Probably bolstered by their strong showing on multiple Amazon.com bestselling lists for the holiday season and word they they are getting closer to inking a deal to bring the iPhone to Japan via largest carrier DoCoMo, Apple’s stock hit $200 a share for the first time today.

How good has 2007 been for Apple? Well one year ago everyone was very bullish about the company and their stock price was “only” in the $80’s then. Since then they’ve changed the name (slight shift to Apple Inc. from Apple Computers), made a huge splash in a new business arena (cellphones anyone), and continued to gain market share in the all-important-for-profits computer division. There were some stumbles, notably with the whole iPhone price cut fiasco, NBC bolting the iTunes store, the Apple TV, and a delay for OS X “Leopard”, but all-in-all an awesome year.

Remember that is was just May of this year when the company’s market cap passed $100 billion for the first time. That same market cap now already stands at $175 billion and rising.

So how will 2008 be? While it would be hard to imagine that it will be as successful in terms of stock price gain, the year could be even more successful in terms of sales and market share growth. Apple is poised release a native iPhone development kit early on in the year, iTunes movie rentals, iPhone multi-touch gaming, an ultra-slim MacBook, a 3G iPhone, and if rumors are to be believed, a whole slew of new portable computing devices in conjunction with Intel – and those are just the things we’ve heard about. Imagine what else Steve Jobs has up his sleeve…

Remember when Michael Dell made fun of Apple about 10 years ago when their stock price was below $5? Yeah, maybe he should have put his money where his mouth was. Apple now has almost 4 times the market cap of Dell.