Apple Inc., formerly
Apple Computer, 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 music 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.
The company was founded on April 1, 1976, and incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977.
The word "Computer" was removed from its name on January 9, 2007, the
same day Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, reflecting 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. 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 value of US$415 billion as of March 2013. As of Sept
29 2012, the company had 72,800 permanent full-time employees and 3,300
temporary full-time employees worldwide Its worldwide annual revenue in 2012 totalled $156 billion. 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.
History
1976–80: Founding and incorporation
The
Apple I,
Apple's first product, was sold as an assembled circuit board and
lacked basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case. The owner
of this unit added a keyboard and a wooden case.
Apple was established on April 1, 1976, by
Steve Jobs,
Steve Wozniak and
Ronald Wayne to sell the
Apple I personal computer kit, a computer single handedly designed by Wozniak. The kits were hand-built by Wozniak
and first shown to the public at the
Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a
motherboard (with
CPU,
RAM, and basic textual-video chips), which is less than what is today considered a complete personal computer.
The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66 ($2,690 in 2013 dollars, adjusted for inflation).
Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977,without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multi-millionaire
Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple.
During the first five years of operations, revenues doubled every four months, an average growth rate of 700%.
The
Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16, 1977, at the first
West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its major rivals, the
TRS-80 and
Commodore PET, due to its character cell-based color graphics and an
open architecture. While early models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch
floppy disk drive and interface, the
Disk II.
The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first "
killer app" of the business world,
VisiCalc, a
spreadsheet program.
VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II and gave home users
compatibility with the office, an additional reason to buy an Apple II. Apple was a distant third place to
Commodore and
Tandy until
VisiCalc came along.
By the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line. The company introduced the
Apple III in May 1980 in an attempt to compete with
IBM and
Microsoft in the business and corporate computing market.
Jobs and several Apple employees, including
Jef Raskin, visited
Xerox PARC in December 1979 to see the
Xerox Alto.
Xerox
granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in
return for the option to buy 100,000 shares (800,000 split-adjusted
shares) of Apple at the pre-IPO price of $10 a share. Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a graphical user interface (
GUI), and development of a GUI began for the
Apple Lisa.
On December 12, 1980, Apple went public at $22 per share,generating more capital than any IPO since
Ford Motor Company in 1956 and instantly creating more millionaires (about 300) than any company in history.
1981–85: Lisa and Macintosh
Apple began working on the
Apple Lisa
in 1978. In 1982, Jobs was pushed from the Lisa team due to infighting.
Jobs took over Jef Raskin's low-cost-computer project, the
Macintosh.
A race broke out between the Lisa team and the Macintosh team over
which product would ship first. Lisa won the race in 1983 and became the
first personal computer sold to the public with a GUI, but was a
commercial failure due to its high price tag and limited software
titles.
In 1984, Apple next launched the Macintosh. Its debut was announced by the now famous $1.5 million
television commercial "1984". It was directed by
Ridley Scott and was aired during the third quarter of
Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. It is now hailed as a watershed event for Apple's success and a "masterpiece".
The Macintosh initially sold well, but follow-up sales were not strong
due to its high price and limited range of software titles. The Macintosh was the first personal computger to be sold without a
programming language at all.
[51]
The machine's fortunes changed with the introduction of the
LaserWriter, the first
PostScript laser printer to be sold at a reasonable price, and
PageMaker, an early
desktop publishing
package. It has been suggested that the combination of these three
products was responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing
market.
[52]
The Mac was particularly powerful in the desktop publishing market due
to its advanced graphics capabilities, which had necessarily been built
in to create the intuitive Macintosh GUI.
In 1985 a power struggle developed between Jobs and CEO
John Sculley, who had been hired two years earlier.
[53]
The Apple board of directors instructed Sculley to "contain" Jobs and
limit his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products.
Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him
from his leadership role at Apple. Sculley found out that Jobs had been
attempting to organize a
coup and called a board meeting at which Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties.
[50] Jobs resigned from Apple and founded
NeXT Inc. the same year.
[54]
1986–97: Decline
The
Macintosh Portable
was introduced in 1989 and was designed to be just as powerful as a
desktop Macintosh, but weighed a bulky 7.5 kilograms (17 lb) with a
12-hour battery life. After the Macintosh Portable, Apple introduced the
PowerBook in 1991. The same year, Apple introduced
System 7,
a major upgrade to the operating system which added color to the
interface and introduced new networking capabilities. It remained the
architectural basis for
Mac OS until 2001.
The success of the PowerBook and other products brought increasing revenue.
[53]
For some time, Apple was doing incredibly well, introducing fresh new
products and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine
MacAddict named the period between 1989 and 1991 as the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.
