Apple Climbs to #35 in Fortune 500 Rankings

[rockyroad55]

I'm still pissed Steve Jobs did not make it into Time 100.

 

[AppleScruff1]

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships.
We will add your biological and ethnolocial distinctiveness to our own.
Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

The funny thing is that I remember a time when people used this quote to sneer at Microsoft. And there was a time when Apple was the underdog and created the 1984 commercial. Now with that tight iTunes/iOS control freak software, I doubt that they would make such a commercial again.

Apple has become exactly what they were originally against. They are the establishment now, and the flock bought it hook, line and sinker.

 

[SixPenceRicher]

I'm not. I'm just saying that:

1) "Quality" is a subjective thing

AND

2) Size does not mean quality - Proof by looking at the Top 10 list.

So for the fanboys that are going to EQUATE increasing size with quality, you can't. That doesn't mean that Apple does or does not make quality products relative to the market. It just means that size has little to do with that. Size is about either about base need or conversely about marketing, resources, and time.

And "Profitability" is about how high a price a company can set and get away with it because of supply being greater than demand or because they have sufficiently created a fanatical fanboy base that will accept a higher than rest of the market price for similar items. So if Apple is more profitable as a percent of revenues compared to similar companies, then they are charging us too much but are able to get away with it. Just like the oil companies and banks on the list.

Tony

Quite possibly the most ridiculous post I've read in the past year.

First of all, quality is ABSOLUTELY measurable and not subjective. TQM, Lean and Six Sigma, and numerous other scientific methodologies exist to measure product quality. At the lowest level, quality can be measured in return rates; and from what I've researched, Apple's return rates are exceptionally low (and customer satisfaction rates, exceptionally high). Apple = Quality.

Secondly, profitability has nothing to do with "setting a price and getting away with it". It DOES have everything to do with lowering manufacturing costs due to volume, supply chain management, quality of design and return rate, and management of margins. The reason that Apple is so successful has nothing to do with "getting away with something"... It does have everything to do with excellent management of a business that builds highly desirable products for its customer base.

Dude, don't venture into areas where you don't belong.

 

[Atlantico]

The Ipad is not Apple's secret to sucess. Their secret is being able to create markets for their products where no market previousely existed. That being said, the Ipad is a case in point.

Well that secret sure didn't work for the Apple TV. Or the Macintosh.

The Mac was trying to create the market for GUI PCs, but it was swept from under Apple by Microsoft, even though Apple had a much much better product.

The Apple TV... yeah that isn't working. At all.

But the iPods dominated their market of portable mp3 players and from them comes the recognition and respect Apple has today in portable devices. The iOS devices are a huge success, but for every success story at Apple there are many more flops and near hits.

The last similar success for Apple was the Apple II, which also became wildly popular in its market (it was just a very small market for PCs in 1977, unfortunately), but what is the secret to Apple's success?

I don't know, but I suspect a lot of hard work and persistence is involved.

 

[thermodynamic]

Apple has become exactly what they were originally against. They are the establishment now, and the flock bought it hook, line and sinker.

"King of the hill" sums up the situation.

Pity we're all older than... 9... these days, but who said humanity actually evolved...

 

[AppleScruff1]

"King of the hill" sums up the situation.

Pity we're all older than... 9... these days, but who said humanity actually evolved...

I guess this happens most of the time when a small company grows in leaps and bounds and eventually equals and overtakes the competition. I actually thought for a while that Jobs and Apple would stick with their original mantra; if anyone could have pulled it off, it was Jobs.

 

[Bluestrike2]

The raw numbers mean very little in terms of "profitability." Until put into context with a proper profitability ratio, it's not possible to put together a ranking such as this. Take, for instance, ExxonMobil: though decried for "obscene" profits, their profit margin was 9.53% (which is, admittedly, up from the past). They have large profits in raw dollars, but unless you consider the large expenditures used to get them to that point, all the crying about it you read in the media and blogosphere is only one side of an admittedly large coin.

Compare this, then, to Apple's profit margin of ~22.36%. Apple's overall profit is less than that of ExxonMobile, yet they are a significantly more profitable company.

In short, this list is useless.

 

[TenderBranson]

where do you think Apple will be in 10 years in terms of brand management?

 

[ChazUK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Two great companies at the top IMO. What's not to like?