Apple leapt from third to first for profit, and from twelfth place to sixth for revenue in Fortune Global 500 rankings of the largest companies worldwide.The record-breaking $33.3 trillion revenue reached by the top companies in the world fell to $31.7 trillion, a drop of 4.8 percent from last year's rankings. Despite this, combined sales from all the companies on the list equals more than one third of global GDP. For the eighth year in a row, Walmart was the largest company in the world.Apple's revenue was reported at $274.515 billion. Profit is $57.411 trillion. This is a slight increase over last year's report, which reported that Apple's revenue was $274.515 billion and that $55.256 billion of it was profit. Apple now has approximately 147,000 employees, which is 10,000 more than last year.According to the Fortune 500, Apple is the most profitable company worldwide. SoftBank Group has $47.053 billion and Saudi Aramco has $49.287 trillion. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China has $45.783 billion. Apple is currently only behind State Grid, Amazon and China National Petroleum.Apple faced both challenges and opportunities when the pandemic hit. Apple CEO Tim Cook had no choice but to close down stores and send engineers home. With Apple customers around the world learning and working remotely, iPad sales and Macintosh computer purchases soared to new heights. Fiscal-year revenue also hit an all-time high of $275 billion, a new record. Apple's stock price soared due to this. It rose 80.7% in 2020. As the year ended, regulators turned their attention to Apple because it was potentially abusing its control over the iOS app shop. In October, a House Judiciary antitrust committee report concluded that Apple "exertsmonopoly power" in its iOS app store to hurt competition and increase consumer prices. Fortnite developer Epic Games has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. This testimony will likely increase the pressure on lawmakers to limit Apple's power.Since 2013, Apple has been ranked among the Fortune Global 500 top 20, Apple was ranked third on the Fortune 500 list America's most powerful companies in June. Apple is now in the top five for eight years consecutively.Recent records were set by the company with record third quarter revenues of $81.4 billion and net quarterly profits of $21.7 billion. This corresponds to the second quarter of this calendar year.
