“Never before has this venerable company, which at age 34 is a grizzled veteran by Silicon Valley standards, stood so firmly atop the high-tech industry. Earlier this year, Apple’s market capitalization surpassed that of Microsoft, making it the most valuable property in the tech universe. And during its just-completed fiscal year, it broke four consecutive quarterly revenue and profit records,” Boudreau reports. “Amid the worst recession in decades, Apple hired thousands while others cut jobs.”
“But what most distinguishes Apple is the way it has climbed these heights,” Boudreau reports. “While other tech titans spent 2010 cutting costs and acquiring new technology through mergers, this $65 billion company is innovating like a startup… Its iPhone revolutionized the market for smartphones, the must-have product of the decade. Its iPad is now creating consumer electronics’ most promising new market, for tablet computers.”
Boudreau reports, “The pace of hiring accelerated during the company’s fiscal 2010, which ended Sept. 25. Over the preceding four quarters, it added 12,300 employees, raising its number of full-time workers to 46,600, a 36 percent jump. In the same period, Apple’s R&D spending soared 38 percent and it opened 44 new retail stores, ending the year with a total of 317 outlets… During its just-completed fourth quarter, Apple reported a 27 percent jump in the number of Macintosh computers it sold — out-sprinting the PC industry, which recorded a 7.6 percent increase globally. The soaring popularity of its desktops and laptops is tied to what analysts call the “halo” effect — people fall in love with another Apple product, such as the iPhone, then fall in love with its computers.”
Read more in the full article here.
Disproving once again the old adage ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’. What about Google? What has it innovated lately? Apart from that junky copycat Android, precisely zilch. Google & Facebook, one trick ponies the lot of them.
In a recession it’s all about Value for Money – computers are no longer commodities but have become an investment again, so BCB (buy it, chuck it, buy again) is no longer widespread.
I wonder what percentage of the Apple employees are on the retails side. I believe not all are full time. Even at an average of 100 per store that could be up to 20,000. How many work on the technical side, s/w, h/w, design, engineering etc.
46,00 sounds a lot, but maybe that’s quite efficient for a global company.
Apple needs to put the iPhone on T-Mobile for those like my family who have found ATnT does not work for us. I took my son, the Windows geek, to get a new phone last night. The clerk said “no one” is buying the Windows 7 phone and the clerk was pushing Android to all who came near the counter. Both of my kids now have the mytouch 4G phones and appear to like them. I’m still hoping the iPhone goes to T-Mobile so I will stick with my Nokia clam shell phone. Way to go M$!
@silverhawk
I can’t imagine what’s so wonderful with the Android phone which I would think is filled with dreck & apps that don’t work quite right. WP7 for the win, naturally.
You mean the halo effect isn’t Apple promising 40 virgins with each product?
@silverhawk,
Good luck. My girlfriend has the 3G mytouch and hates it! Let’s see what a week brings.
I can’t imagine why your girlfriend has such good taste in men (I hope) & such bad taste in phones. Must be a left brain type. Perhaps she goes well with my left nut (you hope not).
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Ballmer’s left nut,
It’s a T-Mobile contract thing.
@ Cubert
Daughter has had her’s since October 30; no complaints. I wish we could be on the iPhone but ATnT just doesn’t work for us in our area and T-Mobile does. Every carrier is different and every area is different as far as reception goes. I tried ATnT for four years with frustrating results. My daughter isn’t too techie but loves her hand me down iPod touches. I just gave my M$ geek son a iPod touch and he took it and actually smiled; there is hope for him yet!
@ Cubert
We got both kids the T-Mobile® G2 with 4G and the guy said android 2.2. It was hilarious just how much the sales guy was pimping android over win 7 phone.
Most consumers and surprisingly many pros, empirically use only a small percentage of most computer’s and electronics’ devices functions and features. Thats a fact that any power user can verify anytime…
Apple products, by design and contemplation bring ease of use coupled with fresh functionality to the masses in away that no other company is capable of delivering. That makes most Apple users, get more functionality and use more features (that are easily available and implemented) than the average user…that creates unequivocal buzz and lust.
Apple understands the power and endless different applications of it’s technology which it designs into all its products with an unrivaled simplicity and power that makes for an everlasting empowering fresh user experience. Once anyone tries any Apple device, the comparison to others is futile and a no brainer in favor of Apple.
Apple does not skimp on anything to make that experience unrivaled, exciting and productive, from quality packaging to quality build to value and best support.
It’s products and users first that the company focuses on dogmatically – thats Apples pride and joy, that’s what makes lifelong loyal users and financial rewards and that’s worth it’s weight in gold.
People vote with their money, where they spend it and it is obvious that they value Apple products
It’s no trick to have a spectacular year when one has spectacular products, as Apple does; the real achievement is creating the spectacular products in the first place.
@ breeze – Well said.
The old saying goes “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a pathway to your door.”
The amazing thing about Apple, as is hinted at in the article, is that they have done by operating exactly opposite to the m.o. of the rest of the corporate world. Instead of a race to the bottom on cutting costs, they have steadfastly held to a vision of quality en every aspect of the business.
My friend K, high level software engineer in the technical software field, has been a hardcore MS user for over 20 years. I have gently extolled the benefits of Macs over the years but he always ignored me.
Recently he decided he needed a Mac to do some fairly extensive video editing – nothing professional, but quite a lot of it. So he decided on a Mac Pro (tower that is). He called me when he got and said “I just went to install some hard drives. I opened up the side of the box and I could not believe how beautiful it was in there – beautify and **functional**. Everything was laid out so cleanly and easily accessible, not mess of wires. I could not believed that I could really install the drives in just a few seconds.”
