Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley, and known for consumer electronics, software and online services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Company by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, the company was incorporated by Jobs and Wozniak as Apple Computer, Inc. the following year. Its current name was adopted in 2007 as the company expanded its focus from computers to consumer electronics. Apple is one of the Big Tech companies.
The company was founded to market Wozniak's Apple I computer. Its successor, the Apple II, became one of the first successful mass-produced personal microcomputers. Apple introduced the Lisa in 1983 and the Macintosh in 1984, popularizing graphical user interfaces navigated by a mouse. By 1985, internal conflicts led to Jobs leaving the company to form NeXT and Wozniak stepping back from active employment. During the 1990s, Apple lost considerable market share to lower-priced Wintel computers, Intel-powered PC clones running Windows. By 1997, Apple was reporting major losses and struggling to deliver a modernized operating system, leading it to acquire NeXT, which brought Jobs back to the company. Under his leadership, Apple returned to profitability through the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, the iTunes Store, the Apple Store retail chain, and the "Think different" advertising campaign. Jobs resigned in 2011 for health reasons and died later that year.
Apple's product lineup includes portable and home hardware like the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and AirPods; several in-house operating systems such as iOS, iPadOS, and macOS; and various software and services including Apple Pay and iCloud, as well as multimedia streaming services like Apple Music and Apple TV. Since 2011, Apple has for the most part been the world's largest company by market capitalization, and, as of 2024, is the largest manufacturing company by revenue, the fourth-largest PC vendor, the largest vendor of tablet computers, and the largest vendor of mobile phones. Apple became the first publicly traded US company to be valued at over $1 trillion in 2018, and, as of October 2025, is valued at just over $4 trillion.
Apple has received criticism regarding its contractors' labor conditions, its relationship with trade unions, its environmental practices, and its corporate ethics, including anti-competitive tactics, materials sourcing, and its acquisitions of smaller businesses. Nevertheless, the company has a large following and enjoys a high level of customer loyalty. Apple has consistently been ranked as one of the world's most valuable brands since the late 2000s.
1976–1984: Founding and incorporation
Apple Computer Company was founded as a partnership on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. The company's first product was the Apple I, designed by Wozniak and hand-built. To finance production, Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator. Although neither received the full selling price, together they raised $1,300 (equivalent to $7,400 in 2025).
Wozniak demonstrated the first Apple I prototype at the Homebrew Computer Club in July 1976, where local computer retailer Byte Shop placed an order for 50 fully assembled computers. Unlike most contemporary hobbyist computers, which were sold as kits requiring assembly, the Apple I came as a pre-assembled motherboard with a CPU, RAM, and built-in video circuitry, allowing it to connect directly to a household television instead of requiring a costly computer terminal. Users still had to provide a case, power supply, and keyboard. It was introduced at a price of $666.66 (equivalent to $3,770 in 2025).
Apple Computer, Inc. was incorporated in Cupertino, California, on January 3, 1977, without Wayne, who had left and sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800 (equivalent to $4,530 in 2025) twelve days after its founding. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided business expertise and invested $250,000 (equivalent to $1,328,000 in 2025) during the company's incorporation. During its first five years, revenue grew rapidly, doubling approximately every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980, annual sales increased from $775,000 to 118 million, an average annual growth rate of 533%.
The Apple II, also designed by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16, 1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. Alongside the Commodore PET 2001 and the TRS-80, it formed the "1977 Trinity" of influential personal computers that established the home computer market. Unlike the Apple I, the Apple II was mass-produced as a complete personal computer housed in a plastic case with a built-in keyboard, color graphics, and an open architecture. Apple introduced the Disk II 5+1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive in 1978, replacing cassette tape storage with faster and more reliable removable disks.
The Apple II became Apple's first major commercial success following the 1979 release of VisiCalc, the first widely adopted spreadsheet program and one of the earliest personal computer "killer applications". Initially available exclusively for the Apple II, VisiCalc transformed the computer into a popular business tool and helped establish Apple in the growing personal computer industry.
On December 12, 1980, Apple became a public company through an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq. The company sold 4.6 million shares at $22 each, raising more than $100 million, the largest IPO since Ford Motor Company's 1956 offering. By the end of the first day of trading, Apple's market capitalization reached $1.778 billion and more than 300 employees and investors became millionaires.
In November and December 1979, Apple employees, including Jobs and Jef Raskin, visited Xerox PARC twice as part of a technology exchange negotiated by Jobs, in which Xerox was granted the right to purchase $1 million of Apple's pre-IPO stock. There they observed the experimental Xerox Alto, which featured a graphical user interface (GUI) navigated with a mouse, that inspired Jobs to incorporate a GUI into Apple's future products. Apple's first GUI-based computer, the Apple Lisa, was introduced in 1983. Although the Lisa was pioneering as a mass-marketed GUI computer, its high price and limited software library resulted in poor sales.
Jobs was removed from the Lisa project during its early development and joined the Macintosh division in 1981. The Macintosh had originally been conceived by Raskin as a low-cost, portable computer, with early contributions from Wozniak. After Wozniak stepped back following a plane crash, Jobs took over the project, transforming the Macintosh into a mouse-driven computer with a GUI similar to the Lisa. Wozniak later speculated that Jobs' rivalry with the Lisa project was the driving force behind this shift in direction. Jobs was also hostile toward the Apple II division, which at the time generated most of the company's revenue.
1984–1991: Success with Macintosh
In 1984, Apple launched the original Macintosh on January 24, 1984, introducing it to the public with "1984", a US$1.5-million television advertisement directed by Ridley Scott that aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. This was hailed as a watershed event for Apple's success and was called a "masterpiece" by CNN and one of "the greatest TV commercials of all time" by TV Guide. Although initial Macintosh sales were strong, they declined rapidly after the first few months as reviewers criticized its limited 128 KB of RAM, small software library, and relatively high price of $2,495 (equivalent to $7,700 in 2025).
Slow Macintosh sales led to a power struggle between Jobs and chief executive officer John Sculley, whom Jobs had recruited from PepsiCo in 1983. The board of directors instructed Sculley to limit Jobs' ability to launch further expensive forays into untested products. Rather than accept Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to remove him as chief executive. Jean-Louis Gassée informed Sculley of Jobs' efforts to organize a boardroom coup, prompting an emergency meeting in which Apple's executive staff sided with Sculley. In May 1985, the board stripped Jobs of all operational duties. Jobs resigned from Apple in September 1985 and founded competitor NeXT, taking several Apple employees with him.