Apple is currently hot like a chili pepper. Its products are well accepted, their sales and revenues are growing, and their stocks are going sky-high. A few months ago Apple even managed to dethrone Microsoft as the largest technology company in the world and second third largest according to market capitalization (behind Exxon and PetroChina). Their yearly revenues are currently around $65 billion, which is a lot, and that figure is even more interesting if put into perspective.
Slovenia is a small country in Europe. It has around 2 million inhabitants who almost manage to live in peace. Its GDP in 2009 was around $24k per capita or $49b in total. We are so small that our neighbors are making jokes about it, but we are still a proud nation of capable people, who try hard to make it. Speaking of small - nowadays it's not that unusual for large corporations to have bigger revenues than a small country's GDP, but if a company has more money than a country's GDP, well, that's simply ridiculous. But Apple now sits on more than $50 billion (11 billion in cash + 14 billion in short-term marketable securities + 25 billion in long-term marketable securities), which means that it's actually capable of buying the whole yearly gross domestic product of Slovenia.
Apple obviously won't do that, but eventually it will have to do something. There are speculations about them wanting to buy Facebook (estimated value 33 billion), focusing on mobile payments, and many others. It will be interesting to see what happens, but I'm almost sure Steve will do the right thing. The company is very healthy, the demand is high, so it should be a piece of cake. Just take a look at these interesting facts or the figures below, which display the case of Apple vs. Slovenia. I guess we truly are small.
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Apple
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Slovenia
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Full name
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Apple Inc.
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Republic of Slovenia
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Established
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1976
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1991
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Capital
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Cuppertino
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Ljubljana
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Government
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Monarchy Empire
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Parliamentary republic
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Leader
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Steve Jobs
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Danilo Türk
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Population
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49,400 (2010)
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2,054,199 (2009)
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GDP
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$65.225 billion (2010)
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$49.217 billion (2009)
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GDP per capita
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$1.320 million (2010)
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$24,417 (2009)
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Source: Wikipedia, Apple