Imagine a company generating an extra $1.5bn in sales every week compared with what it earned only a year ago – and nearly all of that coming from products that it had dreamt up from scratch within the last half decade. These were things the world didn’t know until recently that it needed.
That would be like General Motors conjuring up its entire North American sales – all the Chevrolets, Cadillacs, Buicks and GMC trucks – from nothing, in the space of just a year.
That gives some idea of the enormity of Apple’s recent success on the back of the iPhone and iPad. Without those inventions it would be a struggling computer maker trying to fill the gap left by shrinking iPod sales. Instead, it is a world-beater with a share price that surged past $500 this week and didn’t stop to catch breath. It was only with the launch of the iPad that Apple’s market value topped Microsoft’s, a company that once seemed unassailable: it is now worth nearly twice as much.