The company's shares had rallied slightly by the close of trading.

Consider that in 1990, roughly half the global population lived on less than $1 a day; by 2007, the proportion had shrunk to 28 percent -- and it will be lower still by the close of 2010.

At the time of this writing (November 2007) Apple had sold a whopping 100 million iPods, and is on track to ship more than 200 million iPods by the end of 2008 and 300 million by the close of 2009.