THE
‘APPLE’ REVOLUTION:
Gone
are the days where the word “Apple”, would make most of us just think of the
fruit. If you ask anyone who has a basic knowledge of electronic consumer goods
about “Apple”, their immediate response would relate to the prestigious
electronics and software developer across the world. That’s the impact Apple
organization has made in the contemporary world.
WIDE
ARRAY OF PRODUCTS:
Apple
is a multinational corporation having its base headquarters in Cupertino,
California that deals with the design and development of different consumer
electronics, personal computers and software applications. Its most famous
products include the Mac line of computers, iPods, iPhone mobiles, and iPad
tablet computers among the hardware products and OS X, IOS among the operating
systems along with different software applications like iTunes media browser
and the Safari web browser, iLife and iWork creativity and productivity suites.
It has been established almost 38 years ago. Let us have a brief look into how
this renowned organization has evolved through the decades.
INCEPTION
OF APPLE:
Steve
Jobs and Steve Woznaik used to work for an American video game and home
computer company known as Atari Inc. in their early career. But in the year
1976, they left the job to establish a company on their own which basically
deals with the sale of personal computer kits. Hence on 1st April, 1976 the
Apple computercompany was established by the both of them along with Ronald
Wayne. The name was christened in remembrance of a happy summer Jobs had spent
picking apples!
FIRST
SALE AND INCORPORATION:
The
Apple I kits were basically motherboards built single handedly by Steve Woznaik
and they were first publicly shown at the Homebrew Computer Club. The first
Apple I device which constituted CPU, RAM and basic textual video chips was
sold in July of 1976 for $666.66!
One
of the co-founders of Apple, Roland Wayne sold his share of Apple for $800
after which the Apple Company was incorporated on January 3rd, 1977. The
funding of $250,000 along with the required expertise for incorporation was
given by Mike Markkula who was a multi-millionaire.
APPLE
II, III AND LISA:
This
advanced version computer, Apple II came with cell-based color graphics and an
open architecture also designed by Woznaik, which were not available in its
then rivals TRS-80 and Commodore PET. The early usage of cassette tapes was
replaced by 5 ¼ inch floppy disk drives known as Disk II. It was chosen to be
the platform for first killer app of the business world, VisiCalc.
Apple
III was introduced later in the May of 1980 as a competition to the products of
other organizations like IBM and Microsoft in the corporate market of
computing. After visiting Xerox PARC Company in 1979, Jobs was convinced that
every future computer would run with a Graphical User Interface (GUI)and it was
then first developed for Apple Lisa personal computer. With $22 per share,
Apple went public in 1980 becoming a company that created most number of
millionaires in the history.
MACINTOSH:
Because
of some internal disputes between Steve Jobs and the Apple Lisa team, he
removed himself from that project and joined a much less budgeted Macintosh
project. Both teams competed on who we would release their version first.
Though Lisa had won the race, it was a commercial failure because of high price
and limited software titles.
Macintosh
on the other hand had a very good opening fueled by the masterpiece of an
advertisement directed by famous director Ridley Scott announcing its debut.
Though the follow-up sales were slow, the introduction of Post Script Laser
Printer, LaserWriter and PageMaker changed the fate of this product making the
combination a very powerful and intuitive Macintosh package.
DISPUTE
AND JOBS RESIGNATION:
Because
of a power struggle between Jobs and the two years earlier hired John Scully in
1985, Jobs was deprived of all the managerial duties after the board of
directors supported John Scully. Uninterested to continue the work at Apple,
Jobs resigned from the company and founded NeXT Inc in the same year.
POWERBOOK
– GOLDEN AGE:
Apple
introduced “PowerBook” in the year 1991 after introducing Macintosh Portable in
1989 which faced heavy weight problems. PowerBook solved all those problems
with enhanced effective functioning and hence the sales and revenue were hugely
increased for the Apple Company. This period between 1989 and 1991 was regarded
as the Golden Age for Apple.
PERIOD
OF DECLINE:
Because
of too much experimentation in producing a variety of appliances like Digital
Cameras, Portable CD audio players, speakers, video consoles, and TV appliances
etc. which had not made a huge mark in the market, Apple faced a huge
commercial failure in the 1990s. Also the unyielding strategies of the then CEO
John Scully did not help either.