Following the success of the
Macintosh LC, Apple introduced the
Centris line, a low-end
Quadra, and the ill-fated
Performa
line that was sold with an overwhelming number of configurations and
software bundles to avoid competing with the various consumer outlets
such as
Sears,
Price Club, and
Wal-Mart (the primary dealers for these models). Consumers ended up confused and did not understand the difference between models.
[55]
During this time Apple experimented with a number of other failed consumer targeted products including
digital cameras,
portable CD audio players,
speakers,
video consoles, and
TV appliances. Enormous resources were also invested in the problem-plagued
Newton division based on John Sculley's unrealistic market forecasts.
[citation needed] Ultimately, none of these products helped, as Apple's market share and stock prices continued to slide.
[citation needed]
Apple saw the
Apple II series as too expensive to produce, while taking away sales from the low end Macintosh.
[56] In 1990, Apple released the
Macintosh LC with a single
expansion slot for the
Apple IIe Card to migrate Apple II users to the Macintosh platform.
[56] Apple stopped selling the
Apple IIe in 1993.
Microsoft continued to gain market share with
Windows
focusing on delivering software to cheap commodity personal computers
while Apple was delivering a richly engineered, but expensive,
experience.
[57] Apple relied on high profit margins and never developed a clear response. Instead, they sued
Microsoft for using a
graphical user interface similar to the
Apple Lisa in
Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation.
[58]
The lawsuit dragged on for years before it was finally dismissed. At
the same time, a series of major product flops and missed deadlines
sullied Apple's reputation, and Sculley was replaced as CEO by
Michael Spindler.
[59]
The
Newton was Apple's first foray into the
PDA
markets, as well as one of the first in the industry. Despite being a
financial flop at the time of its release, it helped pave the way for
the
Palm Pilot and Apple's own
iPhone and
iPad in the future.
By the early 1990s, Apple was developing alternative platforms to the Macintosh, such as the
A/UX. Apple had also begun to experiment in providing a Mac-only online portal which they called
eWorld, developed in collaboration with
America Online and designed as a Mac-friendly alternative to other online services such as
CompuServe.
The Macintosh platform was itself becoming outdated because it was not
built for multitasking, and several important software routines were
programmed directly into the hardware. In addition, Apple was facing
competition from
OS/2 and
UNIX vendors such as
Sun Microsystems. The Macintosh would need to be replaced by a new platform, or reworked to run on more powerful hardware.
[60]
In 1994, Apple allied with IBM and
Motorola in the
AIM alliance. The goal was to create a new computing platform (the
PowerPC Reference Platform),
which would use IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple's
software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's
software would leave the PC far behind, thus countering Microsoft. The
same year, Apple introduced the
Power Macintosh, the first of many Apple computers to use Motorola's
PowerPC processor.
[61]
In 1996, Michael Spindler was replaced by
Gil Amelio as CEO. Gil Amelio made many changes at Apple, including extensive layoffs.
[62] After numerous failed attempts to improve Mac OS, first with the
Taligent project, then later with
Copland and
Gershwin, Amelio chose to purchase
NeXT and its
NeXTSTEP operating system, bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple as an advisor.
[63]
On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted by the board of directors after
overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial
losses. Jobs became the interim CEO and began restructuring the
company's product line.
At the 1997
Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would join Microsoft to release new versions of
Microsoft Office for the Macintosh, and that Microsoft made a $150 million investment in non-voting Apple stock.
[64]
On November 10, 1997, Apple introduced the
Apple Online Store, tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing strategy.
[65][66]
1998–2005: Return to profitability
On August 15, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the
Macintosh 128K: the
iMac. The iMac design team was led by
Jonathan Ive, who would later design the
iPod and the
iPhone.
[67][68] The iMac featured modern technology and a unique design, and sold almost 800,000 units in its first five months.
[69]
Through this period, Apple purchased several companies to create a
portfolio of professional and consumer-oriented digital production
software. In 1998, Apple announced the purchase of
Macromedia's
Final Cut software, signaling its expansion into the
digital video editing market.
[70] The following year, Apple released two video editing products:
iMovie for consumers and, for professionals,
Final Cut Pro, which has gone on to be a significant video-editing program, with 800,000 registered users in early 2007.
[71] In 2002, Apple purchased
Nothing Real for their advanced digital
compositing application
Shake,
[72] as well as
Emagic for their music productivity application
Logic, which led to the development of their consumer-level
GarageBand application.
[73][74] iPhoto's release the same year completed the
iLife suite.
[75]
Apple retail stores allow potential customers to use
floor models without making a purchase.
