Apple Inc.
Apple Computer was established in 1976 by Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak. In its colourful history, it had come close to become bankrupt in 1996 but managed to recover to become one of the most valuable companies ever. Its product line includes the Macintosh in the 1980s, which had an entirely proprietary design without licensing from 3rd party companies. As well as it had done, the Macintosh lost out to the IBM due to its open design allowing 3rd party companies into the fray allowing more personalization compared to the Macintosh. The Macintosh failed so badly that Jobs had to be shown out the door. During this time Apple struggled to keep itself in the black and almost went bankrupt in 1996. The next year, Jobs was brought back to save his company. He restructured the company on his return. Some of his moves include, reducing the product lines, outsourcing production to low cost centres and increase expenditure in R&D. In 1998, the iMac was launched to be a plug & play computer compatible with available Windows accessories. This product launch caused Apple to have its first year of profit ($309M) after the loss of $1B the previous year. In 2001, the Macintosh was re-launched with the aim to be a digital hub which can integrate all digital devices available at the time, cameras and music for example. These Macintosh were also the first to use Intel CPUs and had the capability to run Windows more popular operating system in them thereby increasing their popularity.
Apple’s popularity further increased with the launch of first the iPod in late 2001 and the iPhone in 2007. Both these items at the point of their release were the first of kinds in their respective markets. Together with smart marketing, support coming from both the iTunes software, which enabled music to be downloaded and sync from computers, and the Appstore, which enabled applications to be downloaded cheaply onto either machines, these products were a huge success. In 2010, the iPod...