Apple Inc. America's First Trillion Dollar Company
Last month Apple Inc. hit a market cap of $1 trillion becoming the first US company to reach that milestone. Powered by better than expected quarterly financial results in early August, it left its rivals in its wake.
The Apple Computer Company was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976 and was incorporated on January 3, 1977 without Ronald Wayne who had left the company shortly after selling his 10% share of the company back to Jobs for $800 (worth $100 billion as of August 2018) . Multimillionaire Mike Markkula became one-third owner of Apple in 1977 and provided the business know-how and funding necessary to take the company to the next level. On April 16, 1977 the first commercially successful line of personal computers the Apple II series, designed by Wozniak, was introduced and was followed by the Apple Lisa in 1983. One year later the Apple Macintosh was born.
The Apple Macintosh was targeted at home and business users and went on sale in January 1984 at a cost of $2495. It was first advertised during Super Bowl XVIII in a commercial directed by Ridley Scott and has been called one of the most influential Super Bowl commercials of all time by TIME magazine. Despite all these successes however, Steve Jobs left the company in 1985 after a long fight with the Apple board. In 1997 Apple Inc., was close to bankruptcy and Jobs was asked to come back in a leadership role in that same year, becoming the permanent CEO until his resignation in 2011.
Before his return to Apple the company was manufacturing computers that were being primarily used by the creative industries such as advertising and motion pictures. But when the iPod was introduced in 2001 everyone started talking about Apple. The product was a huge success selling over 100 million units within six years and by 2010 the iTunes store had become the world's largest music retailer. The iPhone and iPad followed and the rest is history.
Many books have been written about the history of Apple Inc., it's management style, and it's founders. These are just a few:
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