Apple's market cap closes at $3 TRILLION for the first time since August after its shares climbed 2%

Apple's market valuation closed above $3 trillion on Tuesday, the first time since August - showing the company's durability despite a poor holiday sales forecast.

The iPhone makers shares climbed two percent to $193.42 per share, bringing the market capitalization to 3.01 trillion.

Apple became the first company to achieve a $3 trillion market value in June and stayed there until August when the tech giant warned it was headed for a fourth straight quarter of declining sales.

The company's stock price has risen this year, even as the company repurchased $76.6 billions of its shares through a buyback program it announced in May.

In Securities and Exchange Commission filings for the fiscal year ending on September 30, Apple said its net sales were $383.3 billion and net income was $97 billion during 2023.

They reported iPhone sales were up 2.8 percent, contributing to total revenue of $89.50 billion, including nearly $1 billion more in services revenue than Wall Street expected.

But the results do not include the bulk of sales from Apple's newest iPhone 15 models, and the company forecast that sales for the Christmas quarter would be roughly in line with last year.

Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said sales for the current quarter, when Apple typically has its biggest sales of new iPhone models, will be similar to the previous year.

Wall Street was expecting a forecast for sales to rise 4.97 percent to $122.98 billion.

Apple faces potential headwinds last month after the United States International Trade Commission issued an order that would ban US imports of certain Apple Watches over an alleged patent violation.

The order would go into effect on December 26 unless it is overturned on appeal, or Apple reaches a deal with the patent holder to avert enforcement.

The Cupertino, California, company also faces an uneven economic recovery in China, a key market for Apple.

Last quarter, revenue from China dipped 2.5 percent, and CEO Tim Cook said the company's new high-end handset models - the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max devices - are facing supply constraints.

'While we believe investors should breathe a sigh of relief because sales and profits both exceeded expectations, the upside was small and we were concerned to see weak sales from China,' DA Davidson analyst Tom Forte said.

Apple is facing tougher competition in the smartphone market this year as Huawei Technologies returns to the field with new phones powered by Chinese-made chips after being all but shut out of the market for several years by US government trade curbs.

Apple's sales in China fell to $15.08 billion from $15.47 billion in the fourth quarter a year ago.

CEO Cook said that after accounting for foreign exchange rates, Apple's business in China grew year-over-year, driven by iPhone sales and services revenue.

'In mainland China, we set a quarterly record for the September quarter for iPhone,' Cook told Reuters. 'We had four out of the top five best-selling smartphones in urban China.'

Cook said Apple was 'working hard to manufacture more' iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max devices. 'We do believe that later this quarter, we'll reach a supply-demand balance,' he said.

Several global trends are also playing in Apple's favor, with forecasters predicting that the smartphone market has bottomed out and may start to recover in 2024.

In the longer term, investors are eying how Apple responds to the boom in generative artificial intelligence in which systems can follow prompts in human-like ways - an area that has attracted billions in spending by Microsoft and Alphabet's Google.