It was a while coming, but today Apple finally overtook the record set by Microsoft in 1999 as the most valuable publicly traded company of all time - topping $622 billion in market capitalisation compared to the $618.9 billion boasted by Microsoft back in the day – even as we continue to await the long-gestating iPhone 5 and rumoured 7” iPad Mini.Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 5 on September 12th.

Not that you'd expect much less from the company behind such notable gadgets as the iPod, iPhone and the iPad. An Apple-branded TV will surely follow, as speculation posits, as will almost yearly rehashes of the aforementioned, suggesting no sign of slow-down for a technological powerhouse that Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has already speculated, after a valuation of $600 billion in April, could be worth $1 trillion by 2014 – with shares predicted to rise to an unprecedented $1000 a piece.

And yet, as Google's Android continues to claw back a share in the smartphone market previously boasted by the company in question, Apple you'd have thought has some tricky times ahead – well, as much as you can at being worth over half a billion. Still, the sky is the limit...

Richard Birkett