23 October 2001: Apple unveils the iPod
Six weeks after 9/11, and with the tech bubble in ruins, Apple introduced a $399 music player that promised 1,000 songs in your pocket. Critics scoffed at the price and the Mac-only compatibility. But the iPod, and later the iTunes store, transformed Apple from a niche computer maker into a consumer electronics powerhouse and paved the way for the iPhone. Apple shares at the time were firmly in the doldrums.
The lesson: Great products launched in gloomy markets often get ignored by investors at first.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Apple at the start of 2003 → $961,538 today, vs $7,727 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2003, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 961.5 times the money, and $953,811 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Apple teaches: The best returns often come from companies that looked finished; Apple was a near-bankrupt also-ran in 1997, which is exactly why it was cheap.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | $0.26 | $961,538 | $7,727 |
| 2005 | $1.15 | $217,391 | $5,763 |
| 2007 | $3.00 | $83,333 | $4,789 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Apple? Every starting year and the full story →
More Apple history
- 2 January 2019: Tim Cook writes a letter nobody wanted to read
- 9 January 2007: Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone
- 24 January 1984: The Macintosh goes on sale
- 27 January 2010: Apple unveils the iPad
- 1 April 1976: Apple is founded, and one co-founder cashes out early
- 11 April 1976: The Apple I goes on sale for $666.66
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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