Tuesday’s Apple Rumors: Apple Becomes America’s Most Valuable Company

Here are your daily Apple news items and rumors for Tuesday: Apple Over Exxon:
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ) is officially the most valuable company in the U.S. in
market value. Its market capitalization rose past Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM ) just
after 2 p.m. Tuesday. The oil giant was valued just below $337 billion on the
New York Stock Exchange, while Apple was valued above $338 billion on the
Nasdaq. Steve Jobs and Apple COO Tim Cook reportedly dove into a pile of money
and had what witnesses described as a snowball fight but with iPads later that
day. On Wednesday, readers can expect Steve Jobs to buy Uruguay, Europa
(formerly Jupiters moon) and if rumors out of Chinese trade papers are to be
believed all of Europe. All Your PC Customers Are Belong to Us: A Tuesday
report from research firm Gartner (via Apple Insider ) is predicting Apples Mac
computers are going to account for 4.5% of all PC sales in 2011 , impressive
gains for a company that was responsible for just more than 3% of all personal
computer sales in 2008. More impressive, however, is that Apple is expected to
nearly match that growth by 2015, with Macs comprising 5.2% of all PC sales, by
Gartners calculations. International markets will fuel the Mac between now and
then, with growth markets like China leading the charge. Some things never
change, though; Gartner expects Microsoft s (NASDAQ: MSFT ) Windows 7 operating
system and machines that run them to represent 42% of all PC sales by the end of
2011, an overwhelming majority. War on the iPad Goes Over There: Hewlett-Packard
(NASDAQ: HPQ ), Dell (NASDAQ: DELL ), Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM ),
Motorola (NYSE: MMI ) and many others have drained the coffers of their R&D
departments to create and release tablet PCs to take down Apples unstoppable
force, the iPad. Theyve all failed. At least, that is, in the United States.
According to a Tuesday Reuters report, competitors in the tablet war have a
better chance of taking on Apple on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Research firm Forrester believes Apples smaller retail presence in Europe the
company operates just 52 stores in the region compared to 238 in the U.S. will
give other tablet manufacturers a fighting chance. Its a slim chance, though.
The report said 70% of all consumer tablets sold in Europe will be iPads, less
than the 80% in the U.S. But those competitors have to start somewhere. As of
this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks
named here. Follow him on Twitter at