A generation ago, Apple was a penny stock and the iMac was released. The iPod was a success but a small fraction of the story. They were “only” a $75 billion c

A generation ago, Apple was a penny stock and the iMac was released. The iPod was a success but a small fraction of the story. They were “only” a $75 billion company by the year the iPhone came out. Apple’s valuation and PE ratio only became in line with its peers around 5-6 years ago. It was priced as if it were about to go bankrupt for much of its history , even after the iPhone was released, convinced that Apple just HAD to go out of business, or hit a ceiling, or whatever. History is also littered with quotes from competition that didn’t take them seriously: Dell, HPE, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Facebook. The absurdity isn’t that Apple was thought to be an underdog, it’s that so many never took them seriously. Perhaps the main reason Apple is as big as it is now is because wall street and the competition refused to take them seriously? If they did, we’d have a more balanced industry.