surged around 2.5%. The company's stock closed at $160.55 after the bell rang on Friday.
In late October, Microsoft overtook Apple in terms of market valuation. After the Thursday and Friday surges, Apple regained its position and dethroned Microsoft's brief run as the world's most valuable company.
Apple's total market capitalization, which is calculated by multiplying share price by number of outstanding shares, was $2.63 trillion as of market close Friday.
The Bloomberg report on Thursday, citing sources familiar with Apple's car development, indicated that the company had decided to pursue a fully autonomous vehicle that could lack a steering wheel and pedals.
According to the report, Apple was targeting an aggressive release timeline of 2025 for its self-driving car. Recently, Apple's Special Projects Group -- which is working on the vehicle -- hit a key milestone in the development of a specialized chip to power the "Apple Car's" autonomous features.
Apple's entry into the electric car space, which the company has not yet publicly confirmed, would put it in direct competition with existing players like Tesla, Rivian, and legacy automakers who are pursuing an EV strategy.
Earlier on Friday, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty predicted that the "Apple Car" could be a "game changer" for the automotive industry. Wedbush's Daniel Ives also forecast that Apple would announce some type of strategic EV partnership in 2022 to set the stage for a potential launch three years later.
Read on AppleInsider
Credit: Laurenz Heymann/Unsplash
The Cupertino company's share prices hit a record high on Friday following a report Thursday that the company was accelerating efforts to launch a vehicle.
Apple shares surged more than 1% Friday afternoon to above $160. After the "Apple Car" report was published Thursday, Apple's share price surged around 2.5%. The company's stock closed at $160.55 after the bell rang on Friday.
In late October, Microsoft overtook Apple in terms of market valuation. After the Thursday and Friday surges, Apple regained its position and dethroned Microsoft's brief run as the world's most valuable company.
Apple's total market capitalization, which is calculated by multiplying share price by number of outstanding shares, was $2.63 trillion as of market close Friday.
The Bloomberg report on Thursday, citing sources familiar with Apple's car development, indicated that the company had decided to pursue a fully autonomous vehicle that could lack a steering wheel and pedals.
According to the report, Apple was targeting an aggressive release timeline of 2025 for its self-driving car. Recently, Apple's Special Projects Group -- which is working on the vehicle -- hit a key milestone in the development of a specialized chip to power the "Apple Car's" autonomous features.
Apple's entry into the electric car space, which the company has not yet publicly confirmed, would put it in direct competition with existing players like Tesla, Rivian, and legacy automakers who are pursuing an EV strategy.
Earlier on Friday, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty predicted that the "Apple Car" could be a "game changer" for the automotive industry. Wedbush's Daniel Ives also forecast that Apple would announce some type of strategic EV partnership in 2022 to set the stage for a potential launch three years later.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Well not that aggressive. Project Titan has been underway for a decade, right?
I think Xboxster would probably get poopooed by Porsche.
However...
I still don't believe in 100% autonomy with current tech. The human brain is a far more powerful computer than anything these programmers have come up with to date, and no doubt that includes Apple too. I cannot see how a car can drive itself under all circumstances. A lot of tech used in 2021 Toyota cars that keep the thing in the lane relays on painted lines. What about roads with no paint? Even Toyota's Radar Cruise stops working when it sees a curve in the road! What about when a 100% autonomous car encounters potholes, sudden harsh sunlight reflections, fog, etc? What happens when a paved road becomes a dirt road? What happens when the car encounters something it was never programmed for (which would probably be all the time)? I'd hope it would just stop, but then if it never moved, what happens next?
I wish Apple well, but there are a lot of unanswered questions about 100% autonomy. And then the question becomes, how will Apple's shift to cars affect its existing business? They've always be laser focused on what they do well, and they do few things as a result. Wouldn't the automotive business become a distraction? And what of restless lawmakers who can't rest until the've enacted another silly law, always seeking to nail "big tech" to the wall merely because they classify it as "too big" and therefore naughty under anti-trust law? As Apple grows its business (as it should in a free market), law-makers will increasingly find ways to shoot it down. Quite sad, but it's the living reality we have today.
Autonomous car will reduce accident dramatically. The lawyers will find no case to sue. They will be starving.
My brain may be slower and my sensors fewer, but I can still outsmart any "autonomous" car on the road today, and I suspect that will remain true in 2025. This truth does not undermine the progression toward full autonomy. It merely states the state of things right now. Will cars be 100% autonomous and better than human drivers in the future? Yes! Will that be 2025? No. Will that be during my lifetime? I am skeptical. But the day will come. We simply need to keep our expectations in perspective. A lot of the reason AAPL is skyrocketing now is due to the 2025 Apple Car news. But no one can say what, if anything, will debut in 2025. For now, enjoy the stock rise!
Snap!
Humans are involved in writing the code, and the sensors of all types are imperfect and easily fouled regardless of type. Perhaps I’ve missed the tests where full self-driving cars have been undergoing testing in snow and ice conditions which are far more interesting than all the past testing scenarios.
Oh, and if GPS goes out, they’ll need to rely on analyzing their surroundings entirely. There are places that GPS doesn’t reach now due to manmade as well as natural barriers that I’ve driven through. Remember a big story from last week about Russia shooting down one of their own satellites? GPS and related satellites will be the first thing knocked out should there be such conflicts, because they’re used for military targeting, and it’s an added bonus if you can scramble civilian infrastructure as well: I’ve not checked to see if our GPS satellites can be moved to different orbits or not, so that’s another reason to take them out.
I do developer support in my current role, I have also done many other types of development in my career, and I can reasonably conclude this: depending on all the humans regardless of their experience level to get it all correct, even if they did manage to think of all the possible conditions to check for, it’s amazing just how many minor-but-fatal-in-weird-situations code happen in practice. This is true in code far simpler than what’s required for a self-driving car.
Full self-driving car solutions are not something that makes technically-feasible sense, where they’re in a full natural environment. Humans are amazing generalization machines, even if imperfect: a “perfect coder” that actually can identify every possible thing they need to address is more likely than not a unicorn and as easy to find.
My understanding of all that’s involved leads me to believe FSD will be “solved” but not actually solved, because it will get to the point where it is close enough to humans for how well it appears to work, but kill/injure people in the dumbest ways you’d imagine, and not remain legally-viable. That being said, where there’s money, stupid false and destructive things become “truth” historically, so I can’t rule that out.
I can drive in a blizzard with the road completely covered and still manage to drive safely with only my two eyes for “sensors”. There isn’t an autonomous car available today that can operate in poor weather, even with multiple sensors, powerful computers and countless gigabytes of high-resolution GPS maps stored onboard.