Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered and incorporated in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Company by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, the company was incorporated by Jobs and Wozniak as Apple Computer, Inc. the following year. It was renamed Apple Inc. in 2007 as the company had expanded its focus from computers to consumer electronics. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue, with US$391.04 billion in FY 2024.
The company was founded to produce and market Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. Its second computer, the Apple II, became a best seller as one of the first mass-produced microcomputers. Apple introduced the Lisa in 1983 and the Macintosh in 1984, as some of the first computers to use a graphical user interface and a mouse. By 1985, internal company problems led to Jobs leaving to form NeXT, Inc., and Wozniak withdrawing to other ventures; John Sculley served as long-time CEO for over a decade. In the 1990s, Apple lost considerable market share in the personal computer industry to the lower-priced Wintel duopoly of the Microsoft Windows operating system on Intel-powered PC clones. In 1997, Apple was weeks away from bankruptcy. To resolve its failed operating system strategy, it bought NeXT, effectively bringing Jobs back to the company, who guided Apple back to profitability over the next decade with the introductions of the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad devices to critical acclaim as well as the iTunes Store, launching the “Think different” advertising campaign, and opening the Apple Store retail chain. These moves elevated Apple to consistently be one of the world’s most valuable brands since about 2010. Jobs resigned in 2011 for health reasons, and died two months later; he was succeeded as CEO by Tim Cook.
Apple’s current product lineup includes portable and home hardware such as the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV; operating systems such as iOS, iPadOS, and macOS; and various software and services including Apple Pay, iCloud, and multimedia streaming services like Apple Music and Apple TV+. Apple is one of the Big Five American information technology companies;[a] for the most part since 2011,[b] Apple has been the world’s largest company by market capitalization, and, as of 2023, is the largest manufacturing company by revenue, the fourth-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales, the largest vendor of tablet computers, and the largest vendor of mobile phones in the world. Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion in 2018, and, as of June 2024, is valued at just over $3.2 trillion.
Apple has received criticism regarding its contractors‘ labor practices, its relationship with trade unions, its environmental practices, and its business ethics, including anti-competitive practices and materials sourcing. Nevertheless, the company has a large following and enjoys a high level of brand loyalty.
History
Main article: History of Apple Inc.
1976–1980: Founding and incorporation
See also: History of Apple Inc. § 1971–1985: Jobs and Wozniak
Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne as a partnership.[8][11] The company’s first product is the Apple I, a computer designed and hand-built entirely by Wozniak.[12] To finance its creation, Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus, and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator.[13]: 57 Neither received the full selling price but in total earned $1,300 (equivalent to $7,000 in 2023). Wozniak debuted the first prototype Apple I at the Homebrew Computer Club in July 1976.[14] The Apple I was sold as a motherboard with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips—a base kit concept which was not yet marketed as a complete personal computer.[15] It was priced soon after debut for $666.66 (equivalent to $3,600 in 2023).[16][17]: 180 Wozniak later said he was unaware of the coincidental mark of the beast in the number 666, and that he came up with the price because he liked “repeating digits”.[18]
Apple Computer, Inc. was incorporated in Cupertino, California,[1] on January 3, 1977,[19][20] without Wayne, who had left and sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800 only twelve days after having co-founded it.[21] Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 (equivalent to $1,257,000 in 2023) to Jobs and Wozniak during the incorporation of Apple.[22] During the first five years of operations, revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980, yearly sales grew from $775,000 to US$118 million, an average annual growth rate of 533%.[23]
The Apple II, also designed by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16, 1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire.[24] It differs from its major rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics and open architecture. The Apple I and early Apple II models use ordinary audio cassette tapes as storage devices, which were superseded by the 5+1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II in 1978.[25][26]
The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first killer application of the business world: VisiCalc, a spreadsheet program released in 1979.[25] VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II: compatibility with the office,[25] but Apple II market share remained behind home computers made by competitors such as Atari, Commodore, and Tandy.[27][28]
On December 12, 1980, Apple (ticker symbol “AAPL”) went public selling 4.6 million shares at $22 per share ($.10 per share when adjusting for stock splits as of September 3, 2022),[20] generating over $100 million, which was more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956.[29] By the end of the day, around 300 millionaires were created, including Jobs and Wozniak, from a stock price of $29 per share[30] and a market cap of $1.778 billion.[29][30]
