In the ranking of the world’s largest companies by market capitalization, the leader has changed – it is the IT giant Microsoft, according to trade data. The firm stripped its most valuable company status of its main competitor, Apple Corporation, whose shares plummeted after the publication of financial statements.

The iPhone maker has been in the lead for 16 months since early July 2020. At the time of writing, Microsoft is trading at $327.27 with a market cap of $2.45 trillion. Apple shares, after falling by 3.6 percent, are worth $147.07 on a $2.43 trillion capitalization. Therefore, to date, Microsoft has overtaken Apple in value by about $20 billion.