I like numbers that tell a story. If you want to build a Next Big Thing, then you might ask the question - ‘How big?’

I found this quote today - sorry can’t who’s blog it was on:

The current market capitalization of Apple is US$159.37 billion, squeaking by Google’s market cap of US$157.56 billion. Next in Apple’s sights ought to be the old man on the block, IBM. Their current market value is around US$170 billion. It may take a while for Apple to catch up with Microsoft, though — at the present time MSFT is worth about US$255 billion.

For UK comparison, Vodafone has a UK market cap around £75billion (on today’s London Stock Exchange site), so slightly shy of Apple and Google but not doing badly thank you. The precise exchange rate probably matters in this calc - whether it’s £1:$2 or £1:$1.9, but we’re talking quite hypothetical so I’ve avoided precise calcs.

For other UK comparisons, here’s a pre-Northern Rock list of the FTSE 100, as at Dec 2007 - sourced from Wikipedia and listed in £££ - we can all figure that the banks will have dropped back, but the oil firms at $220 billion are out-gunning some of the US tech players. Go UKplc!!

The following table lists the 33 FTSE 100 companies which had a market capitalisation of £10 billion or more on 31 December 2007, the last trading day of 2007.

Rank Company Capitalisation (£m)
1 Royal Dutch Shell 134,376.32
2 BP 116,722.52
3 HSBC 99,573.75
4 Vodafone Group 98,837.71
5 GlaxoSmithKline 71,305.15
6 Rio Tinto Group[2] 53,249.29
7 Royal Bank of Scotland Group 44,741.32
8 Anglo American 40,826.49
9 British American Tobacco 40,264.60
10 BG Group 38,663.88
11 Tesco 37,547.56
12 BHP Billiton[3] 35,131.42
13 Xstrata 34,494.18
14 Barclays plc 32,975.87
15 AstraZeneca 32,017.50
16 Diageo 28,326.51
17 HBOS 27,543.08
18 Lloyds TSB 26,574.59
19 Standard Chartered 25,801.42
20 Unilever[4] 24,758.06
21 BT Group 22,026.04
22 National Grid 21,690.25
23 SABMiller 21,188.52
24 Reckitt Benckiser 20,852.97
25 Imperial Tobacco Group 18,381.72
26 Prudential 17,514.73
27 BAE Systems 17,468.18
28 Aviva 17,463.78
29 Scottish and Southern Energy 14,021.28
30 Centrica 13,165.69
31 Cadbury Schweppes 13,052.16
32 British Sky Broadcasting 10,850.10
33 Rolls-Royce 10,468.82

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