Apple in, AT&T out of The Dow

06.03.2015
Apple, whose stock market value recently ballooned to more than $700 billion, later this month will take AT&T's place on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The Mac and iPhone/iPad maker (NASDAQ: AAPL) will become one of The Dow's 30 blue chip companies after trading closes on March 18.

The company's share price was more than $128 as of this writing. A 7-for-1 share split by Apple last year and a more recent 4-for-1 split by Visa enabled the Dow to let Apple in with messing up its delicate balance.

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Other tech heavyweights on the bellwether index include Cisco, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.

And as Dow Jones notes in its press release about the Apple-for-AT&T swap: "The Telecommunication Services sector will continue to be represented in the DJIA by Verizon Communications Inc."

There's an "ouch" for AT&T. Though at least the carrier does get to sell iPhones for use on its network.

Meanwhile, Apple's next big financial milestone: The $1 trillion mark Activist investor Carl Icahn thinks so.

(www.networkworld.com)

Bob Brown