San Francisco, January 29

As the digital advertising market booms and demand for smartphones wanes, Alphabet Inc could soon dethrone Apple as the world’s most valuable company.

If it happens, Alphabet will move to the head of the class just five months after Google reorganised itself under the holding company.

The Silicon Valley rivals could trade places as early as today, given how rapidly financial gap between them is narrowing. At end of trading on Thursday, Apple’s market value stood at $522 billion; Alphabet was worth $515 billion.

That’s a dramatic swing from where things stood just 13 months ago. Apple then boasted a market value of $643 billion, almost twice Google’s $361 billion.

Since then, investors have soured on Apple Inc. The company has struggled to come up with another trend-setting product amid slumping sales of its most important device — the nearly nine-year-old iPhone, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of Apple’s overall sales.

Apple has already acknowledged the iPhone will begin this year with its first quarterly sales decline since it debuted in 2007. The slowdown helped push down Apple’s stock price by 15 per cent since the end of 2014.

In contrast, Google has maintained its leadership in lucrative internet search and ad market while building other popular products in video, mobile, web browsing, email and mapping. That bundle of Google services brings in most of Alphabet’s revenue, and is expected to deliver growth in 15 per cent to 20 per cent range as marketers shift even more of their budgets to digital services.

Alphabet also has impressed investors by reining in its spending. Google hired a Wall Street veteran, Ruth Porat, as its chief financial officer last May.

In addition to reversing a long expansion of Google’s operating expenses, Porat also persuaded Alphabet’s board to spend $5 billion buying back its own stock. That move signalled a more shareholder- friendly approach.