Apple, Inc: Company Overview

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Apple Inc, founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniack and Ronald Wayne on April 1st, 1976, is a consumer electronics company. Apple designs and develops personal computing hardware and operating systems. Amongst other things, Apple is best-known for its iMac PCs, iPhones, iPod music player, iPad tablet PC, iOS operating systems and the iTunes media market. Apple was named as the world’s most admired company, each year from 2008 to 2012, by Fortune Magazine. It’s revenue in 2012, amounted to US$156 billion, making it the second largest IT company in the world. iTunes, Apple’s signature music retail store, is the largest online music store in the world. iPhone was the world’s best-selling phone in each of the years 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013. With sales of over 33.8 million iPhones, 14.1 million iPads and 4.6 million Mac PCs, Apple bagged in net revenue of $37.5 billion in only its fourth quarter of 2013! With such figures, to call Apple a Tech-giant might, perhaps, be an understatement. History: Apple Inc. traces its humble beginnings to Steve Jobs’ backyard. Wozniack, in 1976, built the first line of PCs offered by Apple called the Apple I. Jobs approached a local computer store, The Byte Shop, which was willing to buy Apple I computers for US$ 500 each. Given the shortage of funds at their disposal, Jobs and Wozniack managed to convince their supplier to agree on selling parts to them on credit and went on to sell 200 Apple I computers. Apple’s basic computing machine, Apple I was an incomplete personal computer by today’s standards, lacking both a keyboard input and a display device. Wozniack had gauged the potential in the computing business and began working on an improved prototype, the Apple II. Jobs wanted the Apple II... ... middle of paper ... ...uctural compliance to laws, research into the moral beliefs and attitudes of business people, best-practices claims, and attempts at applying traditional ethical theories of justice to the functional areas of business are some of the activities pursued under the banner of corporate ethics. Corporate Social Responsibility, often used interchangeably with corporate ethics, refers to the initiatives taken to assess or evaluate the business’ impact on its external environment. The term mostly applies to contributory efforts initiated by a company that go beyond the scope of regulatory framework it is subject to. Companies engaged in Corporate Social Responsibility programs invest in activities that may not necessarily benefit the company’s profitability in the short-run but have longer term implications such as society’s welfare or a positive impact on the environment.

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