苹果公司全方位介绍 英文
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Introduction of Apple Inc.
1.
Company profile
Apple Inc. (formerly Apple
Computer, Inc.) is an American multinational
corporation that designs and sells consumer
electronics, computer software, and
personal
computers. The company's best-known hardware
products are the Macintosh
line of computers,
the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad (Apple calls its
computers
Macintoshes or Macs, and it calls
its laptops MacBooks. Their popular line of mobile
music players are called iPods and a smart
phone they have released is called the
iPhone.). Its software includes the OS X and
iOS operating system; the iTunes media
browser; and the iLife and iWork creativity
and production suites. Apple is the
world's
third-largest mobile phone maker after Samsung and
Nokia. Established on
April 1, 1976 in
Cupertino, California, and incorporated January 3,
1977, the
company was named Apple Computer,
Inc. for its first 30 years. The word
personal computers shifted towards
consumer electronics.
As of July 2011, Apple
has 364 retail stores in thirteen countries as
well as the
online Apple Store and iTunes
Store. It is the largest publicly-traded
corporation in
the world by market
capitalization, with an estimated value of US$$626
billion as of
September 2012. The Apple market
cap is larger than that of Google and Microsoft
combined. As of September 24, 2011, the
company had 60,400 permanent full-time
employees and 2,900 temporary full-time
employees worldwide; its worldwide annual
revenue in 2010 totaled $$65 billion, growing
to $$108 billion in 2011.
Fortune magazine
named Apple the most admired company in the United
States
in 2008, and in the world from 2008 to
2012. However, the company has received
widespread criticism for its contractors'
labor practices, and for Apple's own
environmental and business practices. Apple
topped list of the World's Most Powerful
Brands on October 2, 2012.
2. Current
products
2.1 iPad
On January 27, 2010,
Apple introduced their much-anticipated media
tablet, the
iPad running a modified version of
iOS. It offers multi-touch interaction with
multimedia formats including newspapers,
magazines, ebooks, textbooks, photos,
movies,
TV shows videos, music, word processing documents,
spreadsheets, video
games, and most existing
iPhone apps. It also includes a mobile version of
Safari for
web browsing, as well as access to
the App Store, iTunes Library, iBookstore,
contacts, and notepad. Content is
downloadable via Wi-Fi and optional 3G service or
synced through the user's computer. AT&T was
initially the sole US provider of 3G
wireless
access for the iPad.
On March 2, 2011, Apple
introduced an updated iPad model which had a
faster
processor and two cameras on the front
and back respectively. The iPad 2 also added
support for optional 3G service provided by
Verizon in addition to the existing
offering
by AT&T. However, the availability of the iPad 2
has been limited as a result
of the
devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami in
Japan in March 2011.
On March 7, 2012, Apple
introduced the third generation iPad (dubbed
iPadby Apple). The third-generation iPad added
LTE service from AT&T or
Verizon and an
upgraded processor, the A5X. It also added the
Retina display (2048
by 1536 resolution),
originally implemented on the iPhone 4 and iPhone
4S. The
dimensions and form factor remained
relatively unchanged, with the new iPad being a
fraction thicker and heavier than the previous
version, and minor positioning changes.
Since
the tablet launched in 2010, iPad users have
downloaded 3 billion apps,
while the total App
Store downloads is up to over 25 billion
downloads.
