The shares of Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) rose yesterday morning. The announcement of the iPad 3 on March 7thhas managed to push the Cupertino, California headquartered designer of vanguard electronics to a new high. The Apple stock, listed on NASDAQ under the AAPL symbol, was up almost nine points, more than 1.5 percent, in early afternoon trading. It is making a favorable market environment for the company.
Apple is valued at $534.08 a share; but because of the iPad announcement the company’s market valuation is now near $500 billion dollars. It is still below Microsoft’s valuation of $583 billion from 1999. Apple is getting closer.
AAPL on February 9, 2012, the shares of Apple, Inc. passed ten percent of all of NASDAQ value, trading at $431 a share. They crossed the $500 a share milestone on February 13th. The AAPL on Steve Jobs’ October 5, 2011 passing traded at $378.25.
Apple officially gave the date for the unveiling of the iPad 3 next Wednesday, March 7. The keynote will be at 10am PST at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The company timed its invitations to while the Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s keynote talk at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. This is similar to what happened on January 2007 iPhone introduction during the CES.
Apple shares are now larger than Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) combined, and is 52x larger than Research In Motion (RIMM). Since December Apple shares have earned more than the proposed value of Facebook as a company.
The investors will have to figure out if the release of the iPad is enough to keep the shares above $500 and beyond.
It is very likely that this iPad effect will affect the shares on March 7th, when Apple announces the new features, new products or updates for their devices.
