It wasn't all that long ago that seemed invincible. The iPhone maker was the first publicly traded company in the U.S. to surpass a $1 trillion market cap and has continued to check off succeeding benchmarks seemingly with ease: the first to sail past $2 trillion and $3 trillion, respectively.

Over the past year or so, however, competition for the crown has stiffened, and Apple has traded places numerous times with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), which currently holds the market cap crown, with a market cap of more than $3.01 trillion, ahead of Apple's $2.87 trillion. One analyst believes that could be the new order of things, with two more stocks poised to hurtle past Apple's valuation in the years to come.

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Source Fool.com