Company profile
SEC EDGAR ↗- Industry
- Electronic Computers
- Listed
- Nasdaq: AAPL
- Incorporated
- CA
- Headquarters
- Cupertino, CA
- Fiscal year end
- Sep 26
Financials
FY2025- Revenue
- $416.2B
- Net income
- $112.0B
- Total assets
- $359.2B
Latest full fiscal year from SEC filings (10-K) — SEC EDGAR ↗. Stratrix is a strategy publication, not a real-time financial data service.
The analyses
Cannibalization Choice · Growth & Portfolio
Apple Killed Its Own Cash Cow on Purpose: The iPod, the iPhone, and the Courage to Cannibalize
By 2006, the iPod was a juggernaut - around 40% of Apple's revenue. So Apple built a product designed to destroy it. The decision looked reckless and was actually the most disciplined move in the company's history, governed by a single rule: if you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will.
7 min
The Distribution Rebellion · Boundaries of the Firm
Everyone Said the Apple Store Would Fail. It Became the Most Productive Retail on Earth.
In 2001, the experts agreed: a computer company opening its own glass-walled stores in expensive malls was a vanity project destined to fail. Apple did it anyway - because the real goal was never retail. It was taking back control of how its products met the world.
8 min
The Fork · Decision Forks
In 2020 Apple Walked Away From Intel to Design the Mac's Brain Itself
In 2020 Apple walked away from Intel after fifteen years and began designing the Mac's brain itself. The world called it a speed story - the M1 was fast. That missed the point. Apple wasn't buying performance; it was buying the right to stop letting the most important part of its computer be designed by someone else.
7 min
The Pricing Ladder · Business Model
Apple Cut the First iPhone by $200 in Two Months — It Competes on Price Out of View
The myth says Apple never cuts prices. But it slashed the original iPhone $200 in two months, shipped a $399 SE on a four-year-old chassis, and props the whole ladder up with retail price floors. Apple competes on price - selectively, and out of view.
8 min
The Moat Anatomy · Moat & Competition
Each Apple Device Makes the Next Easier to Buy — and a $109B Services Line Collects
Apple's lock-in isn't a contract or a chip. It's behavioural: each new Apple device makes the next one easier to buy and the whole stack harder to abandon. The monetiser is a $109B Services business at ~74-76% gross margin.
8 min
The Walled Garden · Moat & Competition
Apple's Strongest Lock-In Is Free. It's the Color of a Text Bubble.
Everyone fixates on Apple's App Store 'tax.' But the most powerful cage Apple ever built costs it nothing to enforce: in 2013 its own executives killed iMessage for Android on the explicit logic that a green bubble keeps families buying iPhones.
8 min
The Money Machine · Business Model
Apple Services: A 74%-Margin Business That Grows Only When Hardware Sells
Wall Street treats Apple Services as the great escape from iPhone dependence. It's the opposite: a 74%-margin business that grows only when Apple sells more hardware. Services hit $109.2B in FY2025 - and every dollar of it sits on top of devices already in pockets.
7 min
The Price Ladder · Business Model
The iPhone Price Ladder Is a Margin-Mix Engine That Went Opaque in 2018
Apple sells phones from $599 to over $1,000, and the press calls it consumer choice. It's a margin-mix engine - and it only works because Apple quietly stopped telling anyone what the average iPhone actually sells for in 2018.
7 min
The Market-Entry Gambit · Growth & Portfolio
157 of Apple's 187 Suppliers Build in China — and Eight More Just Joined as India Ramps
In 2009, China added $6.50 of value to an iPhone. Today 157 of Apple's 187 disclosed suppliers manufacture there. Apple is moving assembly to India - and quietly adding eight net-new Chinese suppliers in the same breath. 'Decoupling' is marketing. The trap is real.
8 min
The Standards War · Decision Forks
Apple Kept Lightning Because It Owned the On-Ramp — Until the EU Outlawed the Toll Gate
Lightning lived on the iPhone from 2012 to 2023 while the rest of the industry went USB-C. Apple held on not because Lightning was better, but because it owned the on-ramp — until Directive (EU) 2022/2380 made the toll-gate illegal.
7 min
The Flywheel · Business Model
The 30% Apple Charge Is a Myth, a Moat, and Now a Crime Scene
Most iPhone developers never pay Apple's famous 30% - they pay 15%. The headline rate built a $96B services flywheel. Then a federal judge found Apple in willful contempt for a 27% workaround, and in 2026 the Supreme Court let the ruling stand.
8 min
The Pricing Strategy · Business Model
Apple Hasn't Raised the iPhone's Price Since 2017. It Doesn't Need To.
Everyone thinks Apple charges more for the iPhone every year. The base price has sat at $799 since 2017. The margin grew anyway - from ~40% to a record 46.9% - and almost none of it came from hardware.