2.2 iPod
The current iPod
family, featuring the iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano,
iPod Classic, and
iPod Touch
On October
23, 2001, Apple introduced the iPod digital music
player. It has
evolved to include various
models targeting the wants of different users. The
iPod is
the market leader in portable music
players by a significant margin, with more than
220 million units shipped as of September
2009[update]. Apple has partnered with
Nike to
offer the Nike+iPod Sports Kit enabling runners to
synchronize and monitor
their runs with iTunes
and the Nike+ website. Apple currently sells four
variants of
the iPod.
iPod Shuffle,
ultraportable digital audio player first
introduced in 2005,
currently available in a 2
GB model.
iPod Nano, portable media
player first introduced in 2005, currently
available
in 8 and 16 GB models. The latest
generation has a FM radio, a pedometer,
and a
new multi-touch interface that replaced the
traditional iPod click wheel.
iPod
Classic (previously named iPod from 2001 to 2007),
portable media
player first introduced in
2001, currently available in a 160 GB model.
iPod Touch, portable media player that
runs iOS, first introduced in September
2007
after the iPhone went on sale. Currently available
in 8, 32, and 64 GB
models. The latest
generation features the Apple A4 processor, a
Retina
Display, and dual cameras
on the front and back. The back camera allows for
HD video recording at 720p.
2.3 iPhone
On October 4, 2011, Apple unveiled the iPhone
4S, which was released in the
United States,
Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, France,
Germany, and Japan on
October 14, 2011, with
other countries set to follow later in the year.
This was the
first iPhone model to feature the
Apple A5 chip, as well as the first offered on the
Sprint network (joining AT&T and Verizon
Wireless as the United States carriers
offering iPhone models). On October 19, 2011,
Apple announced an agreement with
C Spire
Wireless to sell the iPhone 4S with that carrier
in the near future, marking the
first time the
iPhone was officially supported on a regional
carrier's network.
Another notable feature of
the iPhone 4S was Siri voice assistant technology,
which Apple had acquired in 2010, as well as
other features, including an updated 8
megapixel camera with new optics. Apple sold 4
million iPhone 4S phones in the first
three
days after its release, which made it not only the
best iPhone launch in Apple's
history, but the
most successful launch of any mobile phone ever.
On Wednesday
September 12, 2012, Apple's sixth
edition iPhone, the iPhone 5 was announced. It
featured a bigger screen, 4G LTE connectivity,
and a new Apple A6 chip among
many other
improvements. Apple sold two million iPhone's in
the first twenty four
hours of pre ordering.
2.4 Apple TV
At the 2007 Macworld
conference, Jobs demonstrated the Apple TV,
(previously
known as the iTV), a set-top video
device intended to bridge the sale of content from
iTunes with high-definition televisions. The
device links up to a user's TV and syncs,
either via Wi-Fi or a wired network, with one
computer's iTunes library and streams
from an
additional four. The Apple TV originally
incorporated a 40 GB hard drive for
storage,
includes outputs for HDMI and component video, and
plays video at a
maximum resolution of 720p.
On May 31, 2007 a 160 GB drive was released
alongside the existing 40 GB model and on
January 15, 2008 a software update was
released, which allowed media to be purchased
directly from the Apple TV. In
September 2009,
Apple discontinued the original 40 GB Apple TV and
now continues
to produce and sell the 160 GB
Apple TV. On September 1, 2010, alongside the
release of the new line of iPod devices for
the year, Apple released a completely
redesigned Apple TV. The new device is 14 the
size, runs quieter, and replaces the
need for
a hard drive with media streaming from any iTunes
library on the network
along with 8 GB of
flash memory to cache media downloaded. Apple with
the Apple
TV has added another device to its
portfolio that runs on its A4 processor along with
the iPad and the iPhone. The memory included
in the device is the half of the iPhone
4 at 256 MB; the same as the iPad,
iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3G, and iPod touch 4G. It
has HDMI out as the only video out source.
Features include access to the iTunes
Store to
rent movies and TV shows (purchasing has been
discontinued), streaming
from internet video
sources, including YouTube and Netflix, and media
streaming
from an iTunes library. Apple also
reduced the price of the device to $$99. A third
generation of the device was introduced at an
Apple event on March 7, 2012, with
new
features such as higher resolution (1080p) and a
new user interface.
3. Marketing
Apple
aficionados wait in line around an Apple retail
store in anticipation of a
new product. This
branch is located on Fifth Avenue in New York
City, with a glass
cube housing a cylindrical
elevator and a spiral staircase that lead into the
subterranean store.
