IT Giants Grew by 50% during Pandemics
3 minutes for reading
In October last year, we wrote about 25 representatives of US small businesses that flourished in the pandemics. Today, we will mention Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, and check how they survived the COVID-19 year.
General information
On February 6th, the Wall Street Journal published an article where it was stated that for such companies as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook last year was quite successful. Their overall yearly income increased by 24% to 1.1 trillion USD, while their market capitalization grew by 50%, reaching 8 trillion USD.
All this was facilitated mostly by the COVID-19 pandemics and quarantine measures. How come? You know it all better than I do: distant work and learning, people rushing at the social networks and other Internet resources out of boredom, as well as their endless craving for online shopping as a cure for stress.
Apple
The necessity to learn and work from home increased the demand for iPad tablets, MacBook laptops, and Mac PCs. A new iPhone was also released – how could one abstain from buying it?
The WSJ notices that sales of smartphones constituted a major part of the annual revenue of the company from Cupertino. October through December only, Apple sold iPhones for 65.6 billion USD, which is 58.9% of its general quarterly revenue. As for yearly changes, Apple stocks (NASDAQ: AAPL) grew by 80.75% from 73.41 to 132.69 USD.
Microsoft
The very same distant-everything helped Microsoft sell more instruments for joint work and Surface laptops. Also, cloud storage services enjoyed more demand. As for the sphere of entertainment at home, the sales of the Xbox game console leaped up.
2020 pushed the stocks of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) up by 41.04% from 157.7 to 222.42 USD.
Amazon
During the pandemics, the yearly revenue of the online trading platform reached 386 billion USD, growing by 38%. The company had to create 500 thousand additional workplaces to cope with the avalanche of orders. Hence, the company swelled to 1.3 million employees.
The stock price of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) grew by 76.26% from 1847.84 to 3256.93 USD.
Alphabet
The Google-owning corporation caught the quarantine wave alongside other major players of the IT sector, enjoying general digitalizing, increased demand for Internet services, and especially the craving for online ads.
However, the growth of its stock price turned out less noticeable: the A-class stocks of Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) grew by just 30.85% from 1339.39 to 1752.64 USD.
The social network not only helped stressed people to calm down by scrolling the feed but can also boast financial success. The latter was mostly generated by online ads though not only this.
Mark Zuckerberg’s company noticeably succeeded in online commerce, bringing to life new functions of online purchases, including on Instagram. Apart from the revenue, obviously, it also increased the involvement of users.
In 2020, the stocks of Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) grew by 33.09% from 205.25 to 273.16 USD. As you can see, the growth was hardly beyond that of Alphabet stocks. Last year, these two companies had much in common. For example, in the middle of December, they were accused of plotting in order to monopolize the market of online ads.
Summing up
Last year, the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemics seriously harmed the world economy. However, some segments not only stayed afloat but also flourished. A bright example would be the IT sector.
According to the Wall Street Journal, during the 12 months of 2020, large representatives of the sphere (by which we mean Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook) succeeded astonishingly. Their overall yearly income increased by 24% to 1.1 trillion USD, while their market capitalization grew by 50%, reaching 8 trillion USD. Meanwhile, others barely lived through the pandemics.