Meanwhile
Microsoft had been developing effective and efficient software applications
which came cheap. Apple, though had been developing quality software, because
of the high cost and richness, their products had been a commercial failure.
Even though they sued Microsoft for using a similar GUI as that of Apple Lisa,
the case dragged and eventually dismissed after many years. The Apple’s decline
continued with a heavy loss in almost every strategy they employed. Their CEO
John Scully was replaced by Michael Spindler then.
During
Michael’s reign, many strategies were employed to enhance the version of
Macintosh and introducing alternative platforms like A/UX and experimented with
Mac-only online portal called e-World. They faced huge competition from OS/2
and UNIX vendors and the outdated Macintosh was not helping them either. Apple
collaborated with IBM and Motorola to enhance the performance of Macintosh and
together they produced Power Macintosh using Motorola’s Power PC processor but
it was unable to create any huge difference.
Michael
Spindler was then replaced by Gil Amelio in 1996 who later tried to install a
number of changes to Apple and Mac OS but failed miserably. Apple then ousted
Gil Amelio after observing the heavy loss that incurred to the organization on
July 1997. Before that, Gil Amelio brought back Steve Jobs and chose to
purchase NeXT and NeXTSTEP operating system.
Steve
Jobs then became the interim CEO and started restructuring the company’s
product line as follows
• Collaboration with Microsoft to release newer
MS office for Macintosh in 1997.
• Introduction of all-in-one computer in 1998
led by Jonathan Ive.
• Purchase of several companies to create a
portfolio of professional and consumer-oriented digital production software
including Macromedia’s Final Cut.
REGAINING THE POWER:
The
years between 2000 and 2006 marked the power regaining period for the Apple
Company. Starting with Mac OS X which was released in 2001, there have been
many developments in the productions of innovative operating systems and
software applications. Since then, they have abandoned the use of colored
plastics starting with the titanium PowerBook.
The
new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel’s Core
Duo CPU on January 10, 2006 shortly after Jobs’ announcement that they would be
producing systems based on Intel. The new products that followed were Mac Pro,
MacBook and MacBook Pro and since then Apple began building its own engineers
to design microchips. To install Windows XP or Vista alongside Mas OS X, a new
software Boot Camp was introduced.
With
an increase from $6 to $80 per share, the price of Apple’s stock had raised
more than ten times which represented an enormous success and it had even beat
Dell’s market cap by January 2006. The only thing they were unable to beat was
Microsoft as only 8% of Apple’s laptops and desktops were used in US.
THE
APPLE MOBILE ERA:
Apple
had developed a number of successful mobile devices, media players and personal
computers between the years 2007 and 2010. It had brought a new dimension to
the touch screen devices by including certain pre-programmed touch gestures.
With most of the success coming from the mobiles, Apple decided that it would
concentrate on developing hand held devices. The share price of Apple crossed
$100 mark by May of 2007.
After
introducing the innovative iPhones, iPods, Apple began developing third party
applications for these touch devices. These had become a huge success too and
later Apple had become third largest mobile handset supplier in the world owing
to the popularity of the iPhone.
In
the year 2010, Apple had introduced the iPad touch device which is nothing but
a large screen tablet device based on the same operating system which iPhone
uses. iPad devices also have been a huge success and it enabled Apple to exceed
the Microsoft’s market cap since 1989. Later iPhone 4 which came with the
features like video calling and multitasking was released which faced some
problem with the signal reception. Apple then released a free bumper case for
iPhone 4 users to eliminate the signal reduction. The release of iPhone 4 was
followed by multi touch iPod Nano, iPod touch and iPod shuffle devices.
Later
that year, in the month of October, the shares of Apple reached an all-time
high with as much as $300 per share.
ACHIEVEMENTS AND RECOGNITION:
•
Apple is now the world’s second largest IT Company in terms of revenue with
only Samsung Electronics in front of it.
•
It is also the third largest mobile phone maker after Samsung and Nokia.
•It
has been named the most admired company by Fortune Magazine in United States in
2008 and in the world consequently for five years from 2008 to 2012.
•It
has also become the world’s most valuable brand among Omnicom Group’s “Best
Global Brands” report surpassing Coca-Cola on September 30, 2013.
