Who's Most Valuable? Apple Is Still the Champ Over Microsoft

For the first time in years, Apple Inc. gave up its crown as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company on Monday, at least for part of the trading day.

Shares of the iPhone maker have dropped sharply over the past several weeks, and the decline has erased about $300 billion in market capitalization from the company, which crested at a record $1.1 trillion valuation in early October. The slump took the company’s market cap briefly below that of Microsoft Corp.’s on Monday, the first time in more than eight years that Microsoft was worth more by this metric. It was also the first time since 2013 that any company topped it, ever since Apple eclipsed Exxon Mobil Corp. in size, according to an analysis of Bloomberg data.