9-708-480
REV: SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

DAVID B. YOFFIE MICHAEL SLIND

Apple Inc., 2008
In January 2007, three decades after its incorporation, Apple Computer shed the second word in its name and became Apple Inc.1 With that move, the company signaled a fundamental shift away from its historic status as a vendor of the Macintosh personal computer (PC) line. Mac sales remained vital to Apple’s future, but they now accounted for less than half of its total revenue. A year and a half later, in June 2008, the company posted results that ratified the success of its leap beyond the PC business: In its third quarter, Apple earned a net profit of $1.07 billion on $7.46 billion in revenue, for a 38% increase on year-ago quarterly sales. Annual results were also impressive. Sales in the 2007 fiscal year topped $24 billion, up 24% from the previous year. (See Exhibit 1a—Apple Inc.: Selected Financial Information, plus Exhibit 1b and Exhibit 1c.) Investors, meanwhile, sent Apple’s stock to new heights: Despite a sharp drop in early 2008, its share price had risen more than 15-fold since 2003 and now hovered near its all-time high. (See Exhibit 2—Apple Inc.: Daily Closing Share Price.) Non-PC product lines drove much of Apple’s financial performance. The company’s iPod line of portable music players, together with its iTunes Store, had upended the music business. With the iPhone, a multifunction handheld device released in June 2007, Apple aimed to do the same for the mobile phone market. The launch of the iPhone 3G, in July 2008, involved major changes to the offering—a revamped pricing model, a new retail channel advanced, and a platform for third-party applications, along with 3G network service—that promised to make it still more competitive. “Apple Inc.” was thriving to a degree that was seemingly far beyond the capacity of “Apple Computer.” Yet critical aspects of the