Apple 2009 in review – Ups and downs
The year 2009 has been a year of positive and negatives for Apple, but at the end of it all, the Cupertino giant has finished well above where it started the year in all of the categories that matter.
The year started with rumors about the health of Steve Jobs, which unraveled into a gigantic hullabaloo about the ethics (or lack of ethics) regarding the reporting (or lack of reporting) on the health of a corporate CEO of Jobs’ magnitude. There were charges, further disclosures, and finally a six-month medical leave of absence for Mr. Jobs, who used that time for therapy and a liver transplant, according to a V3 story. At the end of the appointed half-year, Jobs was back in harness in Cupertino, apparently none the worse for wear.
On the financial front, Apple headed into a hazardous financial year along with everyone else as a great global recession rolled over the planet, resulting in job losses and corporate bankruptcies at a rate rarely seen before. Almost everyone in the electronics industry had a down or flat year. But not Apple. Riding the wave of the iPhone, the iPod, and the iMac, Apple posted banner numbers and is closing the calendar year with a record high stock price, seemingly unbothered by the bogeyman of recession. If ever a company appeared to be bulletproof, it was Apple in 2009.
It may be a matter of having the right products at the right time, or of having the sort of brand that people see as value over volume, or having the right CEO, or all of those and more. Regardless of the reasons, Apple has pulled off a year that should rank among the best corporate performances in history. With the deck stacked against them, they used lemons to make perfect lemonade for all of us to enjoy, whether we bought their products or their stock.
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