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As of the end of 2013, Apple Inc. is worth half a trillion dollars: that’s $500,000,000,000. The company’s brand alone is the most valuable brand name in the world, estimated by the brand consulting company Interbrand to be worth $98.3 billion dollars, surpassing the #2 and #3 spots held by the $93.3 billion Google and Coca-Cola’s $79.2 billion. These are truly staggering numbers, worth looking at in more detail to see what they represent.
Apple’s History
Apple began as a three-man operation, founded on April Fool’s Day, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and the often-overlooked Ronald Wayne. Jobs had the ideas and Woz made them happen, while Wayne was the adult supervision, serving as the administrative side of the little start-up. He designed the first logo and wrote the manual for their first product — the Apple I personal computer — but left the company long before they reached their superstar fame. And that fame was not long in coming. Over the first half-decade the company grew by 700% annually. The first computer was quickly followed by the extremely successful Apple II, the home platform for VisiCalc, a “killer app” that everyone seemed to need. The mid-’80s brought the Macintosh, forerunner of today’s Macs. Even back then they were targeted toward a less-tech-savvy audience — the Macintosh was the first home computer ever issued without a programming language included. In the ’90s the company went through some hard times, but then came the 2000s, and with them the iPod.
Why Apple’s Worth So Much
The company owns some of the world’s best-selling products, generating massive amounts of revenue each year. The iPod was one of their first real breakthroughs, selling over 100 million devices by 2006, and 26 million in 2013 alone. iTunes, the company’s music database selling songs for $0.99 each, is another important commodity, selling 25 billion songs by early 2013. The iPhone is an even more valuable product, outselling the iPod since 2010 with 150 million in 2013. The iPhone is by far Apple’s most valuable product, accounting for 53% of revenue in 2012. And while Apple’s growth has slowed somewhat in recent years, it doesn’t look like it will be quitting any time soon.
What $500 Billion Actually Is
Five hundred billion is a bigger number than most of us can even wrap our mind around. To help you understand just how much money Apple is worth, the Tumblr Things Apple is Worth More Than tries to put it in perspective. With a cost per share now greater than the cost of an iPad, the company is worth almost exactly a billion copies of its own hot product. Apple is worth more than all ten aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy’s fleet, all the beef eaten annually in the United States, and the global coffee industry. The total cost of the American Civil War was only a quarter of Apple’s net worth, and the Apollo Space Program only half of it.
Steve Jobs and his buddies couldn’t have envisioned just what they were starting on that afternoon in 1976. Apple’s incredible success is due to extremely innovative products, skillful marketing and a lot of being in the right place in the right time. And today, Apple Inc. is worth over $500 billion.