Apple Inc.
Company: Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA
Company Description: Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Overall Company of the Year - More Than 2,500 Employees
Nomination Title: Apple Inc.
Tell the story about what this nominated company achieved since January 1 2010 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
Apple continues to report strong sales and revenue. Its constant evolution of products and services continues to help fuel the sales pipeline and keep the customers coming back for more features and functionality.
Apple reported its highest revenue and earnings for its fiscal 2011 first
quarter which ended December 25, 2010. Revenue grew 71 percent. The Company
posted record revenue of $26.74 billion and record net quarterly profit of $6
billion, or $6.43 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.68
billion and net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share,
in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 38.5 percent compared to 40.9 percent
in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the
quarter’s revenue.
Apple sold 4.13 million Macs during the quarter, a 23 percent unit increase over
the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 16.24 million iPhones in the quarter,
representing 86 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 19.45
million iPods during the quarter, representing a seven percent unit decline from
the year-ago quarter. The Company also sold 7.33 million iPads during the quarter.
“We had a phenomenal holiday quarter with record Mac, iPhone and iPad sales,”
said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We are firing on all cylinders and we’ve got some
exciting things in the pipeline for this year including iPhone 4 on Verizon
which customers can’t wait to get their hands on.”
“We couldn’t be happier with the performance of our business, generating $9.8
billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter
Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2011,
we expect revenue of about $22 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share
of about $4.90.”
Apple has just sent out its sales figures for the iPad's debut on Saturday, and
the company is claiming *rips envelope open* 300,000 units were sold on Saturday
alone. Not bad: The pre-sale feeding frenzy made one analyst revise his initial
estimate of 250,000 to 300,000 tablets in the first weekend, to between 600,000
and 700,000 (Yes, Gene Munster, that means you). But how does that compare to
sales of the iPhone, Cupertino's first mass-market device it sent out?
Back in June 2007, Apple claimed that 270,000 first-gen iPhones were sold in the
first 30 hours or so, although it took another three months for the device to
hit the magic 1 million mark. Blame that on the price--$599--and the fact that
it was only available on AT&T at first, although when hackers finally managed to
jailbreak the phone, it suddenly became a lot more covetable (the iPad's already
been jailbroken). A year later, when Apple released the iPhone 3GS, it took just
three days to reach seven figures. Total sales of the device are now somewhere
around 45 million worldwide.
List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
Additional Sources:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1607098/apple-sales-figures-ipad-compare-iphone
http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/jobs.html
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/01/18results.html
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader of this nominated company:
Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple, which he co-founded in 1976. Mr. Jobs also
co-founded and was the CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which created some of the
most successful and beloved animated films of all time including Toy Story, A
Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille.
Pixar merged with The Walt Disney Company in 2006 and Steve now serves on
Disney's board of directors. Steve grew up in the apricot orchards which later
became known as Silicon Valley, and still lives there with his family.