By Robert Cyran June 6, 2018 It has been a long time coming, but Apple could soon be worth $1 trillion — and counting. At about $940 billion, the tech giant is close to being the first company to pass that threshold in market capitalization, as Breakingviews predicted seven years ago. Growth has slowed since then, but customers remain loyal and today’s valuation is far from stretched. Apple’s timely focus on data privacy may help it get there. The rather mundane improvements rolling out at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this week demonstrate how the smartphone market is largely mature. Shipments worldwide declined slightly for the first time last year, the research firm IDC believes, and should grow less than 3 percent annually over the next five years. That said, there’s no obvious replacement for smartphones on the horizon. Apple earned $48 billion last year, mostly from iPhone sales, so this looks like the base camp for the company....
