Apple Stock Now Worth an iPad Per Share

A decade ago, you could have purchased Apple stock for around $10 a share. Today, Apple is trading at more than 50 times that, its price driven upward by the company’s monster holiday quarter and the seemingly unstoppable momentum of the iOS juggernaut.

As I write this, AAPL is trading at well over $503 per share, after closing above $500 — for the first time — on Monday. That’s $3 more than the cost of a 16 gigabyte iPad 2. The company’s market cap is currently $469 billion, and if/when its stock reaches $537, Apple will become a half-trillion dollar company.

And if its ascent continues after that? Another $100 or so more, and Apple could claim the title of most valuable company of all time, beating Microsoft’s record of $650 billion during the dotcom bubble.