According to Apple there’s an App for…something that I shouldn’t say…

Apple is an extremely successful company. Earlier this week they released their latest set of results.

For the first time their quarterly sales exceeded $20 billion. In my opinion though the really impressive thing about the published figures was their cash balance.

They have total cash and marketable securities (stocks and shares, etc that can be readily converted to cash) amounting to a staggering $51 billion.

To put this amount of money in perspective, if they took their cash and put it in an empty company and then listed this “cash only company” on the London Stock Exchange, it would not only make it into the FTSE 100 but the “Apple cash company” would in fact be the 18th largest company quoted on the London Stock Exchange!

The blog entry here provides some thoughts on what else Apple could do with their cash if they decided to go on a shopping trip.

One of the growth areas of Apple can be found within their Apps business. Apps are “applications” (in effect software to use on their devices). 3 billion apps were downloaded in the first 18 months after their launch.

Apple has a very slick and professional marketing strategy.

Apple’s iPhone adverts such as the one below famously state “There’s an app for that” and finish with “There’s an app for just about anything”.

As well as having a very creative approach to their advertising Apple has also taken a very commercial and sensible approach to matters.

Last week the phrase “There’s an app for that” was officially classified as a trademark of Apple.

This means they will be able to prevent competitors benefiting from the phrase.

It will probably result in adverts such as the one below by US network carrier Verizon being prohibited. Verizon parodied it’s competitor  A&T (a carrier for the iPhone in the US) with this “There’s a map for that” advert.