American corporation Apple Inc. is one of the most world-known companies. It specializes in developing, producing and selling consumer electronics, personal computers and computer software. It drives mad millions of people with its iPhones and iPads. Mac computers are very popular in many countries too. The company’s most asked-for software products are operating systems iOS and OS X, web browser Safari, media browser iTunes, and suites iWork and iLife.

History of Apple

Its history started on the 1st of April, 1976, when Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak established Apple Computer to sell their first product, personal computer kit Apple I, built by Steve Wozniak. They started selling the kit in July. Its price was 6.66.

On January 3, 1977, Apple Company was incorporated. Ronald Wayne sold his share to the other two partners for 0.

In April of the same year Apple presented the Apple II computer at the West Coast Computer Faire, which was chosen as the platform for VisiCalc. Apple III, produced in 1980, was the first company’s attempt to enter the competition with Microsoft and IBM, but it was not successful.

At the end of 1980, Apple became a public company.

In 1983 Apple made Lisa, the first PC with GUI going on sale. But this project turned out to be a failure. Customers were not eager to buy Lisa, because it was too expensive and raw. Macintosh, launched in 1984, was sold better than Lisa, due to unbelievable TV commercial, directed by famous director Ridley Scott.

Later the company introduced publishing package PageMaker and laser printer LaserWriter. These products, in conjunction with Macintosh, made possible desktop publishing activities.

In 1989 – 1991, Apple produced the Macintosh Portable, PowerBook and System 7. All of them were rather successful and helped to increase the company’s revenue. But then Apple started experimenting with new lines of product, none of which was able to win the consumer.

In 1998, Apple made the iMac, an all-in-one personal computer, designed by the team of Jonathan Ive. The PC was sold about 800,000 units during the first several months. In the following years Apple acquired several companies, specializing in computer software production. It helped to released Mac OS X on the 24th of March, 2001.

Apple in the 2000s

On November 10, 2001, the company began to sell the iPod. This digital audio player became unbelievably popular. More than one hundred million iPods were sold within several years.

Two years later Apple introduced iTunes Store, where customers could download songs for .99 apiece. Soon millions of music lovers from all over the world used this online service, which became the leader in the market.

In 2006, Apple transitioned all its Macs to Intel chips. Some brands were taken out of production, yielding the track to MacBook, Mac Pro and MacBook Pro.

Apple became one of the first manufacturers of electronics to adopt touch screens for mass market. On June 29, 2007, Apple released the iPhone, the first model of the line of smartphones with multi-touch screen, running iOS. There is no need to tell how popular iPhones are in the modern world. It will be enough to say that two millions pre-orders of iPhone 5 were received within the first day after the company started taking them.

Another extremely called-for product of Apple is the iPad, the tablet multi-touch computer, running iOS. On November 2, 2012, its fourth generation and iPad Mini came on market.

Since 2007, the company is no longer known as Apple Computer Inc. It changed the name to Apple Inc., because production of computers ceased to be its principal activity.

Apple without Steve Jobs

The year of 2011 was sad for Apple and its devotees. On 24th of August Steve Jobs, the co-founder and CEO of the company resigned his position, and on October 5 he died of pancreatic cancer. Jobs was replaced by new CEO, Tim Cook.

Nowadays Apple Inc. is a multinational corporation with the headquarters in Silicon Valley. Corporate Apple’s locations are situated in Cupertino, California. Its campus consists of six separate buildings. The company has more than 75 000 employees worldwide.

In 2012, Apple’s annual revenue was about 6 billion. Its market capitalization in 2012 is equal to about 6 billion, which makes it the world’s largest public corporation.

As of the end of 2012, Apple Inc. owns almost four hundred retail stores, located in 14 countries, not counting iTunes Store and Apple Store.