Apple's largest shareholder, Fidelity Management, will earn $128.8m each quarter from the dividend, based on its holdings as of December 31. Vanguard Group, the second-biggest shareholder, will receive $98.5m and State Street Corp will get make $92m. Apple revealed at its first-quarter results last month that it has $98bn of cash on its balance sheet - a figure which grew by $38bn in the last year alone. The last time Apple paid a dividend, 17 years ago, it finished the year with just under $500m in cash. He said the payout would still leave Apple in a strong position to invest heavily in research and development. You'll see more of all of these in the future," Mr Cook said, adding: "Innovation is the most important objective at Apple and we will not lose sight of that. These [decisions] will not close any doors for us... The pipeline is full of stuff and I think customers are going to be incredibly pleased with what's coming through. Benedict Evans, an analyst at Enders Analysis, said the return would account for about a quarter of Apple's cash generation in 2011. However, Apple executives indicated that the company would have liked to return even more to shareholders, but that it had wanted to avoid the cost of repatriating funds from overseas, as required by US law. More than half of Apple's cash is held outside the US. Mr Cook said: "Because of the tax consequences of repatriation, we focused on domestic cash... we want to maintain the flexibility to use US cash for other investments." In doing so, Apple has added its weight to the growing number of large US corporations, such as Cisco, to openly oppose the repatriation tax. Peter Oppenheimer, chief financial officer of Apple, said that the regime was a "considerable economic disincentive" to companies wishing to bring money back to the US and that it has "expressed [its] views with Congress and with the administration." Mr Cook declined to disclose sales figures for the latest version of the iPad, which launched last week but said Apple had seen a "record weekend." Apple shares were up $15.53 at $601.10 in late trading.