If large technology companies were countries they would be among the 30 richest in the world

If the companies with the highest market value in the world were countries, they would be among the 30 richest in the world. Such is the market capitalization reached by technological giants such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon in recent years from the hand of a Wall Street that does not stop breaking historical records.

The figures come from an analysis of MacKeeper, an Apple product services company that runs its own blog. While the gross domestic product of a country and the market capitalization of a company are not entirely comparable values. While the first is a flow, the value of each good and service produced in a given year within a nation, the second arises from multiplying the value of the share of a company by the totality of the capital stock. It would be the market price of a company at a given time.

However, the valuations of the world’s largest companies have acquired such dimensions that they are only comparable with the value produced by entire countries.

Along these lines, the work finds that Apple, the company with the largest capitalization of the lot, reached a market value of USD 2.2 trillion near the end of February, a figure that exceeds the GDP of 96% of the world’s countries. Only the seven largest economies in the world manage to produce in a year more than the company founded by Steve Jobs is worth. For example, it is bigger than Italy, Brazil or Russia.

“Apple would rank as the eighth richest country in the world, but it would only need to increase its value above $ 2.72 trillion to usurp France from seventh place,” the analysis noted.

The second-largest company, Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil company, would be the eighth largest economy in the world based on its market capitalization of $ 1.99 trillion. Among the technology companies, the next giant to appear is the one founded by Bill Gates, Microsoft, with a market value of USD 1.8 trillion.

“Microsoft’s market capitalization of $ 1.8 trillion makes it the third largest company on our list (after Apple and Saudi Aramco, the oil and gas company). This places its value on par with Canada’s GDP, and richer than many developed economies such as Australia, Spain, and Indonesia. In fact, both Apple and Microsoft have a higher market capitalization than all of Central Europe and the Baltic countries combined, ”the analysis noted.

The third great technology giant, Amazon, exceeds USD 1.6 trillion in market capitalization, which would make it the twelfth largest economy in the world.

“Online retailer Amazon is undoubtedly one of the biggest tech giants in the world, and its sales have exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its market capitalization of $ 1.6 trillion makes the company richer than 92% of the countries in the world, ”explained MacKeeper.

For those who do not like to compare flows and stocks, the report also stops on the retail giant Walmart. Since a measure more similar to the GDP of a country can be the sales of a company, it is after all the value generated in the year, the huge supermarket chain reaches a size such that it compares hand in hand with entire countries in what moves annually.

“Although it does not compete in terms of market capitalization, only for the company’s income, Walmart’s huge global revenues make it a greater financial power than many countries, with Nigeria, Austria, Argentina, Iceland and Ireland leading the way. With a GDP of $ 523 billion, the supermarket giant makes Ireland’s $ 388 billion look like small change, ”the report concluded.