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From a dusty old garage in a quiet Californian suburb to perhaps the most recognisable brand on the planet, Apple has certainly come along way since Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, two college dropouts, teamed up in 1976 in Cupertino, and cobbled together the first Apple computer. Having recently toppled oil giants Exon Mobil from top spot as the world’s most profitable company, Apple is now seen by many as not so much a technology brand, but rather a way of life.
Apple’s relatively brief history often seems to be merely an exercise in breaking records. In 1983, for example, Apple sauntered nonchalantly into the Fortune 500 list at #411 after being in existence for only five years, thus making it the fastest growing company in history.
Having been rooted in home computing, Apple turned up fashionably late to the mobile phone party and it wasn’t until the early noughties, when the company introduced the world to their range of pocket-sized music players (selling iPods in mind-boggling numbers) that the famous chomped apple logo began finding its way into people’s homes; which in turn, paved the way for Apple’s all-conquering iPhone. The company then grew exponentially from that point, in a fashion never before seen.
The lion’s share of Apple’s annual revenue (some $65 million) is now generated from products released in the last 10 years; the most prolific of these, as you’d probably imagine, is the Apple iPhone.
It is estimated that iPhones account for around 39% of Apple’s overall revenue, with each new release of the iconic smartphone seeing millions of fans salivating outside Apple outlets, desperate to be the first to get their hands on the new device.
Recently, Apple has experienced a couple of wobbles in their inexorable rise to the summit of the consumer electronics industry. Most notably, perhaps, has been their spat with Samsung over alleged patent infringements. Apple have also had to bat away criticism levelled at them for the conditions faced by their Chinese workforce which, in 2010, were likened to those of a sweatshop factory by the British press.
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