Apple' brand and brand
community. Apple's brand's loyalty is considered
unusual for any product. At one time, Apple
evangelists were actively engaged by the
company, but this was after the phenomenon was
already firmly established. Apple
evangelist
Guy Kawasaki has called the brand fanaticism
―something that was
stumbled upon‖. Apple has,
however, supported the continuing existence of a
network
of Mac User Groups in most major and
many minor centers of population where Mac
computers are available.
Mac users would
meet at the European Apple Expo and the San
Francisco
Macworld Conference & Expo trade
shows where Apple traditionally introduced new
products each year to the industry and public
until Apple pulled out of both events.
While
the conferences continue, Apple does not have
official representation there.
Mac developers,
in turn, continue to gather at the annual Apple
Worldwide
Developers Conference.
Apple
Store openings can draw crowds of thousands, with
some waiting in line
as much as a day before
the opening or flying in from other countries for
the event.
The New York City Fifth Avenue
―Cube‖ store had a line as long as half a mile; a
few
Mac fans took the opportunity of the
setting to propose marriage. The Ginza opening
in Tokyo was estimated in the thousands with a
line exceeding eight city blocks.
John
Sculley told The Guardian newspaper in 1997:
―People talk about
technology, but Apple was a
marketing company. It was the marketing company of
the decade.‖
Research in 2002 by
NetRatings indicates that the average Apple
consumer was
usually more affluent and better
educated than other PC company consumers. The
research indicated that this correlation could
stem from the fact that on average Apple
Inc.
products are more expensive than other PC
products.
3.1 Name
According to
Steve Jobs, Apple was so named because Jobs was
coming back
from an apple farm, and he was on
a fruitarian diet. He thought the name was ―fun,
spirited and not intimidating‖.
3.2 Logos
The original logo with Isaac Newton under
an apple tree
The rainbow ―bitten‖ logo,
used from late 1976 to 1998
The
monochrome logo, used since 1998
Apple's first
logo, designed by Ron Wayne, depicts Sir Isaac
Newton sitting
under an apple tree.
Almost
immediately, though, this was replaced by Rob
Janoff's ―rainbow Apple‖,
the now-familiar
rainbow-colored silhouette of an apple with a bite
taken out of it.
Janoff presented Jobs with
several different monochromatic themes for the
―bitten‖
logo, and Jobs immediately took a
liking to it. While Jobs liked the logo, he
insisted it
be in color to humanize the
company. The Apple logo was designed with a bite
so that
it would not be recognized as another
fruit. The colored stripes were conceived to
make the logo more accessible, and to
represent the fact the Apple II could generate
graphics in color.
This logo is often
erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan
Turing, with the
bite mark a reference to his
method of suicide. Both the designer of the logo
and the
company deny that there is any homage
to Turing in the design of the logo.
In 1998,
with the roll-out of the new iMac, Apple
discontinued the rainbow
theme and began to
use monochromatic themes, nearly identical in
shape to its
previous rainbow incarnation, on
various products, packaging and advertising. An
Aqua-themed version of the monochrome logo was
used from 2001–2003, and a
Glass-themed
version has been used since 2003.
Steve Jobs
and Steve Wozniak were Beatles fans, but Apple
Inc. had trademark
issues with Apple Corps
Ltd., a multimedia company started by The Beatles
in 1967,
involving their name and logo. This
resulted in a series of lawsuits and tension
between the two companies. These issues ended
with settling of their most recent
lawsuit in
2007.
3.3 Slogans
Apple's first slogan,
―Byte into an Apple‖, was coined in the late
1970s. From
1997–2002, Apple used the slogan
―Think Different‖ in advertising campaigns.
