Steve jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple computer on April 1, 1976. They started working from a small family garage of Jobs in Los Altos, California and assembled a computer circuit board named Apple I. In a very short span of time, they had made 200 units of the circuit. Simultaneously, a new partner A.C. "Mike" Markkula Jr. joined "the firm" of two college dropouts in their 20s. He was the most experienced businessman on board and was capable to attract venture capitalists. Steve Jobs always wanted to give its customers simple to use personal computer and released Apple II in April 1978. Introduction of the product led to a revolution in the computing world and within three years the annual sales of PC industry reached to $1 billion. Apple …show more content…
IBM had a tie up with Microsoft for its DOS operating system and with Intel for its microprocessors. IBM introduced open systems that could be copied by the other producers. However, Apple products had proprietary designs and refrained other parties to have license to produce similar products.
IBM PCs took away a huge market share and became a new standard for the PC industry. In response, Apple launched Macintosh in 1984. It was a breakthrough innovation in ease of use, industrial design and technical elegance. However, due to incompatibility issues and slow processor speed the sales were limited. The top line of the firm dropped by 62% from 1981 to 1984 leading to a major crisis for the company. Jobs had to resign as CEO and John Sculley, with prior experience at Pepsi-Cola, replaced him.
Sculley tried to take make to newer markets such as desktop publishing and education. In the education sector, Apple was able to grab 50% of the market. Soon, its worldwide market share recovered too and got stabilized at 8%. Till the 1990s, Apple gathered around $1bn cash and was declared as one of the most profitable firm in PC
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IPod with sleek design, simple user interface and large storage became the icon of the digital age. The first iPod could store up to 1000 songs and was priced at $399. Over the years, new innovative designs were introduced one after the other. IPods helped Apple set on explosive growth path. It could be synced with both Windows and Mac and was available in all price ranges. An iPod accessory market was created too with ranges from fashionable cases to docking stations.
In April 2003, launch of iTunes desktop software that could synchronize iPods with computers and the iTunes Music Store differentiated Apple's iPods. IPods and iTunes together completed Apple's vision of an entertainment hub. The iTunes store was the first legal site that allowed users to download music on pay-per-song basis. Songs were priced at $0.69, $0.99, or $1.29 per download. The downloaded songs could be burnt on a CD or transferred to iPods or could simply be played on user's computers. The launch of iTunes further increased the Pod sales up to 304,000 units in just a