(Apple Store, North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois in 2005)
Mac OS X, based on NeXT's
OPENSTEP and
BSD Unix
was released on March 24, 2001, after several years of development.
Aimed at consumers and professionals alike, Mac OS X aimed to combine
the stability, reliability and security of
Unix with the ease of use afforded by an overhauled user interface. To aid users in migrating from
Mac OS 9, the new operating system allowed the use of OS 9 applications through Mac OS X's
Classic environment.
[76]
On May 19, 2001, Apple opened the first official
Apple Retail Stores in Virginia and California.
[77] On July 9, they bought Spruce Technologies, a
DVD authoring company. On October 23 of the same year, Apple announced the
iPod
portable digital audio player, and started selling it on November 10.
The product was phenomenally successful — over 100 million units were
sold within six years.
[78][79] In 2003, Apple's
iTunes Store was introduced, offering online
music downloads
for $0.99 a song and integration with the iPod. The service quickly
became the market leader in online music services, with over 5 billion
downloads by June 19, 2008.
[80]
Since 2001, Apple's design team has progressively abandoned the use of translucent colored plastics first used in the
iMac G3. This began with the
titanium PowerBook and was followed by the white
polycarbonate iBook and the flat-panel
iMac.
[81][82]
2005–07: Transition to Intel
The
MacBook Pro, Apple's first laptop with an
Intel microprocessor, announced in January 2006.
At the
Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address on June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would begin producing
Intel-based Mac computers in 2006.
[83] On January 10, 2006, the new
MacBook Pro and
iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel's
Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006 Apple had transitioned the entire Mac product line to Intel chips, over one year sooner than announced.
[83] The
Power Mac,
iBook, and
PowerBook brands were retired during the transition; the
Mac Pro,
MacBook, and MacBook Pro became their respective successors.
[84][85] On April 29, 2009,
The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was building its own team of engineers to design microchips.
[86]
Apple introduced
Boot Camp to help users install
Windows XP or
Windows Vista on their Intel Macs alongside Mac OS X.
[87]
Apple's success during this period was evident in its stock price.
Between early 2003 and 2006, the price of Apple's stock increased more
than tenfold, from around $6 per share (split-adjusted) to over $80. In
January 2006, Apple's
market cap surpassed that of
Dell.
[88] Nine years prior, Dell's CEO
Michael Dell said that if he ran Apple he would "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
[89]
Although Apple's market share in computers had grown, it remained far
behind competitors using Microsoft Windows, with only about 8% of
desktops and laptops in the US.
[citation needed]
2007–11: Widespread success
Apple achieved widespread success with its
iPhone,
iPod Touch and
iPad products, which introduced innovations in
mobile phones,
portable music players and
personal computers respectively. In addition, the implementation of a store for the purchase of software applications represented a new
business model.
Touch screens had been invented and seen in mobile devices before, but Apple was the first to achieve mass market adoption of such a
user interface that included particular pre-programmed touch gestures.
Delivering his keynote speech at the
Macworld Expo
on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced that Apple Computer, Inc. would from
that point on be known as Apple Inc., because computers were no longer
the main focus of the company, which had shifted its emphasis to mobile
electronic devices. The event also saw the announcement of the
iPhone and the
Apple TV.
[90] The following day, Apple shares hit $97.80, an all-time high at that point. In May, Apple's share price passed the $100 mark.
[91]
In an article posted on Apple's website on February 6, 2007, Steve
Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on the iTunes Store
without
digital rights management (DRM) (which would allow tracks to be played on third-party players), if record labels would agree to drop the technology.
[92] On April 2, 2007, Apple and
EMI jointly announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI's catalog in the iTunes Store, effective in May.
[93] Other record labels followed later that year.
In July of the following year, Apple launched the
App Store to sell third-party applications for the
iPhone and
iPod Touch.
[94]
Within a month, the store sold 60 million applications and brought in
$1 million daily on average, with Jobs speculating that the App Store
could become a billion-dollar business for Apple.
[95]
Three months later, it was announced that Apple had become the
third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity
of the iPhone.
[96]
On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that after over 20 years of
attending Macworld, 2009 would be the last year Apple would be attending
the
Macworld Expo, and that
Phil Schiller would deliver the 2009 keynote in lieu of the expected Jobs.
[97]
Almost exactly one month later, on January 14, 2009, an internal Apple
memo from Jobs announced that he would be taking a six-month
leave of absence,
until the end of June 2009, to allow him to better focus on his health
and to allow the company to better focus on its products without having
the rampant media speculating about his health.
