On January 17, 2011, Jobs announced in an internal Apple memo that he would take another medical leave of absence, for an indefinite period, to allow him to focus on his health. Chief operating officer Tim Cook assumed Jobs’ day-to-day operations at Apple, although Jobs would still remain “involved in major strategic decisions for the company.” Apple became the most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world. In June 2011, Steve Jobs surprisingly took the stage and unveiled iCloud, an online storage and syncing service for music, photos, files and software which replaced MobileMe, Apple’s previous attempt at content syncing. This would be the last product launch Jobs would attend before his death. It has been argued that Apple has achieved such efficiency in its supply chain that the company operates as a monopsony (one buyer, many sellers), in that it can dictate terms to its suppliers. Briefly in July 2011, due to the debt-ceiling crisis, Apple’s financial reserves were greater than those of the US Government. On August 24, 2011, Jobs resigned his position as CEO of Apple. He was replaced by Tim Cook and Jobs became Apple’s chairman. Prior to this, Apple did not have a chairman and instead had two co-lead directors, Andrea Jung and Arthur D. Levinson, who continued with those titles until Levinson became Chairman of the Board in November.
On October 4, 2011, Apple announced the iPhone 4S, which included an improved camera with 1080p video recording, a dual core A5 chip capable of 7 times faster graphics than the A4, an “intelligent software assistant” named Siri, and cloud-sourced data with iCloud. The following day, on October 5, 2011, Apple announced that Jobs had died, marking the end of an era for Apple Inc. The iPhone 4S was officially released on October 14, 2011.
On October 29, 2011, Apple purchased C3 Technologies, a mapping company, for $240 million, becoming the third mapping company Apple has purchased. On January 10, 2012, Apple for $390 million acquired Anobit, an Israeli hardware company that developed and supplies a proprietary memory signal processing technology that improves the performance of flash-memory used in iPhones and iPads.
On January 19, 2012, Apple’s Phil Schiller introduced iBooks Textbooks for iOS and iBook Author for Mac OS X in New York City. This was the first major announcement by Apple since the passing of Steve Jobs, who stated in his biography that he wanted to reinvent the textbook and education. The 3rd generation iPad was announced on March 7, 2012. It includes a Retina display, a new CPU, a five megapixel camera, and 1080p video recording. On a July 24, 2012, conference call with investors, Tim Cook said that he loved India, but that Apple was going to expect larger opportunities outside of India, citing the reason as the 30% sourcing requirement from India.
On August 20, 2012, Apple’s rising stock rose the company’s value to a world-record $624 billion dollars. This beat the non-inflation-adjusted record for market capitalization set by Microsoft in 1999. On August 24, 2012, a US jury ruled that Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion (£665m) in damages in an intellectual property lawsuit. Samsung said they will appeal the court ruling.
On September 12, 2012, Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, featuring an enlarged screen, more powerful processors, and running iOS 6. The latter includes a new mapping application (replacing Google Maps) that has attracted some criticism. It was made available on September 21, 2012, and became Apple’s biggest iPhone launch, with over 2 million pre-orders pushing back the delivery date to late October.
On October 23, 2012, Apple unveiled the iPad Mini, which features a 7.9 inch screen in contrast to the standard 9.7 inches on the iPad. A third generation 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display was also released. Apple also updated the iPad with a faster processor and a lightning connector. New iMac and Mac Mini computers were also announced.