Could Microsoft be the first technology company to earn a one trillion market value? Analyst Michael Markowski seems to think so, citing the technology giant’s recent acquisition of professional social media site LinkedIn as the boost that pushed Microsoft into the race.
According to Markowski, this places Microsoft alongside digital moguls like Apple and Alphabet, both of which currently have a higher market cap than Microsoft — at the moment Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has a market value of about $550 billion ($549.7, exactly), while Apple takes the top slot with about $623 billion ($622.6).
Microsoft paid $26 billion for LinkedIn earlier this year, a move that gave the company the same indirect status Google and Apple currently possess in the social media world — a status that might be becoming more and more important in a business world that’s increasingly run on digital means.
Apple has broken into the social media space through fintech offerings such as Apple Pay, which can be utilized in social spaces like Facebook’s Messenger, while Google’s mobile wallet has been slowly but surely knitting itself into the company’s vast online presence.
LinkedIn, a site where professionals across various industries connect and network, is itself a testament to that ideal, as is the growing enthusiasm for crowdfunding business platforms modeled on the success of the Kickstarters of the world — especially in the hands of millennial investors, for whom social media’s power to disseminate information is nothing new.
It’s combining that power with advances in artificial intelligence, mobile technologies, voice, or even blockchain that will be the deciding factor in which company first crosses the trillion threshold. One should remember that like Alphabet and Apple, Microsoft is a tech company first — therefore, its prime value will come foremost from its advances in technology — combining LinkedIn with a fintech crowdfunding platform, for instance.
Using social media with an eye towards information flow — as Google is doing with its Waymo project, and Apple is beginning to do with its advances in AI — will be key to making sure Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn will continue to put it on the path to one trillion, as opposed to making its platform the primary focus of the company.