Apple's stock, known as AAPL.O, went up by 7% on Friday. This happened because Apple, the company that makes iPhones, announced a big plan to buy back its own stock. They also said they expect to sell more products in the future, which made investors interested again.
The company said on Thursday that they expect to sell a lot of stuff in the next few months, which was better than what people thought. They also said they will buy back $110 billion worth of their own shares. This is the biggest plan to buy back shares ever by an American company, according to Winston Chua, an analyst.
Because of this news, Apple's stock went up by a lot on Friday. The value of the company went up by almost $200 billion, making it worth about $2.86 trillion. This is the second highest value for a company, after Microsoft, which is worth $3 trillion.
If Apple buys back all the shares it said it would, it will own nearly 4% of its own company.
Apple also said it's going to update its products soon, starting with the iPad on May 7th. This made investors feel better because Apple hasn't been selling as much stuff lately.
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, talked to investors and made them feel better about the company's future. Some people were worried that Apple wasn't going to grow much anymore, but Tim Cook made them feel more confident.
Apple is doing what other big American tech companies are doing by giving money back to investors. This helps to keep investors happy, especially when companies are spending a lot on new technology like artificial intelligence.
Even though Apple hasn't spent as much as other companies on artificial intelligence, investors still didn't like how slowly they were rolling out new AI services. This made Apple's stock price go down by 10% this year.
Tim Cook said that Apple is going to announce some exciting things soon. This made people think that Apple might talk about artificial intelligence at its big annual conference for developers.
Some analysts think that Apple's next iPhone will be really popular because it will have more artificial intelligence features. They also think people will wait longer before buying new phones, which will be good for Apple.
Lots of analysts raised their predictions for Apple's stock price, saying it could go up by 15%. Right now, Apple's stock is worth 25 times more than what they're expected to earn in the next year, while Microsoft's stock is worth 30.5 times more. Microsoft became the most valuable company this year because of its artificial intelligence work.