You know, with the press constantly yammering on about Apple's minuscule and shrinking 2- or 3-ish percent market share of the personal computer market, it's easy to lose sight of one significant fact: the company still pulls in billions of dollars a year. Not just millions, but billions. C'mon, kick it with us Sagan-style: Billllllyuns.

Apple most recently reported that its annual revenue for fiscal 2003 was $6.21 billion, which, granted, isn't as much as Apple used to make back in the day, but it's still a scary-huge wad of bills. Convert all the money that customers spent on Apple products and services last year into hundred-dollar bills and we're talking about a stack of Bennies that weighs over 126,000 pounds-- roughly the same as 51 Toyota Celicas, 39 Dodge Stratuses, or 7.3 of the world's largest single-winder twine ball. That's one big freakin' pile of lettuce. And since at least some people think the lettuce pile is only going to get bigger, back up the tanker full of Hidden Valley Ranch and pass the big crouton!

According to a Dow Jones Newswires article sent to us by faithful viewer mrmgraphics, Steven Milunovich, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, figures that revenue from iPod sales will be in the neighborhood of a cool billion this year-- and that's a pretty ritzy neighborhood, we don't mind saying. (Swimmin' pools... movie stars.) But if you figure that the average selling price of an iPod is maybe $350 (taking into account the popularity of the $249 miniPod balancing sales of the $499 Big Giant Disk™ edition), that breaks down to over 2.8 million iPod sales this year. Considering that at the beginning of the year Apple announced that it had sold 2 million iPods ever, Milunovich's estimate might be a smidge over the line into Insane Optimism territory.

Then again, maybe not; 730,000 of those iPods (roughly 37% of the total) had been sold to frenzied holiday shoppers in the fourth calendar quarter of 2003 alone, and Apple would have sold more if it hadn't simply run out. With that kind of momentum, maybe 2.8 million iPods by New Year's isn't such a wacky scenario after all. And Milunovich goes farther still, predicting that iPods may account for as much as two billion smackers in fiscal 2006.

How will Apple deal with all the additional moolah? No worries, folks; faithful viewer bo dug up a Macworld UK article which includes all sorts of nifty tidbits about Apple's finances and strategies, courtesy of CFO Fred Anderson. (Is it just us, or is ol' Fred scoring a lot more airtime these days now that he's on the fast track to retirement?) In addition to some provocative comments about future HP-style iPod deals, increased R&D spending, and Apple's "three key drivers" for growth in 2004 ("portable-- mobility and wireless communications; the digital lifestyle and music, iPod, iPod mini and iTunes Music Store"-- hey, kids, can you spot the "three key drivers" in that hodgepodge?), Fred confirmed that Apple "would like to become a $10 billion company again" and "already has control systems in place to enable it to handle more revenues than it takes today."

So there you have it, folks: Apple has already built a bigger piggy bank, one capable of holding 11.7 enormous balls of twine. Now all it needs are the sales to fill it.