Although the slogan has been retired, it is
still closely associated with Apple. Apple
also has slogans for specific product lines —
for example, ―iThink, therefore iMac‖
was used
in 1998 to promote the iMac, and ―Say hello to
iPhone‖ has been used in
iPhone
advertisements. ―Hello‖ was also used to introduce
the original Macintosh,
Newton, iMac (―hello
(again)‖), and iPod.
3.4 Advertising
Since the introduction of the Macintosh in
1984 with the 1984 Super Bowl
commercial to
the more modern 'Get a Mac' adverts, Apple has
been recognized in the
past for its efforts
towards effective advertising and marketing for
its products, though
its advertising has been
criticized for the claims of some more recent
campaigns,
particularly 2005 Power Mac ads and
iPhone ads in Britain.
Apple's product
commercials gained fame for launching musicians
into stardom
as a result of their eye-popping
graphics and catchy tunes. First, the company
popularized Canadian singer Feist's ―1234‖
song in its ad campaign. Later, Apple
used the
song ―New Soul― by French-Israeli singer-
songwriter Yael Naïm to promote
the MacBook
debut single shot to the top of the charts and
sold hundreds of
thousands of copies in a span
of weeks.
4. Corporate affairs
During the Mac's early history Apple
generally refused to adopt prevailing
industry
standards for hardware, instead creating their
own. This trend was largely
reversed in the
late 1990s beginning with Apple's adoption of the
PCI bus in the
75 Power Macs. Apple has since
adopted USB, AGP,
HyperTransport,Wi-Fi, and
other industry standards in its computers and was
in some
cases a leader in the adoption of
standards such as USB. FireWire is an
Apple-
originated standard that has seen widespread
industry adoption after it was
standardized as
IEEE 1394.
Ever since the first Apple Store
opened, Apple has sold third party accessories.
For instance, at one point Nikon and Canon
digital cameras were sold inside the store.
Adobe, one of Apple's oldest software
partners, also sells its Mac-compatible software,
as does Microsoft, who sells Microsoft Office
for the Mac. Books from John Wiley &
Sons, who
publishes the For Dummies series of instructional
books, are a notable
exception, however. The
publisher's line of books were banned from Apple
Stores in
2005 because Steve Jobs disagreed
with their decision to publish an unauthorized
Jobs
biography, the launch of the iBookstore,
Apple stopped selling physical
books, both
online and at the Apple Retail Stores.
4.1
Headquarters
Apple Inc.'s world corporate
headquarters are located in the middle of Silicon
Valley, at 1–6 Infinite Loop, Cupertino,
California. This Apple campus has six
buildings that total 850,000 square feet
(79,000 m2) and was built in 1993 by Sobrato
Development Cos.
Apple created
subsidiaries in low-tax places such as Ireland,
the Netherlands,
Luxembourg and the British
Virgin Islands to cut the taxes it pays around the
world.
According to the New York Times, Apple
was among the first tech companies to
designate overseas salespeople in high-tax
countries in a manner that allowed the
company
to sell on behalf of low-tax subsidiaries on other
continents, sidestepping
income taxes. Apple
was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as
the ―Double
Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,‖
which reduces taxes by routing profits through
Irish
subsidiaries and the Netherlands and
then to the Caribbean.
In 2006, Apple
announced its intention to build a second campus
on 50 acres
(200,000 m2) assembled from
various contiguous plots (east of N Wolfe Road
between Pruneridge Avenue and Vallco Parkway).
Later acquisitions increased this to
175
acres. The new campus, also in Cupertino, will be
about 1 mile (1.6 km) east of
the current
campus. The new campus building will be designed
by Norman Foster.
On June 7, 2011, Steve Jobs
gave a presentation to Cupertino City Council,
detailing the architectural design of the new
building and its environs. The new
campus is
planned to house up to 13,000 employees in one
central four-storied
circular building (with a
café for 3,000 sitting people integrated)
surrounded by
extensive landscape (with
parking mainly underground and the rest
centralized in a
parking structure). There
will be additional buildings such as an
auditorium, R&D
facilities, a fitness center
and a dedicated generating plant as primary source
of
electricity (powered by natural gas and
other more environmentally sound means).
