Could Apple become the world’s first $1-trillion company?

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) could become the world’s first company with a $1-trillion market cap, according to James Altucher, managing partner at hedge fund Formula Capital.

Apple just passed the $300-billion market cap milestone, ranking it second only to Exxon-Mobil (NYSE: XOM) which is valued at about $377-billion.

In an article that appeared on BusinessInsider as well as CNBC, Altucher estimates that iPad sales will total between 10 million and 12 million this year, versus 7.5 million at the end of last quarter, adding that Apple has about 40 percent gross margin on iPad sales.

Moreover, “iPad has about 30 percent gross margin on app sales and 10 percent margin on song sales,” he wrote. “They are selling up to 30 million apps a day.”

He further estimates Apple’s sale of iPads will likely skyrocket in the coming years, perhaps to as many as 200-million by 2013.

“Two-hundred million iPads with a 30 percent margin (currently margins on iPads are about 36 percent, but I assume they will go down) is about $30 billion in gross profits,” Altucher estimates.

Plus, assuming the company sells 100 million apps per day, each app, on average, is about 30 cents.
“They get 30 percent margins on an app, or about 9 cents per app,” he noted. “That’s $9 million in gross profits per day or about $3.5 billion per year in gross profits on app sales in 2013. Already we are at $35 billion in gross profits and that’s without counting iPhone sales, iPod sales, song sales (also about 10 cent margin per song), video sales, and of course, Mac sales.”

Moreover, he adds, the iPhone will be available on Verizon, further accelerating sales.

Altucher proposes that by 2013, if iPad and app sales represent about 40 percent of Apple’s gross profits, total gross profits could amount to $80 billion (versus $25 billion now).

“Cash flow could be about 75 percent of that (like it is today), or about $60 billion,” he stated. “Slap a 20 times multiple on that and you have a market cap of $1.2 trillion. That’s a share price of about $1200 by 2013.”

Altucher also alluded to the ubiquity of Apple products.

He crowed that “already in my house there’s one Macbook Air. There are two iTouches, one iPhone, two iPads, and four or five iPods. I’ve got 10 authorized computers already for iTunes across two accounts. I download apps at least once per day, much more if you add in songs, TV shows and movies from the iTunes store. Within two weeks, before I leave on a trip for India, I will buy a Macbook Air 13” to travel with, and I know I will never go back to the HP laptops I’ve been using for almost the past 10 years.”

Apple shares are currently trading at about $331.60 per share, at a P/E of about 21.9.