$1B hedge fund founder thinks Amazon will beat Apple to become first trillion-dollar company

It’s been widely predicted for many years now that AAPL will become the first company in the world to achieve a market capitalization of a trillion dollars, but one credible commenter thinks Amazon may get there first.

Scott Galloway is clinical professor of marketing at NYU and the founder of Firebrand Partners, an activist hedge fund that has invested over $1 billion in U.S. consumer and media companies.

He told Re/code‘s Kara Swisher that his prediction was a commentary on Amazon and the retail space rather than on Apple.

The majority of retailers will face this triple threat of stagnant wages in the middle class, a transition away from typical retail goods to more experiences and Amazon/fast fashion. And also the over-storing of America: We could lose a third of our retail space and probably not miss it.

His argument is that physical stores will continue to make sense only for luxury goods that people want to touch and try on in person.

Amazon is poised to capture the “90 to 98 percent” of purchases that are tedious for consumers, while the two percent of companies that deliver joy — think Porsche, Manolo Blahnik and Ray-Ban — will probably be all right, Galloway said.

Apple of course continues to grow its own retail presence, with Taiwan the latest country to get its own Apple Store.