Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered
in Cupertino, California,
that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software and
personal computers. Its best-known hardware products are the Mac line of
computers, the iPod media player, the iPhone smartphone,
and the iPad tablet
computer. Its consumer software includes the OS X and iOS operating
systems, the iTunes
media browser, the Safari web browser, and the iLife and iWork creativity and
productivity suites.
Apple was founded by Steve Jobs,
Steve
Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976 to develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple
Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977, and was renamed as Apple Inc. on January
9, 2007 to reflect its shifted focus towards consumer electronics.
Apple is the world's
second-largest information technology company by revenue after Samsung Electronics, and the world's third-largest mobile phone maker after Samsung and Nokia. Fortune magazine named Apple the most
admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world from 2008 to
2012. On September 30, 2013, Apple surpassed Coca-Cola to
become the world's most valuable brand in the Omnicom
Group's "Best Global Brands" report. However, the company has
received criticism for its contractors' labor
practices, and for Apple's own environmental and business practices.
As of May 2013, Apple maintains 408 retail
stores in fourteen countries as
well as the online Apple Store and iTunes
Store, the latter of which is the world's largest music retailer. Apple is
the largest publicly traded
corporation in the world by market capitalization, with an estimated market
capitalization of $446 billion by January, 2014. As of September 29, 2012, the
company had 72,800 permanent full-time employees and 3,300 temporary full-time
employees worldwide. Its worldwide annual revenue in 2013 totalled $170 billion.
As of Q1 2014, Apple's five-year growth average is 39% for top line
growth and 45% for bottom line growth. In May 2013, Apple entered the top
ten of the Fortune 500 list of companies for the first time,
rising 11 places above its 2012 ranking to take the sixth position.
Source: Wiki
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