Anyone who regularly follows my Foolish articles will see that there are two things I'm rather fond of: Apple (NAS: AAPL) and charts.
I've compiled more than 10 years of operating data on the Mac maker, starting with the first quarter of fiscal 2002, the fiscal quarter when the iPod was launched -- and I'm happy to share my findings with you, my Foolish reader. Let's take an illustrative trip down memory lane and see the inner workings of Apple's meteoric rise to become the largest company in the world over the past decade.
Back to the Mac
Macs are no longer the show stealer, but they were once the core of Apple's business, so they're as good a place to start as any.
Sources: SEC filings, earnings press releases, Apple investor relations.
Sources: SEC filings, earnings press releases, Apple investor relations.
You can see here that as Apple's Mac business grows in terms of unit sales and revenue, that growth is being driven more by laptops than by traditional desktops. There's no doubt that Macs have exhibited healthy growth overall over the past decade, but as you'll soon see, it's nothing compared with the main course of iDevices.
The main event
I'll present these a little differently, starting with the unit-sales data for the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. If you thought the iPod was a massive success -- and it was -- you'll see just how much more promising Apple's newest product families are.
Sources: SEC filings, earnings press releases, Apple investor relations.
Sources: SEC filings, earnings press releases, Apple investor relations.
This chart is interesting in a couple ways. It shows that the obvious iPod cannibalization set in shortly after the iPhone's introduction as sales pick up.
You can also see how long it took for iPod adoption to really accelerate; it took three years to break the 5 million unit quarterly-sales threshold. It took the iPhone only six quarters to break the same level, the iPad just three. Indeed, this is what happens when I scoot each of those lines over to the same starting point.
Sources: SEC filings, earnings press releases, Apple investor relations.
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