For a few hours this month Apple, once regarded as a maverick upstart company, became the world's biggest company by stock market capitalization, until Exxon Mobil again seized the title.
Some bullish analysts predict that if stock markets recover their confidence Apple could become a trillion dollar company since it has sales growth ten times the normal company and sits on a pile of $76 billion in cash and investments.
But the rise and rise of Apple also raises important questions about the role of markets and the shaping of modern capitalism, particularly in the hitherto most powerful economy of the world. Such is the special status of Apple that its major products, not just its computers but its iPod, iPhone and iPad, have become ubiquitous globally, and the iPod has become the subject of academic study into how the device is an exemplar of trends in globalization.