Apple Inc. (AAPL): Max Profit – Use This, Smoke This, Drink This

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is already one of the more profitable companies in the world based on its operating and profit margins that have been known to be at or near the top of any company you will find in any sector. The company has been legendary for selling millions upon millions of products over the years at premium prices – and late CEO Steve Jobs was a master marketer ad developing the Apple brand as something “cool” to have, and thus make the products seem like people would be willing to pay a premium to be “cool.”

But there has been some loss in the Apple Inc. coolness factor of late, so that has led to a flattening of the growth curve for the company and has put some pressure on current CEO Tim Cook and company to come up with some new products that will get the buzz back. But even though the iDevice is not as cool as it once was, the company is still maintaining very healthy margins on its premium-priced devices, like the iPhone.

And those margins have certainly put the Apple Inc. iPhone at the top of a major list – not just as the most profitable product in the tech sector, but apparently it is the most profitable product of any kind in America, according to a recent report. The report laid out the case for the seven most profitable individual products in the U.S., and the iPhone was the only such product from a tech company.

The iPhone beat out Marlboro cigarettes and Monster energy drinks as most profitable products due to its overall margin of 40 percent and accounting for more than 50 percent of Apple revenue in 2012 while holding about 21 percent of the smartphone market share.

Apple Inc.’s iPhone posted 125 million sales in 2012, which was a 73-percent increase over the previous year. The 40-percent margin on the devices is an estimate based on the estimated $425 average subsidy that U.S. wireless carriers give to Apple to make the iPhone affordable. And certainly, being very profitable makes a company and its stock attractive to fund manager like billionaire David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital (see his portfolio). Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.