Apple has become the first United States-listed company to be valued at a trillion dollars. The company founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was worth $3 billion when Jobs returned to revitalize it in 1996.

The company, which was started in a garage in Palo Alto by Jobs (who died in 2011) and Wozniak in 1976, has transformed the way people communicate with its ubiquitous and unparalleled iPhone.

During the day, the share price of the iPhone maker jumped by 2.8 percent to $207.05, passing the $1trillion (£762bn) mark in New York trading while its stock has soared by 9 percent since Tuesday when the company’s third-quarter earnings exceeded Wall Street’s expectations.

When the iPhone was introduced in 2007, it kicked off a smartphone revolution, leaving the giants of the mobile phone industry like Nokia and Blackberry struggling for survival.

Alphabet, the parent of Google, scrambled to provide its Android software to power mobile phones, making sure Apple didn’t steal a huge march on rivals.

That helped Samsung to become the world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturer while China’s Huawei overtook Apple to become the second largest smartphone seller this week.

Apple  turned to the courts to protect its advantage and won multi-million dollar payouts from Samsung for allegedly copying some of its technology.

Before the launch of the iPhone, the company was reporting revenue of less than $20 billion and profits of less than $2 billion from the sale of its Mac personal computers in 2006 but last year, sales rose to $229 billion and profits to $48.4 billion, making it the most profitable public-listed American company.

Apple, whose stock has also surged more than 50,000% since its stock market listing in 1980, has struggled over the years to produce a product that would match the success of the iPhone.

While it is the first company to hit the trillion dollar mark, it is likely to be followed by Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft. Amazon is currently worth $875 billion. Alphabet is valued at $850 billion and Microsoft $823 billion.

In 2007, PetroChina, the world’s fourth biggest oil company by revenue was the first company to pass the $1trillion mark but its rise to the summit was short-lived following the collapse in oil prices. It is currently worth about $220 billion (£167billion).