Jobs cut Apple from 15 products to 3 and it earned $309M in 1998

Steve Jobs returned to Apple late in 1997 when the company was months from collapse, having lost nearly $1.05 billion in fiscal 1997. Apple had drifted into a sprawling line of Macs, clones and niche machines that none of them could fund.

Jobs narrowed the product groups from 15 to 3, exited older lines, killed the clone programme and cut inventory to about four days, even beating Dell on that metric. He bet the company on a single consumer machine, the iMac, launched in August 1998 at $1,299.

In October 1998 Apple reported its first profitable year since 1995: $309 million of net income for fiscal 1998 against a loss of nearly $1.05 billion in 1997, with a fourth-quarter profit of $106 million. Six weeks after the iMac shipped, Apple had sold about 278,000 units and its US retail share had climbed to 13.5 percent.

Cut 15 product lines to 3 and trimmed inventory to 4 days, turning a $1.045B loss in 1997 into $309M of net income in fiscal 1998.

Killing clones and redundant Mac lines stopped the cash burn.

Focused design and easy internet access made the iMac a mass-market hit.

Four-day inventory freed working capital and raised efficiency.

The Microsoft investment removed the sense Apple was about to die.

A broken company is usually over-broad; choosing three products you can win is worth more than fifteen you cannot fund.

Apple's share price and fortunes recovered, the iMac made it a personal-computer player again, and the restored platform became the base for the iPod and iPhone. The 1997 to 1998 reset is the reference case for focus driving a turnaround.