Apple
Company Background
Apple Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiaries (collectively ‘‘Apple’’ or the ‘‘Company’’) design, manufacture, and market personal computers, portable digital music players, and mobile communication devices and sells a variety of related software, services, peripherals, and networking solutions. The Company sells its products worldwide through its online stores, its retail stores, its direct sales force, and third-party wholesalers, resellers, and value-added resellers. In addition, the Company sells a variety of third-party Macintosh (‘‘Mac’’), iPod and iPhone compatible products, including application software, printers, storage devices, speakers, headphones, and various other accessories and peripherals through its online and retail stores. The Company sells to education, consumer, creative professional, business, and government customers. The Company’s fiscal year is the 52 or 53-week period that ends on the last Saturday of September.
History of Apple
Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs had been friends in high school. They had both
been interested in electronics and both had been perceived as outsiders. When the two first met, Wozniak was 18, Jobs only 13. The pair put their electronics and inventing talents to work making unusual devices, and a few years later purchased a $25 microprocessor with the intention of building a computer. Although this first computer was crude and came without memory, a power supply, or even a keyboard, it was very reliable. Jobs and Wozniak decided on a name that would convey the simplicity of the product's design and use: the Apple.
PC Industry
Apple operates in two primary industries:
• Computing - Hardware and Software
• Delivery of Entertainment and Media
Apple has always been under intense competition within the computer, software, and entertainment industries.
Business Organization
The Company manages its business primarily on a geographic basis. The Company’s reportable operating...