*By Conor White*
Apple, the world's most valuable publicly traded company, may be seriously undervalued, said longtime tech investor Eric Jackson, founder and president at EMJ Capital. He told Cheddar that the iPhone maker should've crossed the $1 trillion threshold long ago.
"This is a company that should be valued as a services business instead of a discreet product business, which is, as long as I can remember, how this company has been valued," he said in an interview Friday.
Jackson estimated Apple's value closer to $1.5 trillion, and he views it as a service-oriented company, much like Salesforce and Google, which get traded at roughly six times price-to-sales multiple.
Though many investors consider Apple a hardware company, Jackson said most consumers have a different relationship with Apple's products.
"Your relationship with your iPhone itself is a long-term service commitment," he said. "Even though you don't have a contract that says your next iPhone you're going to upgrade in one year or two years, who among us who owns an iPhone is not going to, in three to four years, upgrade to the latest and greatest iPhone?"
As bullish as Jackson is on Apple, he admitted China ー and consumers in other countries ー may stunt the company's growth because the iPhone faces competition from cheaper smartphones.
"China is a challenge, for sure, probably the biggest challenge that Apple faces in that regard because you have other services like WeChat that can potentially get in between your personal relationship with the phone," Jackson said.
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/why-one-investor-believes-apple-is-worth-more-than-1-trillion).
Ford Motor laid out some financial expectations and specific growth objectives for its electric vehicle line at an investors' event on Monday. John Lawler, chief financial officer of Ford Motor Co., joined Cheddar News to explain what lies ahead for the automaker.
Teenagers will officially be allowed to open a Venmo account with their parent's permission, the company said Monday, expanding the popular social payments app to an age demographic that is likely to embrace it almost immediately.
Stepping up a feud with Washington over technology and security, China's government on Sunday told users of computer equipment deemed sensitive to stop buying products from the biggest U.S. memory chipmaker, Micron Technology Inc.
Stocks are moving tentatively Monday, as Wall Street waits to see whether a pivotal meeting in the afternoon will help the U.S. government avoid a potentially disastrous default on its debt.
Scores of Boston University students turned their backs on the head of one of Hollywood's biggest studios, and some shouted “pay your writers,” as he gave the school's commencement address Sunday in a stadium where protesters supporting the Hollywood writers' strike picketed outside.
Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking that a federal judge be disqualified from the First Amendment lawsuit filed by Disney against the Florida governor and his appointees, claiming the jurist's prior statements in other cases have raised questions about his impartiality on the state's efforts to take over Disney World's governing body.
