Apple hit a market cap of $1 trillion on Thursday — and hung onto the record valuation at market close — as the iPhone maker became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach $1 trillion.

The stock gained 2.92 percent during trading after a strong fiscalthird-quarter earnings report earlier this week to close at $207.39. It reached the trillion-dollar milestone just before noon ET with a share price of $207.05, based on arecently adjusted outstanding share count of 4,829,926,000 shares.

Investors had previously been looking for a share price of $203.45 to push Apple across the finish line in therace to $1 trillion, but the company'shefty stock buybacks moved the threshold higher Wednesday.

"I think it just speaks to just how powerful the Apple ecosystem has become over the last few decades," GBH Insights analyst Dan Ives told CNBC after the historic market move. "This is not the end, that they hit $1 trillion. I view this as just kind of speaking to a new stage of growth and profitability."

Ives credited the company's growingsoftware and services revenue with driving the valuation. The catch-all category — which includes the App Store, AppleCare, Apple Pay, iTunes and cloud services — posted record revenue of $9.55 billion for the June quarter.

"It just speaks to the vision that [co-founder Steve Jobs] and now [CEOTim Cook] have had in making sure Apple isn't just a hardware company," Ives said.

Amazon had also been approaching the threshold,surpassing $900 billion in market value in July. Apple had quite the head start, though, hitting $900 billionin November.

Many on Wall Street noted earlier this week that Apple was firmly on the path to $1 trillion. Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at New York University's Stern School of Business and the so-called dean of valuation, said thestock is still cheap even at $1 trillion.

As of Thursday's close, Apple had gained 22 percent in 2018 and more than 30 percent in the last 12 months.