Apple to become most profitable company ever

http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/18/apple-most-profitable-company-iphone-5-ipad-mini-itv/

by zacharye • 14 years ago

41 22 14 years ago

funkiee• 14 years ago

I continue to hope that more companies will take the lesson from Apple and start doing more in-house engineering with a focus on quality and not the race to the bottom.

planetguy• 14 years ago

Cargo-cultism. Apple was doing both those things back in 1998 when they were going broke, and they could have just as easily gone broke doing 'em.

There are many ways to run a successful company. Some of 'em involve in-house engineering and a focus on quality, while others involve outsourcing all your engineering and focusing on cheap crap (see also: Wal-Mart, nearly as profitable as Apple).

endersshadow• 14 years ago

Sun also did this and ran themselves into the ground.

quesera• 14 years ago

I agree with you, but Walmart definitely does not outsource the part of their business that separates them from the other cheap import retailers.

smackfu• 14 years ago

Yeah, like Steve Jobs making sure the NeXT factory looked pretty by painting the robots is an example of silliness because NeXT failed. Yet if Apple showed that off in a product video today, it would be held up as attention to detail.

adventureful• 14 years ago

Not disagreeing with the bulk of your comment, but...

In the December quarter alone Apple generated 85% of Walmart's most recent annual profit. And most likely for Christmas 2012 it'll exceed 100%.

Or put another way, if Apple hits their numbers for this year, they'll do about 200% over the profit that Walmart does (annually).

I only point this out because it's staggering.

imgabe• 14 years ago

They were still doing in-house engineering, but in Jobs' biography it's repeatedly mentioned that Sculley changed the focus from product quality to profit and that caused the downturn in their business.

Obviously, not a completely objective source, but it's not necessarily true that they were doing exactly the same things in 1998.

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

Apple succeeded because of high product quality, genius marketing and a lot of timing luck. All of these 3 were essential. Anyone dismissing one of them is usually being biased.

alexro• 14 years ago

You can engineer at least the first two ... and then luck usually shows up

userulluipeste• 14 years ago

Apple succeded because of its pervasive and ruthless principles, its strong propaganda, and their overly seductive designs.

m_for_monkey• 14 years ago

AAPL Stock Chart 1984-2012: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AAPL+Interactive#symbol=a...;

3pt14159• 14 years ago

Wow is that highly deceiving.

You need to put stock charts on a log scale otherwise normal growing stocks (5% per year, say) always look like they are just about to peak.

Here is how it should look for the same time period:

http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...

mtgx• 14 years ago

I think this video by Simon Sinek explains very well why Apple is successful. It's the motivation behind doing the things they do that matters, not just what they make. This tends to attract a lot of customers to think the same way, and believe in Apple's goals and philosophy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4

benologist• 14 years ago

wow bgr.com finally got some spam to the front page!

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kemper

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zacharye

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=CitiiDB

grlthgn• 14 years ago

Is it the most profitable company ever after accounting for inflation? Probably not, but would love to see some data on that.

Apple to become most profitable company ever

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