As his work is far from his home, he frequently telecommutes. Recently he started using his Mac to access his PC via VPN. “I don’t understand it,”he relates, “On the PC laptop that the company gave me, I drop the connection 1 or 2 times every hour. Very annoying when you are trying to concentrate on some issue. On the Mac, connected to the very same network, I almost never drop a connection. So i am running my PC at work from my Mac at home!”
That is just one of the Mac features that I used to demonstrate to Windows people. I always felt like I’m demonstrating alien technology from the future. Millions of examples:
1. How much time does it take to add RAM to a PowerMac? (15 seconds). I demonstrate: pull the latch — whole side panel swings down, with the logic board and memory right in front of you. Insert chips, swing panel shut. Total of 15 seconds (Woooowwww! was always the unanimous reaction);
2. Exposé. I open ten windows; I ask myself “where’s that ‘Dreamweaver’ screen…? F12, exposé opens up (people yell “Wooowww!!!”), I click on window;
3. Fast user switching: I open my laptop, the logged-in profile is that of my wife; I say, “wait a minute, let me get to my user profile”, I click my name, cube rotates with my desktop sliding into place, the crowd goes wild…
I could continue to count, but the point is clear. Over the last 11 years since I had introduced Macs into my workplace, I have been constantly and consistently wowing ignorant Windows users with Mac features. They simply don’t realise that this is everyday computing for me. Their number have been steadily dwindling, though, as many of them are also now Mac owners.
On my MBP both the hard drive and optical drive are Hitachi. Are you sure you bought a real Apple?
It’s obvious why Apple continues to succeed. The rest of the tech industry mostly just copies whatever is successful. Their strategy is to compete based on price and try to sell more units.
Apple’s strategy seems to be the opposite, to intentionally avoid what the competition is doing. This “attitude” even extends to something as mundane as input devices. Apple could have simply produced a classy-looking white mouse, with two physical buttons and a scroll wheel, to include with Macs. Instead, they stuck with a overly-simple single-button mouse for the longest time, and when they finally added more functionality, it led to the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad (intentionally different anything else). Basically, Apple will not do something unless it is different.
The iPhone was not the first “smartphone,” but it was different and it is now the standard that everyone else is copying. The iPad was not the first “tablet PC,” but it was different and it is now the standard that everyone else is copying. You can say the same thing about the iPod and even the Mac.
Apple is an innovator. Most others, including Google at this point, are just copying. Say what you want, but at this point Google has been doign a lot less innovating and a lot more copying. Android is a pretty direct rip off of iPhone, and if you don’t believe it, go check out the phone they were making before iPhone, it looked and functioned a lot like a blackberry out at the time, so even then they were copiers.
Look at where google is struggling, facebook, Google wave and Buzz are no match, they are just dumbed down copies. And there productivity apps are pretty weak as well.
Was it mdn that said that Googles customers are advertisors and that is whom Google is trying to make happy? Same thing happen to MSFT, their customer was corporations and Enterprise support, and not the end users. Apple focus is on the end user every time.
Crawford, why don’t you p-ss & moan some more? Apple is doing great.
Interesting that it’s billed as a terrible economy when corporate profits are soaring and near record highs. Oh, that’s right — the economy’s only terrible for the average taxpayer who’s getting screwed by the corporate masters and their hired puppets in DC.
With all the analysts out there blethering away about Apple, it is remarkable how few of them actually understand Apple. You just gotta laugh at all silly the attempts to shove Apple into a category box:
Apple: “They are the Energizer Bunny.”
Jobs & Apple: “… like the Beatles.”
Meanwhile, the decrepit old ignorant mythology lives on as well:
Mark Gilmore, co-founder of Wired Integrations: “IBM developed the PC”
NO. Apple developed the PC. Then IBM freaked out and played catchup with their rendition of the PC.
The worst offender is probably Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at Cal State Channel Islands. “The question is, can Apple continue to do that? History says probably not.”
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And yet Apple has provided innovative computer based products since April 1, 1976, even during the Marketing-As-Management doldrums of 1985 – 1998. History has causes and effects. This professor prefers to skim the surface instead of diving into the details of Apple’s consistent drive to be entrepreneurial even in the worst of times and the most marketing-moronic of management.
BTW: The US economy is in a DEPRESSION using nearly every parameter. You don’t hear this fact because of marketing spin from The Corporate Oligarchy who run the media and the government.
And who drove the US economy into a depression? The Corporate Oligarchy.
So if you think licking the festering toes of corporations is going to fix everything and return the US to BOSS OF THE WORLD status, taste what you’re licking. It’s grotesque.
It’s We The People who will save the USA. Kick The Corporate Oligarchy in the balls.
8^þ,
You usually get a surge in corporate profits in the early stages of a recovery. That said employers on the downside of a recession will sack staff last and hire or rehire them last. That’s how recoveries work.
What makes the northern hemisphere recession different is that it’s a structural downturn that is wrapped up in a burst real estate bubble, mixed in with a high degree of sovereign debt floating around the same region’s financial system.
The most important downside is the state of Ireland, (financial collapse spreading to Britain), Portugal (ditto & spreading to Spain) and the then the whole mess affecting the rest of the Euro zone and then spreading across to the Atlantic. This could then lead to a double dip recession. And that had nothing to do with Democrats, Republicans, people at a tea party or for that matter, people at a coffee launch.
We the people -yeah right. Business is where the jobs are.