Apple stock to hit $1000? Steve Wozniak believes so

Apple's stock price has the potential to hit USD 1,000 as the company has a tremendous amount of growth ahead of it due to the integrated nature of its products and services, Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder, told CNBC in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

Apple shares closed at USD 542.44 on Wednesday, up 1.31%. They are up more than 55% over the past year. "You know, people talk about USD 1,000 stock price... you know, at first you want to doubt it but I actually believe that and I don`t really follow stock markets," Wozniak said. He said that Apple's retail store, iTunes, iPhone, iPad and computer making divisions were "a lot of companies into one," adding that "every one [company] is so excellent." Some analysts have said that, with Apple joining the select club of companies whose market value exceeded USD 500 billion, the only way is down as there is no more room for it to grow. But Apple`s business has a lot of upside potential, according to Wozniak. "Apple is on such a winning course because it`s encapsulated all of its different big products that I mentioned, they all work together so well that you are in a course that if you buy a product from another company it doesn`t really do as much as one from Apple does. So Apple has a large room for growth," he said. "Apple has that much growth left because we`re talking something like Apple TV that works with all these other great, great companies and products all in the same sphere," Wozniak explained. "It`s not like a side project `we`re going to start a TV company`. No, we`re going to start TV within the whole Apple world. Assuming that we are going to, I don`t know," he added. Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, told CNBC last year that the highly anticipated Apple TV was likely to be launched in late 2012. "Steve Jobs`s hands are all over it," Munster said, adding that it will be watched closely as the first major product launch following the Oct. 5 death of the company`s visionary leader. Copyright 2011 cnbc.com