View this article at: http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/04/07/apple.in.fobes.2000/ Thursday, Apr 07, 2005 12:40pm Apple moves up Forbes 2000 list, MS falls slightly Apple now ranks 442nd on Forbes' list of the largest companies worldwide. The company moved up more than 300 positions from 2004, when it ranked 762nd on the list. Forbes lists Apple's sales at $9.76 billion, with profits of $510 million, and a market value of $36.66 billion. Apple now has over $9 billion in assets, and 11,695 employees. The highest ranked technology hardware company was IBM, which ranked 17th overall. HP trailed IBM with a distant 54th. Apple remains ahead of Sun, Nortel, Casio, and other hardware makers. Apple also ranked higher than Yahoo, Google and Adobe. Microsoft lead the Software category, but had fallen to 47th overall from 31st. The highest ranked company worldwide was financial firm Citigroup, with nearly 300,000 employees and assets of over $1.4 trillion.