The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies

Apple

VIVIANE RIEGEL

Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

DOI: 10.1002/9781118989463.wbeccs8

Apple Inc. is an American multinational company that designs and markets consumer electronics, software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh computers, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Apple software includes the iOS operating system, the iTunes media browser, and the iCloud online storage. Its brand logo is an apple fruit with a bite taken out of it.

According to the Forbes Global Leading Companies (2013), by 2013 Apple had a worldwide annual revenue of US$171 billion, with more than half of it coming from the iPhone category. Its overall market value in May 2013 was US$416 billion, making it the most valuable company in the US market (it had been public since 1980 on NASDAQ). The 2013 BrandZ Report ranked Apple as the most valuable brand in the world, with a brand value of US$185,071 billion.

Apple was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, in Cupertino, California. By the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line. On January 24, 1984, Apple launched the Macintosh, and its debut was announced by the now famous US$1.5 million television commercial “1984,” considered a watershed event for Apple's success. Steve Jobs resigned from the company one year later and only returned in 1997, when he began restructuring the company's product line. In 2001, Apple opened the first ...