After the latest earnings season, Microsoft Corp surpassed Apple Inc to become the world's highest market capitalization company again more than a year later.

As of Friday's close, Microsoft Corp's share price was up 2.24%, with a market capitalization of $2.49 trillion. Meanwhile, Apple Inc's share price fell 1.82%, and its market capitalization fell to $2.48 trillion.

With the Windows operating system and Office office suite, Microsoft Corp long occupied the position of the world's most valuable company in the late 1990s. During the dotcom bubble, Microsoft Corp's market capitalization peaked at $614.7 billion, 40 times that of Apple Inc.

However, after the launch of the iPhone series of hardware, Apple Inc surpassed Microsoft Corp in market capitalization in 2010. The latter fell into a nearly 10-year downturn due to the continuing impact of the US government's antitrust crackdown and strategic mistakes such as missing out on the smartphone revolution.

The last time Microsoft Corp surpassed Apple Inc in market capitalization was in May last year, when a large number of investors flocked to technology growth stocks due to strong monetary and fiscal stimulus. But Apple Inc's share price rose rapidly after the hardware dividend during the epidemic, and the company's market capitalization reached $2,000bn for the first time three months later, regaining the crown again.

The gap with AWS is greatly narrowed.

Market analysis believes that the outbreak of Microsoft Corp cloud business and Apple Inc supply chain restrictions are the key factors for Microsoft Corp's market capitalization to exceed again.

In terms of financial data, Microsoft Corp announced on Tuesday that the results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022 were very strong: the company's revenue reached $45.3 billion, an increase of 22% over the same period last year, far exceeding market expectations.Revenue beat Wall Street's average expectations for the 11th consecutive quarter.The company's operating profit reached 20.2 billion, far exceeding market expectations by 18.6 billion.

In terms of business segmentation, Microsoft Corp's business performance is better than expected. Cloud business has become the biggest driver of the company's revenue. Intelligent cloud businesses, including Azure Public Cloud, Enterprise Services, GitHub, etc., achieved revenue of US $16.98 billion, exceeding expectations by US $165.8.Year-on-year growth of 31% Azure cloud business is growing at an astonishing 50% this quarter.

In terms of cloud business competitors, the gap between Microsoft Corp and industry leader Amazon.Com Inc has narrowed significantly.

Based on income over the past 12 monthsMicrosoft Corp's Azure cloud computing service now accounts for 61% of AWS business, up from 30% just five years ago.Over the past eight quarters, Microsoft Corp's cloud business has grown at an average year-on-year rate of 34%, while Amazon.Com Inc's AWS has averaged 32%.

Apple Inc "lack of core"

In Apple Inc's case, Apple Inc's quarterly revenue fell short of market expectations for the first time since May 2017 due to supply chain constraints.

Apple Inc recorded revenue of $83.36 billion in the closing quarter of fiscal 2021, up 29 per cent from a year earlier and the highest in the company's history in the September quarter, but below analysts' expectations of $84.69 billion, up 2.4 per cent from a month earlier, according to the financial report.

For the weaker-than-expected results, Apple Inc CEO Cook attributed the reason to the higher-than-expected supply restrictions on iPhone, iPad and Mac. On the conference call, Cook saidThe company lost $6 billion due to supply chain problems.

Mr Cook said chip shortages were the main cause of supply chain shortages, with chip supply problems on "legacy nodes" or older chips. At the same time, the epidemic in Southeast Asian countries has had the impact of a large-scale shutdown.

To make matters worse, Apple Inc expects supply chain constraints to have a greater impact on the critical holiday shopping season at the end of the year.According to past experience, the demand for shopping at the end of the year tends to boost the performance of the company.

Apple Inc expects the revenue impact of supply constraints to exceed $6 billion in the fourth quarter by the end of the first quarter (year-end shopping season), Cook said on a conference call. According to the current trend of limited supply chain, it may be a while before Apple Inc's market capitalization exceeds Microsoft Corp's.