It is no secret that Apple’s shares have turned into a goldmine ever since the release of the iPhone 4S. The once close-to-bankrupt company is getting bigger than everyone’s wildest imagination. It seems there is no stopping Apple now.
Apple’s shares are breaking all barriers and with every new product release, people’s confidence in Apple is getting even stronger. With the fat wallet it has, Apple no longer even needs depend upon its shareholders for money. While Apple’s shares are soaring at $605 a share (Rs. 30,250 just in case you are interested), Apple has launched a grand campaign to buyback its shares. For the first time in years, Apple is also announcing a quarterly dividend for its shareholders.
There is no doubt that Apple has created history with its innovative products. Its market policy is no less enterprising. Apple has created its hold on the mobile market space through dynamic innovation. Two names feature predominantly in Apple’s success story – the iPad and the iPhone. One more we can never forget is Steve Jobs.
Lets rewind a bit. When Apple started out, it was doing well for itself. Even in the start it tried to create something different than whatever was out there and it succeeded, the enterprising Steve Jobs built the company from scratch with help from Steve Wozniak. But then Jobs was ousted from his own company through a coup by the board of directors. Apple then started on a downward spiral.
Everyone sees and admires what Apple has become, but no one really remembers that back in ’95, Apple was nowhere on the scene. It was a tiny player in the world of PCs and was spiraling down to bankruptcy with around 800 million in debt. It was then that Steve Jobs came back and stitched a partnership with Microsoft to get Apple back on its feet.
From there on, one thing helped Apple tremendously, going into the mobile space with a completely new perspective on things. While Apple started gaining success with the iPod, it was stepping into the mobile industry that has help Apple become what it has. First, the iPhone – a phone fully touchscreen – with apps and an OS, redefined how we saw smartphones and then, the iPad really brought the tablet category to the mainstream consumer.
Apple’s growth chart has boomed like never before because it has shown the courage to get out there and give us products the iPhone 4S with Siri and the new iPad with retina display. Today its product sales are so high that it doesn’t even need an alternative income source.
Personally, if I had some Apple shares, I wouldn’t have sold them, no matter what. There is no downside to Apple at least for the coming years. Hanging on to a few hundred of these could make one a millionaire!