IW 50 Best: Apple's Road to the Top

A Year of Improvement

Above all, it is this continued dedication to great products that defines the company and what has taken them to the top of U.S. manufacturing.

"Building really great products will be successful almost in any market if they meet customer needs and get into the emotions and hearts of people," notes Purdy. Apple, he says, is singularly dedicated to building great products that meet evolving customer needs and have a design factor that communicates strong emotional attachment to the buying process.

"As long as they continue to build great products that meet customer needs," he says, "they will continue to dominate that market."

Last year was a perfect example.

For Apple, 2011 was not a year for breakthroughs -- there were no game-changing hardware releases as in years past; the company didn't even fulfill broad expectations of a whole-number release of an updated iPhone. With the exception of a few pieces of software -- the iCloud, most notably -- the total product line offered by the company did not seem altogether different at the end of the year as in 2010.

2011 was a year of improvement, a year of reimagining existing technology in new forms with new features to improve the quality of the users' experience. It was a year of shifting and innovating for new and future growth.

In 2011, meeting these needs meant improvements to two key components of Apple's product line: the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S.