The sun never sets on the Apple empire.

It will go unnoticed by many, but Apple will soon replace AT&T in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Except for a few years, AT&T has been part of the DJIA for almost 100 years. Now it's Apple's turn. When I was a young man, AT&T was the worker's icon. If you worked for AT&T, then you were believed to have a great job with great retirement benefits. That will not change, but the iconic AT&T is not the same company many of our fathers perhaps worked for. And for years it was known as just "the phone" company. 

Despite the fact that we had the best phone service in the world, in 1982, the government broke up AT&T into several smaller companies and as collateral damage, the break-up destroyed the famous Bell Labs. Bell Labs was an innovative giant and many technologies that we use today had their conception in the minds of the Bell Lab's employees. I work with many technical experts and a resume that includes a stop at Bell Labs is a go-signal for extraordinary talent. A stop at Apple is like that today.

The AT&T break up was the result of a 1974 anti-trust lawsuit brought by the justice department alleging that AT&T was monopolistic. The government tried this tact with Microsoft in the 90's but did not succeed. Within the decade, Apple may be the next target on the Feds radar screen. It is possible that the Feds have a too-big-to fail list and another list that is a too-big-for-the-Feds-comfort list. The latter list is when a company becomes so successful that it carries a bigger hammer than hangs from the Fed's tool belt.  Success breeds envy. The president asked Apple executives what would it take to build the iPhone in the USA. The reply was it will never happen. The reasons were rational and exhaustive.

The Dow Jones executives were smart to include Apple in the DJIA, it should mean a positive DJIA for the foreseeable future.

The sun never sets on the Apple empire. 

Image courtesy of the April Williams global image portfolio.