Apple: One Year After Steve Jobs" Death, the iPhone Falters Steve Jobs died one year ago. It's time for the Apple community to move forward. Kin Cheung / AP Staff members welcome customers to the Apple store in Hong Kong as the sale of the iPhone 5 begins, Sept. Only Apple could sell 5 million iPhones in three days and be a disappointment for Wall Street's number-crunchers. The Cupertino Calif.-based cash-machine's new mobile phone debuted last Friday, and consumers lined up around the block - around the world - to purchase the new device. In the Soho neighborhood of New York City on Friday, a line more than 100 deep snaked around the corner at noon. "The iPhone 5 didn't make my iPhone oboslete," a NYC tech reporter remarked to me. She was granted anonymity becasue she is not authorized to speak to the press. All the people who are upgrading on the first weekend are cell-phone junkies. She's right. The people who line up overnight with camping gear and sleeeping bags days in advance to buy new Apple products are fanatics - or what we would call "fanboys." They nust have the newest device as soon as possible. There is a Cult of Apple - a Cult of Mac, if you will - that is utterly obsessed with these products. Count me among them. I'm only now learning how to use an iPad, thanks to a friend's instructions. Apple has reeled off one of the most profitable runs in the history of capitalism. This company, founded by a Reed College dropout and a Bay-area geek-genius, is sitting on over $100 billion cash (that's "billion" with a "b"). For perspective, that's $30 billion more than New York City's annual budget. MORE: How Google's Chief Innovator Sergey Brin Is Making Science Fiction Real But the clouds over Cupertino will hang especially low next Friday, on the one-year anniversary of Steve Jobs" death. The Apple community has been in mourning for one year. Now, it's time to look again to the future. There's a fundamental question here: What if Steve Jobs already introduced all of Apple's breakthrough products? After all, during his too-brief, once-in-a-century career, he radically disrupted at least seven industries: personal computing, desktop software, music, mobile phones, publishing, tablet computers, and Hollywood animation. Joe Nocera at The New York Times approaches the issue from a different angle. Millions of us revere the memory of Steve Jobs, but what if that era of Apple is over? Apple closed down 1.3% Monday. Apple shares have risen 70% this year. Apple constitutes an estimated 5% of the S&P 500, and iPhone sales are expected to rival the GDP of small Caribbean countries. "We are not overly concerned with this "disappointing" number as we believe this is a classic case of near-term expectations getting out of touch with reality," Sterne Agee's Shaw Wu said (via Fortune) in a note entitled Classic Case of Unrealistically High Expectations. We find it unfortunate that some analysts continue to publish irresponsible estimates without taking into account realistic demand trends and potential supply constraints on new in-cell touchscreens. More: Is Apple Losing Its Shine After Steve Jobs? Apple's management team is led by a brilliant operational thinker - Tim Cook. He's trying to preserve, maintain and extend the glory of his predecessor, a visionary maketing genius, Steve Jobs. Jobs was a tyrant. He demanded perfection. Nothing less was acceptable. Whenever Apple news comes up, pundits try to divine the meaning of that day's stock move. Luckily, Steve Jobs didn't think quarter-to-quarter about earnings. What did he care about? Delivering the best device to the user. In this way, Marissa Mayer is a kindred spirit with Steve Jobs: both are absolutely obsessed with the user experience. On Wall Street, owning Apple ($AAPL) is de rigueur. Hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, money management firms, investment banks, and other financial actors must own Apple. Because it's the largest and most successful American company ever. Apple is the new blue-chip firm, the Big Blue for the 21st-century. Based on my back-of-the-envelope math, Apple's valuation constitues 5% of the S+P 500. Here's the bottom line: Apple has become a symbol of American success. As we remember Steve Jobs, we think about how he would have wanted us to act. He was completely focused on a company that is now worth $650 billion. It's tough to find new ways to put numbers this massive in context. But imagine a small, private U.N. member-state. It's a bittersweet moment for Apple shareholders: The stock is reaching new heights on the one-year anniversary of Steve Jobs.