Apple is actually bigger by employee count, however about half (I think) are retail employees in the stores.
So yes - a very large organisation. However Apple's chip design teams are much, much smaller than that. And because Apple mostly doesn't do chip design those teams are likely able to work like a startup, without much internal politics or in-fighting. Where as all of Intel's 100,000+ employees are basically devoted to chip design and manufacture.
Apple as a whole, though, is starting to look rather sick from the same sort of problems that Intel has. Under Jobs there was an energy and clarity of purpose that's been lacking for some time. The drift in Apple's core businesses are obvious. The iPhone has been stuck in turgid incrementalism for a long time now, and has already been largely "disrupted" by Android which sold into cheaper markets and used that to fund R&D budgets that match Apple's. We don't think of it as disruption because Android arrive so soon after the iPhone and thus there was no obvious delayed "disruption event", Apple just had their market share capped by the refusal to compete on price, which is why Apple fans have for years been forced to make arguments about why Apple is successful because they take a larger profit margin than others.
Their core Mac business has also been adrift for many years now. I and many others actively avoid trying to upgrade because things frequently get worse rather than better. The first decade of the century saw constant innovation in the Mac business, after all their best people were reallocated to the iPhone and iPad, quality entered a long period of decline. macOS releases struggled with regressions and rarely introduced new innovations worth caring about. Their apps and hardware have also stalled with own goals and unforced errors like the keyboard fiasco <looks at butterfly keys with holes in the plastic from ordinary levels of use>.
Developer experience and docs are another area of problems, there was a good rant about it posted here the other day.
All these are due to organisational rot, and most obviously, a form of in-fighting between iOS / macOS in which the iWorld got the best people and resources, leaving macWorld to pathetically try and steal things from the other group occasionally, regardless of whether it made sense for a laptop context or not.
So yes - a very large organisation. However Apple's chip design teams are much, much smaller than that. And because Apple mostly doesn't do chip design those teams are likely able to work like a startup, without much internal politics or in-fighting. Where as all of Intel's 100,000+ employees are basically devoted to chip design and manufacture.
Apple as a whole, though, is starting to look rather sick from the same sort of problems that Intel has. Under Jobs there was an energy and clarity of purpose that's been lacking for some time. The drift in Apple's core businesses are obvious. The iPhone has been stuck in turgid incrementalism for a long time now, and has already been largely "disrupted" by Android which sold into cheaper markets and used that to fund R&D budgets that match Apple's. We don't think of it as disruption because Android arrive so soon after the iPhone and thus there was no obvious delayed "disruption event", Apple just had their market share capped by the refusal to compete on price, which is why Apple fans have for years been forced to make arguments about why Apple is successful because they take a larger profit margin than others.
Their core Mac business has also been adrift for many years now. I and many others actively avoid trying to upgrade because things frequently get worse rather than better. The first decade of the century saw constant innovation in the Mac business, after all their best people were reallocated to the iPhone and iPad, quality entered a long period of decline. macOS releases struggled with regressions and rarely introduced new innovations worth caring about. Their apps and hardware have also stalled with own goals and unforced errors like the keyboard fiasco <looks at butterfly keys with holes in the plastic from ordinary levels of use>.
Developer experience and docs are another area of problems, there was a good rant about it posted here the other day.
All these are due to organisational rot, and most obviously, a form of in-fighting between iOS / macOS in which the iWorld got the best people and resources, leaving macWorld to pathetically try and steal things from the other group occasionally, regardless of whether it made sense for a laptop context or not.