[98] Despite Jobs' absence, Apple recorded its best non-holiday quarter (Q1 FY 2009) during the
recession with a revenue of $8.16 billion and a profit of $1.21 billion.
[99][100]
After years of speculation and multiple rumored "leaks", Apple
announced a large screen, tablet-like media device known as the iPad on
January 27, 2010. The iPad runs the same touch based operating system
that the iPhone uses and many of the same iPhone apps are compatible
with the iPad. This gave the iPad a large app catalog on launch even
with very little development time before the release. Later that year on
April 3, 2010, the iPad was launched in the US and sold more than
300,000 units on that day, reaching 500,000 by the end of the first
week.
[101] In May of the same year, Apple's
market cap exceeded that of competitor
Microsoft for the first time since 1989.
[102]
Apple released the
fourth generation iPhone, which introduced
video calling,
multitasking, and a new
uninsulated stainless steel
design, which acts as the phone's antenna. Because of this antenna
implementation, some iPhone 4 users reported a reduction in signal
strength when the phone is held in specific ways. After a large amount
of media coverage including mainstream news organizations, Apple held a
press conference where they offered buyers a free rubber 'bumper' case,
which had been proven to eliminate the signal reduction issue. Later
that year Apple again refreshed its
iPod line of MP3 players which introduced a
multi-touch iPod Nano,
iPod Touch with
FaceTime, and
iPod Shuffle with buttons which brought back the buttons of earlier generations.
[103][104][105]
In October 2010, Apple shares hit an all-time high, eclipsing $300.
[106] Additionally, on October 20, Apple updated their
MacBook Air laptop,
iLife suite of applications, and unveiled
Mac OS X Lion, the last version with the name
Mac OS X.
[107] On January 6, 2011, the company opened their
Mac App Store, a digital software distribution platform, similar to the existing iOS App Store.
[108] Apple was featured in the documentary
Something Ventured which premiered in 2011.
2011–present: Post–Steve Jobs era
On January 17, 2011, Jobs announced in an internal Apple memo that he
would take another medical leave of absence, for an indefinite period,
to allow him to focus on his health. Chief operating officer
Tim Cook
assumed Jobs' day-to-day operations at Apple, although Jobs would still
remain "involved in major strategic decisions for the company."
[109] Apple became the most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world.
[110] In June 2011, Steve Jobs surprisingly took the stage and unveiled
iCloud,
an online storage and syncing service for music, photos, files and
software which replaced MobileMe, Apple's previous attempt at content
syncing.
[111]
This would be the last product launch Jobs would attend before his
death. It has been argued that Apple has achieved such efficiency in its
supply chain
[112] that the company operates as a
monopsony (one buyer, many sellers), in that it can dictate terms to its suppliers.
[113][114] In July 2011, due to the
American debt-ceiling crisis, Apple's financial reserves were briefly larger than those of the
U.S. Government.
[115]
On August 24, 2011, Jobs resigned his position as CEO of Apple.
[116]
He was replaced by Tim Cook and Jobs became Apple's chairman. Prior to
this, Apple did not have a chairman and instead had two co-lead
directors,
Andrea Jung and
Arthur D. Levinson, who continued with those titles until Levinson became Chairman of the Board in November.
[117]
On October 4, 2011, Apple announced the
iPhone 4S,
which included an improved camera with 1080p video recording, a dual
core A5 chip capable of 7 times faster graphics than the A4, an "
intelligent software assistant" named
Siri, and cloud-sourced data with
iCloud.
[118][119] The following day, on October 5, 2011, Apple announced that Jobs had died, marking the end of an era for Apple Inc.
[120][121] The iPhone 4S was officially released on October 14, 2011.
On October 29, 2011, Apple purchased C3 Technologies, a mapping
company, for $240 million, becoming the third mapping company Apple has
purchased.
[122] On January 10, 2012, Apple paid $500 million to acquire
Anobit,
an Israeli hardware company that developed and supplies a proprietary
memory signal processing technology that improves the performance of
flash-memory used in iPhones and iPads.
[123][124]
On January 19, 2012, Apple's
Phil Schiller introduced iBooks Textbooks for iOS and iBook Author for Mac OS X in New York City.
[125]
This was the first major announcement by Apple since the passing of
Steve Jobs, who stated in his biography that he wanted to reinvent the
textbook and education. The
3rd generation iPad was announced on March 7, 2012. It includes a
Retina display, a new CPU, a five megapixel camera, and
1080p video recording.
[126][127]
On July 24, 2012, during a conference call with investors, Tim Cook said that he loved
India,
but that Apple was going to expect larger opportunities outside of
India, citing the reason as the 30% sourcing requirement from India.