7 min
The Vertical Integrator · Business Model
Apple Built the iPhone Before Its Own Chips — and the Order Was the Strategy
The first iPhone ran a Samsung chip. Apple's first in-house SoC didn't ship until 2010 — and that sequence is the point. Owning the silicon was the prerequisite for owning everything stacked on top of it.
8 min
The Adjacency Machine · Growth & Portfolio
iTunes to iCloud: The Software Chain Behind Apple's $96 Billion, 73.9%-Margin Lock-In
Everyone credits the iPod 'halo' for Apple's rise. But the halo is an analyst's correlation, not a cause. The real engine was a software chain - iTunes, App Store, iCloud, Services - that grew to $96 billion in FY2024 at a 73.9% margin and quietly raised the cost of switching.
8 min
The Succession Question · Decision Forks
Everyone Bet the Supply-Chain Guy Would Coast. He Compounded Apple 10x Instead.
In 2011 the bet was that Tim Cook would manage Apple's decline. Apple's stock rose ~2,000% under him against ~503% for the S&P 500 - and the same China-and-logistics genius that built the value now threatens it.
8 min
The Turnaround · Decision Forks
Apple Held Over $1 Billion in Cash at Its Lowest Point — What Ran Out Was Faith in the Mac
The legend says Microsoft's $150 million bailout saved a bankrupt Apple. But Apple was sitting on over $1 billion in cash. What was actually running out wasn't money — it was the willingness of developers and customers to keep betting on the Mac.
8 min
The Counterfactual · Decision Forks
Sculley Tried to License the Mac — One Executive Killed It to Guard a 55% Margin
The legend says Sculley closed the platform out of stubbornness. He was the one trying to open it. The man who killed the deals was protecting hardware margins above 55% — and a decade later, when Apple finally licensed, he was proven right and Apple nearly died.
8 min
The Crisis Response · Decision Forks
The FBI Paid $900,000 to Crack an iPhone — and Handed Apple Its Central Legal Argument
In 2016 the FBI ordered Apple to build software to crack a dead terrorist's iPhone, citing a law from 1789. Then it paid $900,000 to a third party to do the job instead - and in doing so, accidentally won Apple's central legal argument while the phone turned up nothing of value.
8 min
The Reversal · Decision Forks
Apple's $99 Pencil and the 2010 'Blew It' Quote: A Reversal Built on Missing Context
Everyone says Apple ate its words when it launched the $99 Apple Pencil in 2015. But the famous 'if you see a stylus, they blew it' line was from 2010, about tablets that needed one — and the Pencil never needs one. The reversal is a quote taken out of context.
7 min
The Crisis Response · Decision Forks
Apple's Repair 'Reversal' Was a String of Minimum Concessions, Each Timed to Outside Pressure
Apple is praised for reversing on right to repair. It never reversed. From 2019 to 2025 it issued a string of minimum-viable concessions—each timed to a shareholder vote, a state bill, or an SEC ruling—while still sending an employee to testify *against* repair in 2024 and lobbying through proxies in 2025.
8 min
The Bet · Decision Forks
Apple Bet $3,499 That You'd Strap a Computer to Your Face. The Market Said No.
Apple aimed to sell 700,000–800,000 Vision Pros in year one and moved roughly 370,000–500,000. By end-2024 it had halted production, and by 2025 it had reassigned the man who built it to fix Siri. The 'next computing platform' is now being quietly re-arbitrated.
8 min
The Loss Leader · Business Model
Apple Sells the Bundle Cheap. The Discount Is the Cheapest Part of It.
Everyone calls Apple One a loss leader against Netflix and Spotify. It isn't. The Services segment runs a 73.9% gross margin, the bundle carries a real, bounded discount atop a 73.9%-margin Services segment, and Apple has raised the price twice since 2020. The product was never entertainment.
7 min
The Moat Anatomy · Moat & Competition
Huawei Announced 7nm Two Weeks Before Apple; the Durable Engine Is $96.2B of Services
Apple called the A12 'the first 7nm chip' — Huawei had announced its own 7nm chip two weeks earlier, on the same TSMC line. The silicon was never the moat. The $96.2B Services flywheel is.
7 min
The Founder Doctrine · People & Control
What Survived Steve Jobs at Apple: A Closed System That Makes Discipline Structural
Everyone says Apple still 'thinks like Jobs.' But doctrines fade with their founder. What survived since 1997 — when Jobs cut roughly 70% of Apple's products to four — isn't fidelity to a mantra. It's a closed system that makes the discipline structural.
8 min
The Culture Doctrine · People & Control
Apple's Secrecy Rules Drew a Formal NLRB Complaint in 2024
Apple's own policy says employees may discuss wages and working conditions. Its own behavior keeps suppressing exactly that — which is why the NLRB filed a formal complaint in October 2024 over secrecy rules it says interfere with the right to organize.
7 min