4.2
Corporate culture
Apple was one of several
highly successful companies founded in the 1970s
that
bucked the traditional notions of what a
corporate culture should look like in
organizational hierarchy (flat versus tall,
casual versus formal attire, etc.). Other
highly successful firms with similar cultural
aspects from the same period include
Southwest
Airlines and Microsoft. Originally, the company
stood in opposition to
staid competitors like
IBM by default, thanks to the influence of its
founders; Steve
Jobs often walked around the
office barefoot even after Apple was a Fortune 500
company. By the time of the ―1984‖ TV ad, this
trait had become a key way the
company
attempted to differentiate itself from its
competitors.
As the company has grown and
been led by a series of chief executives, each
with his own idea of what Apple should be,
some of its original character has
arguably
been lost, but Apple still has a reputation for
fostering individuality and
excellence that
reliably draws talented people into its employ,
especially after Jobs'
return. To recognize
the best of its employees, Apple created the Apple
Fellows
program, awarding individuals who made
extraordinary technical or leadership
contributions to personal computing while at
the company. The Apple Fellowship has
so far
been awarded to a few individuals including Bill
Atkinson, Steve Capps, Rod
Holt, Alan Kay, Guy
Kawasaki, Al Alcorn, Don Norman, Rich Page, and
Steve
Wozniak.
Numerous employees of
Apple have cited that projects without Jobs'
involvement often take longer than projects
with his involvement. Another presents
the
image of Jobs ―wandering the hall with a flame
thrower in hand, asking random
people 'do you
work on MobileMe?'‖.
At Apple, employees are
specialists who are not exposed to functions
outside
their area of expertise. Jobs saw this
as a means of having best-in-class employees in
every role. For instance, Ron Johnson who was
Senior Vice President of Retail
Operations
until November 1, 2011, was responsible for site
selection, in-store service,
and store layout,
yet he had no control of the inventory in his
stores (which is done
company wide by then-COO
and now CEO Tim Cook who has a background in
supply-chain management). This is the opposite
of General Electric's corporate
culture which
has created well-rounded managers.
Under the
leadership of Tim Cook who joined the company in
1998 and
ascended to his present position as
CEO, Apple has developed an extremely efficient
and effective supply chain which has been
ranked as the world's best for the four
years 2007–2010. The company's
manufacturing, procurement and logistics enables
it
to execute massive product launches without
having to maintain large, profit-sapping
inventories; Apple's profit margins have been
40 percent compared with 10–20
percent for
most other hardware companies in 2011. Cook's
catchphrase to describe
his focus on the
company's operational edge is ―Nobody wants to buy
sour milk‖. The
company previously advertised
its products as being made in America up to the
late
1990s, however as a result of outsourcing
initiatives in the 2000s almost all of its
manufacturing is now done abroad. According to
a report by the New York Times,
Apple insiders
―believe the vast scale of overseas factories as
well as the flexibility,
diligence and
industrial skills of foreign workers have so
outpaced their American
counterparts that
―Made in the U.S.A.‖ is no longer a viable option
for most Apple
products‖.
4.3 Finance
In its fiscal year ending in September 2011,
Apple Inc. hit new heights
financially with
$$108 billion in revenues (increased significantly
from $$65 billion in
2010) and nearly $$82
billion in cash reserves. Apple achieved these
results while
losing market share in certain
product categories.
On March 19, 2012, Apple
announced plans for a $$2.65 per share dividend
beginning in fourth quarter of 2012, per
approval by their board of directors.
On
August 20, 2012 Apple closed at a record share
price of $$665.15. With
936,596,000 outstanding
shares (as of June 30, 2012), it had a market
capitalization of
$$622.98 billion. This is the
highest nominal market capitalization ever reached
by a
publicly traded company and surpasses a
record set by Microsoft in 1999.