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The company story

Apple Inc.

XNAS: AAPL · USD · split-adjusted

Ninety days from bankruptcy to the most profitable company in history.

Apple has been left for dead more than once. Its story is less about products than about who was allowed to decide which products got made.

$0.1523first monthly close, Dec 1980 $329.40latest, Sep 29, 2026 +216121.18%since Dec 1980 $1,000 → $2,162,211.80first close to now
  1. 1The first actDec 1980 – Dec 1996+22.34%
  2. 2The returnJan 1997 – Dec 2000+78.95%
  3. 3Music, then everythingJan 2001 – Dec 2007+1731.95%
  4. 4The iPhone economyJan 2008 – Dec 2015+444.34%
  5. 5Services and the buybackJan 2016 – Sep 2026+1253.61%

A great computer company slowly run out of ideas

The Macintosh made Apple famous, then the company spent a decade selling expensive machines into a market commoditising underneath it. After Steve Jobs was forced out in 1985, market share, then cash, then the story went.

  1. IPO at $22 a shareMarket

    The largest technology offering since Ford, and it makes roughly three hundred people at the company millionaires on paper.

    Closed $0.1523 that month

  2. Jobs is forced outCrisis

    After a failed boardroom move against John Sculley, the founder resigns and starts NeXT. Apple keeps selling Macintoshes into a market Microsoft is about to take.

    Closed $0.07031 that month

  3. Apple buys NeXT — and its founderDeal

    $429M for an operating system Apple needs and an executive it does not yet know it is hiring. Within eight months Jobs is running the company.

    Closed $0.1864 that month

Kill the products, keep the company

Jobs came back, cut the line to four machines, took $150M from Microsoft, and shipped an all-in-one computer that looked like nothing else on a desk.

  1. $150M from Microsoft, and a truceDeal

    Announced to boos at Macworld. It buys time, and it ends the lawsuit that was consuming both companies.

    Closed $0.1942 that month

  2. iMacProduct

    Four products replace a catalogue of dozens. Apple is profitable again within a year.

    Closed $0.2785 that month

A computer company that happened to sell 100 million music players

The iPod and the iTunes Store taught Apple retail, media negotiation, and mass-market hardware — the exact skills the next product required.

  1. iPod, and the first Apple StoresProduct

    A thousand songs in your pocket, sold in shops Apple controls end to end. Both decisions were widely described as mistakes at the time.

    Closed $0.3136 that month

  2. iPhoneProduct

    An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. Steve Ballmer laughs at the $499 price; within five years it is the most profitable product on earth.

    Closed $3.06 that month

The most successful product in the history of business

Through a financial crisis, a founder’s death, and a leadership change, one product line grew into the largest profit pool in technology and dragged an app economy behind it.

  1. The crisis drawdownCrisis

    Shares fall roughly 57% in a year even as iPhone volumes climb, a reminder that the tape and the business run on different clocks.

    Closed $3.84 that month

  2. Jobs resigns; Cook takes overLeadership

    He dies six weeks later. The open question — whether Apple can operate without him — is the dominant investment debate for the next three years.

    Closed $13.74 that month

  3. The buyback era beginsMarket

    With cash past $140B and activists circling, Apple commits to the largest capital return programme ever attempted, and keeps expanding it.

    Closed $15.81 that month

Growth from the installed base rather than the next device

Unit growth slowed and the story became recurring revenue, an enormous capital return programme, and silicon Apple designs itself.

  1. The first $1T companyMarket

    Reached on the strength of services revenue and share count reduction as much as unit growth.

    Closed $56.91 that month

  2. $2T, and a four-for-one splitMarket

    Pandemic demand for personal computing plus the first Apple-designed Mac silicon later that year.

    Closed $129.04 that month

  3. $3TMarket

    Briefly, intraday, before a year in which nearly every large technology company gives value back.

    Closed $174.78 that month

  4. Apple IntelligenceProduct

    The AI question arrives late and on Apple’s usual terms: on-device where possible, partnered where not.

    Closed $210.62 that month

The whole arc

+216121.18% in 46 years

One chart, Dec 31, 1980 – Sep 29, 2026. Open it, drag a range, add your own markers — or take this card with you.