Apple: Organization Overview

The organization that we have chosen is Apple Inc., and the three leaders we will be analyzing are the previous and current CEOs, Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, and the Chief Financial Officer, Luca Maestri. Apple Inc. is a multinational technology company that designs, develops and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Apple was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, and became incorporated in January of 1977.

Initially, Apple’s sales of computers grew quickly as new versions of the computers and operating systems were released featuring graphical user interfaces that were much more aesthetically pleasing than had been seen before. However, all of this innovation was driving up the price of Apple’s computers, which allowed Microsoft to be able to steal some of Apple’s market share with lower-priced products. Another reason that Microsoft was able to steal Apple’s market share was that Apple computers had very limited software, while Microsoft computers were able to run on more types of software. At this point in time, Microsoft computers can be considered better because Microsoft uses open source software, which means that the source code is shared with the public and anyone can try to improve it. Apple’s software is closed source, meaning that only the company can see or change the source code ever.

This led Apple into a decline until Steve Jobs made the company profitable again. In August of 2011, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO because of health complications and passed away two months later. The board then named Tim Cook as the new CEO. Today, Apple Inc. is the world’s largest information technology company by revenue and the world’s third-largest mobile phone manufacturer. In 2018 Apple’s market cap reached over one trillion dollars, and the company has an extremely high level of brand loyalty.