Apple’s record value is bigger than all but 19 countries’ GDP

This table proves it

It’s easy to get lost in all the talk of billions and trillions and millions in the news these days.

Unless you happen to own a billion dollars, or are very, very good at visualising quantities on a gigantic scale (this one goes out to all you astrophysicists), it’s easy to be blasé about a number like, say, $710.7bn.

Which happens to be the record-smashing valuation (by market capitalisation) that Apple has just hit, making it the first company in history to surpass the $700bn barrier.

That’s thanks to Apple’s share price rising 1% to around $120 in early trading.

The share price peak follows the news from the end of January that Apple posted the largest quarterly profit in history: some $18bn for the three-month period.

But let’s not gloss over this, because $710.7bn is a lot.

A LOT.

It is, in fact, larger than the annual gross domestic products of every country on earth, bar 19 of them (based on GDP in US dollars, according to International Monetary Fund data for 2014).

Apple’s $710.7bn market cap (i.e. the current market value of its outstanding shares) is just behind the annual GDPs of Indonesia, the Netherlands, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Apple comes in higher than the GDPs of Argentina, Sweden, Poland, Belgium and Norway, as you can see in the table below.

How Apple’s market cap compares with countries’ GDP

Here’s the list of the 32 countries with the highest GDP for 2014, in descending order of size, and including Apple’s market cap.

Data source: International Monetary Fund GDP data for 2014

Country	US $bn
United States	17,416,253
China	10,355,350
Japan	4,769,804
Germany	3,820,464
France	2,902,330
United Kingdom	2,847,604
Brazil	2,244,131
Italy	2,129,276
Russia	2,057,301
India	2,047,811
Canada	1,793,797
Australia	1,482,539
Korea	1,449,494
Spain	1,400,483
Mexico	1,295,860
Netherlands	880,394
Indonesia	856,066
Turkey	813,316
Saudi Arabia	777,870
Apple’s market cap	710,700
Switzerland	679,028
Nigeria	594,257
Sweden	559,113
Poland	552,230
Argentina	536,155
Belgium	527,810
Norway	511,602
Taiwan Province of China	505,452
Austria	436,069
United Arab Emirates	416,444
Islamic Republic of Iran	402,700
Colombia	400,117
Thailand	380,491