A Review on Apple in 2011: Big Momentum, And a Tragic Loss

December 16, 2011 in General by Angelina Roberts

The year 2011 can be termed as a bittersweet year for Apple, Inc. as the company broke out several of the sales record and generated in some of its biggest profits in the history but, lost the co-founder and the then CEO of Apple, who passed away in October this year.

Steve Jobs began the year with a medical leave and giving the charge to the COO, Tim Cook. The late co-founder only made himself public in the launching ceremony of the iPad 2 in March and the iOS 5 and iCloud in the WWDC event of Apple held in the month of June. Jobs parted away from his soul on the 5^th of October which was a day after Tim Cook and Apple unwrapped the latest iPhone model.

Despite the changes, Apple had experienced its best year this year having recorded earnings of $25.9 billion on $108 billion as revenue. The fiscal year was closed recording $81 billion in cash and other securities. In addition to this, Apple also managed to make a hit to one more high point by crossing Exxon Mobil so as to become the a great and a priceless company that is based on market cap which was an honor that the Exxon Mobil took back later this year.

As compared to the year 2009, the product releases of Apple in 2011 can be mainly referred to as refreshes of an existing hardware. The example of iPhone 4Swhich is an upgraded version of iPhone 4 is good which has now been improved to have a speedier processor, an improved camera application along with a new application of voice assistant in the name of Siri. This voice assistant feature turned out to be a definition of the phone.

Though, the press and Apple product users were expecting a lot more different which led too much of an initial disappointment aspect. The unveiling of the Apple iPhone was also associated with the thought that Apple would be offering something very grand in this product after which Apple termed it as the fastest selling product of the company on its initial days on sale putting Apple and its carrier partners in a position to run out of stock.

Several months ahead of the iPhone 4S launch, another event occurred. Apple had lost another prototype iPhone. A major aftermath of this situation was a black eye for the security details of Apple which traced the missing device in San Francisco.

Another smudge mark on the records of Apple 2011 was the discovering of an unencrypted location tracking file which was found to be stored within the iPhone. The researchers of the company took the data which has covered a year’s worth of location entries, and explained that this can be used to track the users’ locations as well as the place where they lived. After a week, the issue was addressed by Apple as a matter of bug and explained that these files was has been made to use to determine as to how fast it can track out people.

Talking about the hardware capabilities, another additional star in the Apple’s product lineup in this year was the release of iPad 2. This iDevices added in a speedier concept from the inside, dual cameras which allow the users to use the FaceTime along with a bit tweaked exterior. The sales of this device was recorded to be considerably strong than its predecessor.

On the other hand, the application of Thunderbolt was also been released in the market which is a high speed data port that was a result of a collaboration between Apple and Intel. Apple, with this release, became the first to bring it in the market giving an update to its MacBook Pro line in the month of February.

Then came July, in which Apple made a major release of the OS X Lion as the latest version of Mac operating systems and was the first app to be offered as a digital download of $30 rather than a disc download. This came possible with the Mac App Store that has been launched as a [part of the software update in January. On the first day of its launching in the markets, Lion became the fastest selling Mac OS X version till date.

There have been several other ups and downs for Apple this year, but, on a whole the majority is of the positive tones but the sad demise of Steve Jobs was a tragic loss to the company.