Big companies attract big attention, and none quite as much as Apple. Its quarterly reports have become something of a collective soothsaying moment for stock markets and the tech industry, and so Thursday’s report garnered its usual share of outsized attention.
Read moreSo Apple is Worth $1 Trillion. Now Comes the Hard Part.
So it finally happened. Apple announced stellar quarterly earnings; investors liked them; the stock rose; and Apple became the first US company to surpass $1 trillion in market value. In our love for big numbers, that made it a big story.
Read moreWhat Apple Has to Fear from China
No company wants to report that its sales have declined. But when you’re Apple, which has consistently seen its revenues grow for more than twelve years, it’s not just bad news but a serious kink in a joyful narrative of boundless possibility. Earlier this week the company—the most valuable in the U.S.—told shareholders that revenues had declined by thirteen per cent.
Read moreApple: The Slaying of a Tech Hero
Apple's quarterly results this week drew a flood of reactions - almost all negative. Given how well the company did under almost any absolute measure, this is odd, though, for Wall Street, not necessarily surprising. But the arc of Apple's rise and temporary fall tells a more troubling story about our current inability to maintain positive momentum about any aspect of our culture. We slay our heroes with casual abandon. Then we wring our hands about the absence of positive catalysts in our world today.
Read moreWall Street’s Irrational Negative Reaction to Apple’s Earnings Report
A large multinational company announces that its business has grown significantly from a year earlier, that its earnings are up more than 20 percent and its sales up nearly 25 percent. Its products continued to see strong demand around the world, with the only negative being that some people apparently held off buying because they wanted to wait for the newest version.
Read moreLatest Record Results Show Apple a Bigger Global Power Than Most Nations
Yet again, Apple announced record sales and earnings. Yet again, its “Jobs report” stood in stark contrast to the monthly official jobs report. For the past four years, as the U.S. economy has stumbled, Apple has soared. As millions have lost jobs or stayed underemployed, Apple has sold more phones, iPads, and computers than most thought possible. While its success certainly has come at the expense of competitors such as Research in Motion (maker of the BlackBerry) and Nokia, it has generated tens of billions in revenue and sold tens of millions of devices by reaching new customers and not simply taking market share. And it has seen its most dramatic success during one of the worst economic slumps in the developed world.
Read moreBefore Condemning Foxconn, Americans Should Examine Their Own Labor History
Apple has made waves this week, but not for its products or its stock price. Instead, it has once again been the center of damning revelations about labor practices in Chinese factories that make the iPad and the iPhone. But while Apple certainly deserves the criticism, this story is not as simple as it seems. It’s not just about Apple and working conditions; the other story is U.S. anxiety about China, double standards, and an American tendency to forget our own history and how we have evolved.
Read moreSteve Jobs Legacy: Apple Must Expand, Offer More Great Products or Fail
Steve Jobs has rightly been lauded over the past day and a half as a visionary who transformed consumer technology over the past 30 years. And Apple has been extolled as a company that embodies the vision of Steve Jobs and is uniquely poised to maintain his legacy, not simply because of the expertise and experience of CEO Tim Cook but because of the stunning loyalty of tens of millions of customers around the globe and a corporate balance sheet flush with tens of billions of dollars in cash and an enviable product pipeline.
Read moreApple After Steve Jobs’s Resignation: Is the Company Doomed?
Let it be acknowledged that Apple, from which Steve Jobs has finally resigned as CEO after years of battling pancreatic cancer, is no ordinary company. It is the most powerful, successful, and innovative consumer technology company of our age.
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