Despite increased competition from Microsoft, a significant change in technology platform, and a stock options scandal, Apple Computer has been named as one of 2006’s highest-growth technology companies by Business Week.

2006: a good year for Apple

Apple has had some dark years when many pundits questioned whether Apple and its alternative computing platform, the Macintosh, even had a future. 2006 is the year when these doubts were cast aside for good.

Apple Computer was recently ranked second on Business Week’s  Tech Hot Growth 50, which lists the top 50 high-growth technology companies as measured by sales growth, total return to shareholders, return on equity, and overall sales. 

Business Week wrote: “[Apple's] breakthrough innovation in digital music has made it an international icon and propelled sales up 39% over the past 12 months, to $19.3 billion. The company sold 39 million Pods in the 2006 fiscal year, as well as 5 million Macintosh computers.”

Wired’s Leander Kahney has gone as far as saying that 2006 was Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ best year ever.

“Jobs is too much of a liberal iconoclast to be taken seriously by the corporate world, but 2006 showed he’s up there with the greats,” wrote Kahney.

One of Apple’s big achievements of 2006 included moving its Macintosh computers from PowerPC processors to Intel processors. A good move from a  technological perspective, since the PowerPC line of processors were lagging behind Intel in the speed stakes. However, it could have been a public relations disaster since many Mac users have in the past viewed Intel as the enemy.

Despite Microsoft launching its own media player, the Zune, Apple’s iPod remains the best-selling media player. Somehow Apple has cornered the market when it comes to style, and no matter how much money Microsoft spends on research and development, and design, it just hasn’t been able to position Zune as “cool”. Such is its popularity, that there are even reports of iPod users owning two or more units. One iPod is just not enough, it seems.

And of course one of Apple’s biggest “successes” of 2006 was a product that it hasn’t even announced yet - the iPhone (though there’s some question as to whether it will be able to use the name iPhone). It’s expected that the iPhone, an iPod/cell phone hybrid), will finally be launched in early 2007. Already it has generated so much hype and excitement – without much effort by Apple – that it’s hard to see that it will be anything but an outstanding success. 

The only real downer for Apple in 2006 has been the stock option scandal, which resulted in the chief financial officer Fred Anderson resigning from Apple’s Board. Questions have been raised about how much Jobs knew, but so far he’s managed avoid the heat.   

In a world where Microsoft dominates desktop operating systems, and so many other markets, it’s good to see that a company like Apple can compete effectively by being innovative and successfully differentiating its products on something as nebulous as style.

I suspect that 2007 will be another good year for Apple. 

Related:

Entry was posted on Wednesday, December 27th, 2006 at 3:37 am under Apple, Microsoft, Technology.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.
Stumble It!