40 Years of Apple

40 years ago, on April 1, 1976, college dropout Steve Jobs and his friends Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne incorporated Apple Computer. At the time, nobody could have imagined that what started in Jobs’ parents’ garage would become one of the greatest success stories in corporate history.

While remarkably successful from the start – Apple went from zero to one and a half billion dollars in revenue within eight years – there were some ups and downs in the company’s early days. It wasn’t until Steve Jobs’ second stint as CEO that Apple became what it is today: the most valuable company in the world. With the release of the iPhone in 2007, Apple’s revenue (and profit for that matter) started to skyrocket, reaching a record $234 billion in fiscal 2015.

Lately the company has become a victim of its own success though. Given its track record over the past ten years, people have come to expect miracles from Apple. However, a product such as the iPhone doesn’t come around every so often, which is why it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Apple’s growth started to slow down recently.