[philwelch]

Profitable, but underwater. NeXT sold to Apple for half a billion when over a billion in funding had been pumped into it (let alone valuation).

NeXT alone was never going to do what Apple has done. Apple had a sustainable hardware business (after being fixed up a little with sexy designs) that gave them enough manufacturing leverage to do iPod, and iPod gave them enough operations leverage and economy-of-scale to do what they're doing now.