Apple Computer was founded on April fool's day in 1976. This was a result of the work of two young men, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The two were college dropouts and were still in their twenties. Working out of Job's garage, they came up with a computer circuit board. They named it Apple I. It was a success as in a couple of months, they had made 200 sales. A new partner, A.C. "Mike" Markkula, Jr joined them. Their mission was to avail a computer that can be used easily by everyone.
In 1978, Apple II was launched. It was a smaller and much more efficient machine. Apple II was a success and it overturned the PC industry, taking its annual sales to 1 billion U.S dollars in just three years. Apples competitive force in the market was because of their quality products; their uniquely designed products that could not be cloned by other producers in the market. In1984, Apple came up with the Macintosh. When John Sculley took over Apple between 1985 and 1993, he sought to make the company No.1 in desktop publishing and education. He Incorporated Adobe PageMaker and Microsoft Excel to the Macintosh. Apple designed its products with unique chips, external hardware like the monitors. Its computer chassis was also made in shapes that were not common. Apple developed its own operating system, suited for the Mac (Yoffie & Slind, 2007).
In 1993, Apple had started to lose its market credibility to its rivals. Michael Spindler took over as the new CEO of Apple. Still Spindler could not revive Apple. Despite his efforts, it was losing momentum. In 1996, Apple was hit by a 69 million U.S dollar loss. Two weeks after this, Gilbert Amelio took over as CEO. He only lasted one year, and within his period he tried to Apple into servers, Internet access devise and PDA's. In September1997 Steve Jobs was appointed the Apple's CEO (Yoffie & Slind, 2007).
Jobs revolutionized Apple and salvaged it its sinking boat. In 1997 August 6th, he got Microsoft to invest a stock of 150 million U.S dollars in Apple. Microsoft was committed to produce core products like Microsoft office for Mac till 2002. Jobs terminated the Macintosh licensing program because of the clones being made which made its value drop. In 1998, Jobs unveiled the iMac. It had a CPU, CD-ROM drive and modem. 3 years on, it sold up to 6 million units. Jobs changed the distribution system for Apple, he launched a website to sell its product directly to clients. The 'think Different' campaign promoted Apple as a preferred option to other computer brands. When apple came up with the iPods, it took over the mp3 industry. Initially the iPods were made to just sync wit Mac OS but later in 2002, Apple made iPod for Windows. The iTunes system made it easier for customers to download music wit their iPods. This shot up the sales for the Apple Company (Yoffie & Slind, 2007).
