Apple’s (AAPL) market cap recently hit $370 billion US dollars. This is an amount that may not seem that large when compared with the $700 billion bank bailout of 2008.
Looking at it next to other things, such as the size of certain industries and government programs, and you may be surprised.
The US retail industry for prok is $30 billion, cattle is $74 billion and poultry $45 billion – all of which total $149 billion, or $181 billion dollars less than Apple’s value. Even the 10 largest software companies’ revenues combined are smaller than Apple. Additionally, the revenues for mobile phones globally are less than Apple’s revenues.
All the federal taxes paid by all corporations in 2010 are $198 billion compared to Apple’s $370 billion. The cost of the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs combined comes close, but is still (barely) less than Apple.
The US pharmaceutical market also comes closer to Apple’s revenues, but is still shy by $81 billion dollars. Apple completely overshadows the global sports market, whose 2012 projected global revenues are only$141 billion dollars.
Even Apple beats out itself, as the Apple of previous years has been smaller than Apple today.
So the question then becomes, what’s bigger than Apple?
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