Apple Could Hit $4 Trillion Market Cap by 2025, Says Wedbush Analyst

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives has said that Apple will become the first company to reach a 4 trillion market cap by 2025, followed by NVIDIA.

The research firm believes that Apple's "naysayers" are overlooking its installed base of over 2 billion iOS devices, with about 300 million iPhones in the upgrade opportunity period, a services business valued at $2 trillion, and consumer artificial intelligence (AI) that must run through the company's ecosystem.

Wedbush maintains its "outperform" rating on Apple with a price target of $300. Wedbush added that driven by an AI-driven upgrade cycle, Apple could sell over 240 million iPhones in 2025, which could be the highest annual iPhone sales in the company's history.

Wedbush believes that during the 2025 upgrade opportunity window alone, iPhone sales in China will reach 100 million units. The research firm also noted Apple's iOS 18.2 update, saying that the next operating system update will usher in a new era for the giant.

Wedbush stated: "This will be a multi-year AI journey that will define the future for Apple with its next-generation chip architecture, hardware releases, and future iPhone models built around the AI foundation that many consumers will ultimately embrace."

The $4 Trillion Threshold

As one of Wall Street's most famous tech analysts, Ives is not the first time to predict that Apple will reach a market capitalization of $4 trillion.

In December 2023, he predicted that Apple would become the first publicly traded company to reach a market capitalization of $4 trillion by the end of 2024, citing its rapid growth and monetization speed.

In June 2024, Ives called Apple's announcement about its AI capabilities a historic moment and noted that it would be a catalyst for Apple to reach a market capitalization of $4 trillion within a year.

Earlier this month, Wedbush said that Apple, NVIDIA, and Microsoft (MSFT.US) are clearly leading in the AI spending race and expect that one of these seven giants is likely to reach the $4 trillion market capitalization threshold within the next 6 to 9 months.

NVIDIA Will Be The Next

Wedbush expects NVIDIA to join Apple in the $4 trillion market capitalization club by 2025.

Last Friday, the chip giant briefly surpassed Apple to become the world's most valuable company. In June of this year, NVIDIA became the most valuable company before being overtaken by Microsoft and Apple.

NVIDIA is seen as the biggest winner of the AI revolution, with its market capitalization more than doubling in less than a year. At this time last year, NVIDIA's market capitalization reached $1 trillion.

In contrast, Apple reached the $3 trillion market capitalization milestone in July 2023. A year ago, Microsoft's market capitalization was about $2.5 trillion.

Going back to 2019, none of these companies had reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion. At that time, NVIDIA's market capitalization was only around $100 billion.