Google parent Alphabet passed Apple as the world's most valuable company

Alphabet, the parent company of Google has surpassed Apple as the most valuable company in the United States, ending Apple's four and a half year reign. Alphabet is now worth around $568 billion as compared with Apple, which has a value of $535 billion.

Alphabet also surpassed Wall Street expectations and recorded $21.3 billion of revenue with profits of $4.9 billion for Q4 ended December 31 2015. The change may signal the passing of technology baton to Alphabet from Apple which went pass Microsoft in 2010.

The reason is that, Alphabet has a bigger ecosystem as compared to Apple. Alphabet includes Google business  which includes the search engine and YouTube, and than there are the 'Other Bets' which include self-driving cars, Google Capital, the secretive X research division, Google Fiber and Nest (offers smart home accessories). 

On the other hand Apple relies heavily on sale of its iPhone, which accounts for two-third of revenue, but sales increased only 1 percent in the fiscal Q1 as compared to last year, while iPad and Mac revenue dropped. Analyst's believe that unless Apple changes course and decides to compete with low cost Android devices on price, iPhones the best days are in the past.

On an annual basis, Alphabet made $16.3 billion, but the figures show that the 'Other Bets" (self-driving cars, Google Capital, X research division and Nest) business lost $3.6 billion during the period, while Google's operating income rose to $23.4 billion, due to increasing sales of advertising on mobile devices. According to analyst Google is poised to capture 32 percent of mobile ad market this year and next, staying ahead of Facebook which is around 20 percent. 

Meanwhile, during the sales call, Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO announced that Gmail now has more than 1 billion monthly active users, up from 900 million users in May 2015. This is the seventh-billion user service for Google which also includes, search, Chrome, Android, Google Play, Maps and YouTube.

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