The American consumer electronics giant Apple began in 1976 when Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded the company operating under the name Apple Computer. As a young follower of the hippie ideology, Steve Jobs had started his special vegan diet, which included eating enormous quantities of apples. At Jobs’ suggestion, the company thus got its name from the apple, and Macintosh computers also later got their names based on an apple variety. Later, the company’s name was shortened to Apple.
History
The technological breakthrough in the early days was thanks to Wozniak’s talent, as he designed the Apple I computer, which was based on a pointer-based operating system. Wozniak, however, was very different in character from Jobs, and Wozniak would have gladly manufactured computers at almost cost price. Jobs, known as a relentless salesman and innovator, on the other hand, saw commercial potential in the product.
A significant turning point in the history of computers occurred in 1979 when Steve Jobs and Jef Raskin visited Xerox PARC, where they got to explore the Xerox Alto, which operated with a graphical user interface (GUI). Jobs immediately understood the possibilities created by the graphical user interface, which was not yet understood elsewhere. Apple soon began designing the Apple Lisa computer, based on a graphical user interface, after the visit. A year later, Apple went public, raising more capital than any other company since Ford Motor Company’s IPO in 1956. At the closing price on the IPO day, the market value reached 1.8 billion USD.
In 1983, Apple hired John Sculley, who had previously worked at Pepsi, as its CEO. A couple of years later, after Apple’s sales were weaker than desired, Jobs tried to turn the board against Sculley to have him fired. However, the power struggle ended in Jobs’ defeat, and in September of the same year, Jobs resigned from Apple with several other key personnel, after which they founded a new company called NeXT, which sold computers designed for educational use.
The next 14 years were a challenging time for Apple without Jobs, but NeXT also never broke through on a large scale in the market. In 1997, one of the most significant turning points in Apple’s history occurred when, according to some estimates, the company was 90 days away from bankruptcy. Apple bought NeXT, founded by Jobs, for 427 million USD, and Jobs thus made a return to Apple as an advisor. Just months later, however, Jobs threatened that unless the then CEO Gil Amelio and 7 out of 8 board members resigned, he would leave himself. Apple was in such a desperate situation that Jobs’ demand was accepted with a small concession; two board members were allowed to stay so that the news would not look quite so drastic externally. The board appointed Jobs as interim CEO and only a little later as CEO. His first task was to discontinue the design of 70% of the products then under development. Apple was saved from bankruptcy and got a new direction, which focused above all on manufacturing user-friendly devices that combined Jobs’ vision of elegantly simple, streamlined, and intuitively easy-to-use devices. Jobs, prone to perfectionism, was very particular about what products should be like and demanded that they be refined until he could proudly present them.
In 2001, Apple expanded its business by introducing the iPod to the market, which revolutionized music listening and for which competitors never posed a real challenge. In the 2000s, Jobs was also years ahead of the rest of the market in vision, and after deeming all the phones he used to be worthless trash – as had also happened with the very first MP3 players that inspired him to design the iPod – he became interested in bringing a truly easy-to-use phone to the market that would not have a physical keyboard at all. Within Apple, there was concern about whether a phone operated solely by a touchscreen could be suitable for business use, where the superiority of a physical keyboard was accustomed. The doubts proved unfounded when the first iPhone was unveiled in 2007 and sold 270,000 phones in just the first 30 hours. The launch of the iPhone was a pivotal moment for the entire phone market.
Apple Today
After suffering from pancreatic cancer for several years, Steve Jobs finally died in October 2011. Apple appointed Tim Cook as its new CEO, who had previously served as Chief Operating Officer and was one of Jobs’ trusted men, although Cook was almost the complete opposite of Jobs in personality.
During Cook’s era, Apple has continued to launch new products and innovate. In addition to computers and phones, the product range now includes iPads, headphones, wearable smart devices, and various digital services such as the App Store, Apple TV, and Apple Wallet.
Growth Prospects
Are Apple’s golden years behind it, and where will growth come from in the future? Recently, some dark clouds have appeared on the horizon as Apple abandoned the development of its own self-driving electric car. This is not the first time Apple has abandoned the development of something, but the project, known as “Project Titan,” began in 2014 and finally ended 10 years later this year. Most of those involved in the project were transferred to generative AI development.
In 2023, Apple unveiled its mixed reality headset, Apple Vision Pro. The headset is the first new product line since the launch of the Apple Watch in 2015. However, the headset, with a price tag of 3500 euros, has not yet broken through in the relatively new market, and sales expectations have already been halved from the original. This is also reflected in Google search results, which have been on a downward trend since the product launch. There is hardly any talk about the headset anymore.
Valuation
Apple ranks as the world’s second most valuable company by market capitalization, trailing Microsoft, but now only narrowly ahead of Nvidia with a market value of 2.913 trillion dollars. The growth rate is also expected to slow down based on analysts’ forecasts, and although profitability is expected to improve slightly from the previous year, the valuation is still quite high relative to growth expectations. It remains to be seen whether Apple can still accelerate its growth or if the company has reached its peak, from which it is difficult to grow faster than the market.
Muskihan on ollut perustamassa OpenAi:ta, mutta tiet erkanivat melko pian sen jälkeen vuonna 2018.
