Apple celebrates its 50th birthday today. What started as a garage project by three men has become one of the most valuable companies in the world.
• Apple was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne
• According to Apple, the ecosystem now includes over 2.5 billion active devices worldwide
• CEO Tim Cook promised an anniversary celebration at a staff meeting in February 2026
From a garage to a billion dollar company
Apple was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in a garage in Los Altos, California. Wayne sold his 10 percent stake just twelve days later for $800, a decision now considered one of the costliest miscalculations in economic history. Half a century later, Apple’s market value is around the $4 trillion mark.
The path there was anything but straight. At the end of the 1990s, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy before the return of Steve Jobs and a series of groundbreaking products turned things around. From the iPod in 2001 to the iPhone in 2007 to the iPad in 2010, Apple not only created new product categories but fundamentally changed how billions of people communicate, work and consume media. As Apple announced in its quarterly report dated January 29, 2026, the ecosystem now includes over 2.5 billion active devices worldwide.
Tim Cook and looking back
CEO Tim Cook, who has led the company since August 2011 as Steve Jobs’ successor, appeared unusually thoughtful in the run-up to the anniversary. As Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman reported on February 8, 2026, Cook said at an internal staff meeting in early February 2026: He had been unusually thoughtful lately as they had been working on how to mark this moment. They went through old archives and photographs, looked at the products, the services and the people. When you really stop and think about the last 50 years, your heart sings. Cook expressly promised a celebration.
Apple is not typically a company that looks back, Cook acknowledged, according to Gurman. The employees who worked on the anniversary planning would have had to build up new muscle because at Apple everything usually revolves around the question of what comes next. However, there is a precedent: for the Mac’s 30th birthday in 2014, Apple had already created a public campaign with interviews from company management and a special website. On its 40th anniversary in 2016, Apple announced that it had reached one billion active devices for the first time.
An anniversary year with record numbers
Apple is entering its anniversary year with impressive business figures. As can be seen from the official quarterly report published by Apple on January 29, 2026, the group achieved record sales of 143.8 billion US dollars in the first fiscal quarter of 2026 (ending December 27, 2025), an increase of 16 percent compared to the previous year. The iPhone contributed the largest share at $85.3 billion, up 23 percent year-over-year. Earnings per share rose 19 percent to $2.84. CEO Tim Cook called demand for the iPhone simply “overwhelming” in the same day’s conference call with analysts.
At the same time, Cook also hinted at the future of the company’s management at the internal meeting. Cook said he thinks a lot about who will be making the decisions in five or ten years. Half a century after it was founded in a Californian garage, Apple is not only facing a symbolic milestone, but also the question of who will lead the company into the next decades.
Dominik Maier, editorial team at finanzen.net
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