[128][129][130][131]
On August 20, 2012, Apple's rising stock rose the company's value to a
world-record $624 billion. This beat the non-inflation-adjusted record
for market capitalization set by
Microsoft in 1999.
[132] On August 24, 2012, a US jury ruled that Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion (£665m) in damages in an
intellectual property lawsuit. Samsung said they will appeal the court ruling.
[133] Samsung subsequently prevailed on its motion to vacate this damages award, which the Court reduced by $450 million.
[134] The Court further granted Samsung's request for a new trial.
[134]
On September 12, 2012, Apple unveiled the
iPhone 5, featuring an enlarged screen, more powerful processors, and running
iOS 6. The latter includes a new mapping application (replacing
Google Maps) that has attracted some criticism.
[135]
It was made available on September 21, 2012, and became Apple's biggest
iPhone launch, with over 2 million pre-orders pushing back the delivery
date to late October.
[136]
On October 23, 2012, Apple unveiled the
iPad Mini, which features a 7.9-inch screen in contrast to the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. Apple also released a third-generation 13-inch
MacBook Pro with a Retina display; the
iPad 4, featuring a faster processor and a Lightning dock connector;
[137][137] and new
iMac and
Mac Mini computers.
[138][139]
After the launch of Apple's iPad Mini and fourth generation iPad on
November 3, 2012, Apple announced that they had sold 3 million iPads in
three days of the launch, but it did not mention the sales figures of
specific iPad models.
[140]
On November 10, 2012, Apple confirmed a global settlement that would
dismiss all lawsuits between Apple and HTC up to that date, in favor of a
ten-year license agreement for current and future patents between the
two companies.
[141] It is predicted that Apple will make $280 million a year from this deal with HTC.
[142]
In December 2012, in a TV interview for NBC's
Rock Center and also aired on the
Today
morning show, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that in 2013 the company will
produce one of its existing lines of Mac computers in the United States.
[143] In January 2013, Cook stated that he expected China to overtake the US as Apple's biggest market.
[144]
In March 2013, Apple announced a patent for an augmented reality (AR)
system that can identify objects in a live video stream and present
information corresponding to these objects through a computer-generated
information layer overlaid on top of the real-world image.
[145]
At the Worldwide Developer's Conference on June 10, 2013, Apple announced the
seventh iOS operating system alongside
OS X Mavericks, the tenth version of Mac OS X, and a new
Internet radio service called iTunes Radio.
[146][147][148] iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks are both expected to be released during fall 2013,
[146][147]
while the iTunes Radio Service, which will be integrated with Apple's
personal voice-assistant software program Siri, is scheduled for release
in the second half of 2013. The radio service features more than 200
stations according to company's statement.
[149][150]
On July 2, 2013, Apple announced the recruitment of
Paul Deneve, Belgian President and CEO of
Yves Saint Laurent,
to Apple's top ranks. A spokesperson for the company stated, "We're
thrilled to welcome Paul Deneve to Apple. He'll be working on special
projects as a vice president reporting directly to Tim Cook."
[151]
Alongside Google vice-president Vint Cerf and AT&T CEO Randall
Stephenson, Cook attended a closed-door summit held by President Obama
on August 8, 2013 in regard to government surveillance and the Internet
in the wake of the Edward Snowden
NSA incident.
[152][153]
A report on August 22, 2013 confirmed that Apple acquired Embark
Inc., a small Silicon Valley-based mapping company. Embark builds free
transit apps to help smartphone users navigate public transportation in
U.S. cities such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago. Following the
confirmation of the acquisition, an Apple spokesperson explained, "Apple
buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally
do not discuss our purpose or plans." In November 2012, Embark claimed
that over 500,000 people used its apps.
An anonymous Apple employee revealed to the
Bloomberg media publication that the opening of a
Tokyo,
Japan store is planned for 2014. The construction of the store will be
completed in February 2014, but as of August 29, 2013, Takashi
Takebayashi, a Tokyo-based spokesman for Apple, has not made any comment
to the media. A Japanese analyst has stated, "For Apple, the Japanese
market is appealing in terms of quantity and price. There is room to
expand tablet sales and a possibility the Japanese market expands if
Apple’s mobile carrier partners increase.
[155]
Products
In response to the July 2013 death of a Chinese woman, who was found
electrocuted holding an iPhone that was recharging with a non-Apple
charger, and a similar incident (also in July 2013) that left a Chinese
citizen in a coma, Apple announced a program whereby authorized Apple
outlets will receive any iPhone, iPod, or iPad chargers not made by
Apple in exchange for the sale of an Apple charger for US$10—half the
usual retail price.
[156]