With over $128 billion in sales in 2011 alone, Apple’s revenue for the year surpasses the gross domestic product of almost 160 of the world’s nations. Among the countries who made less money in 2011 than Apple include New Zealand, Iraq, Slovakia, and the Dominican Republic.
Furthermore, Apple’s 2011 earnings dwarfed those of the 20 top companies on the United States stock market, including juggernauts such as Google, Walmart, Microsoft, and Wells Fargo. Apple owes a large portion of its success to its ubiquitous iPad, which reportedly sold over three million devices in the first 72 hours after the latest version’s release alone. The company projects to sell about 66.4 million iPads in 2012.
Even more important to the company, however, is Apple’s iPhone. Apple owes almost 40 percent of their entire revenue to this product, selling over 72 million devices in 2011 alone. To put into perspective just how big Apple is, Apple has sold over 200 million devices since its operating system was released in 2008, just short of the 213 cars sold in the same time period by every automaker in the world combined.
Source: Best Computer Science Degrees
