Rim's Research In Motion

RIM has a wide range of customers and established in many developed countries which can gain its brand image among its competitors. As RIM is responsible for innovation of high technology products, there is an effective R&D in RIM to make RIM stay competitive in smartphones industry. A strong relationship between RIM and its service providers showed one of RIM’s core capabilities.

In The Wall Street Journal, tech reporter Daisuke Wakabayashi (2014) describes how Apple is expanding its reach into the business market. “The iPhone has replaced the BlackBerry as the mobile phone of choice, as the iPad assumes tasks once reserved for PCs,” (Wakabayashi, 2014). Wakabayashi (2014) noted that “Apple is going mainstream” when it comes to the corporate world, and he profiles multiple large enterprises — including SAP, Nordstrom, and Cisco — that have rolled out iOS and other Apple devices to their

BlackBerry’s Market Share has been reduced to less than 1%. In an industry dominated by two major companies, BlackBerry is highly unlikely to gain a larger percentage of the market,

Incorporated in 1984, Research in Motion, Canada’s most successful and influential tech firm, used to be a market leader in mobile phone industry. However, the company seems to be overtaken by a series of deep-rooted dysfunction. RIM during the past years had grown unwieldy and unorganized. Conflicting opinions and a lack of clear direction worsened an already difficult situation. All of the evidence is showing that the management of RIM has failed: a number of high-level people left; the market shares keep falling; product delayed; investors became angry; and an internal chaos remained at this BlackBerry maker.

In 2011, Apple increased their market share from 15.6% to 19% while RIM fell from 16% to 10.4% (Global Mobile Statistics, 2012). There are several different prospering smart phone brands that are negatively impacting RIM’s financial success. Not only are there a large number of competitors, but they are also well known companies such as Sony, Samsung, Google, and Apple to name a few. These are dominant companies in the electronics sector and all of which have large fixed costs so they must operate at economies of scale and produce near capacity. In turn, they have to sell all these products so that competition becomes more aggressive (Clegg pg.62). These companies all have the competitive advantage of offering their consumers another product lines whereas BlackBerry only offers phones and the new PlayBook which hasn’t been overly successful.

Mike Lazaridis, RIM’s CO-Chief Executive Officer, was a passionate advocate for the power of basis science to improve and transform the world. With his engineering degree, Lazaridis is responsible for product strategy, research and development, product development and manufacturing. Jim Balsillie with more charismatic and outgoing personality brought his wealth of business knowledge to RIM. With such strong leading executive team, RIM had achieved a great employee growth by department from Fiscal 1999 to 2001. (exhibit 3) Moreover, RIM has a well-developed corporate culture that celebrates achievement, creativity, and risk taking. Employees at RIM were well compensated and motivated by various benefits, at the meanwhile, RIM is also famous for its corporate giving to the communities.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is one of the world leaders in the research, development, marketing, sales and service of personal digital music & video devices, in addition to personal computers globally. Its' innovative music and digital content delivery service, iTunes, has sold over 1 billion songs to date. As of the close of their latest fiscal year the company generated $156B in Sales and generated a Gross Profit of $68B earning a Net Income of $41B (Apple Investor Relations, 2013). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate Apple's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) and provide an analysis of each. The cause, impact and recommendations for each specific strength, weakness, opportunity and threat are provided along with an action plan of how to maximize strengths and opportunities and mitigate the effects of weaknesses and threats. The Apple brand is among the most valuable in the world and its ability to innovate with successive product generations unmatched, yet this has led to a high dependence on its iPhone and iPad platforms, to the exclusion of entirely new businesses. The Apple iTunes platform and ecosystem delivers 30% of all profits and a significant portion of overall revenue, making this single business a stabilizing force in their strategic product and services roadmap (Apple Investor Relations, 2013). Despite these challenges however Apple continues to attain

RIM has had a rash of bad press due to failures in its email system as well as its product and management strategy. RIM has suffered two major disruptions of service in 2009 and 2011 that have tarnished the touted reliability standard that has been a standard marketing tool for BlackBerry devices. In 2011 alone, RIM stock dropped more than 50% due to a series of product errors and profit warnings. (Sharp & Prodhan, 2011)

We chose to research Apple Incorporated, one of the most innovative companies of our generation. It is safe to say that nearly every one in the US and many foreign countries have used or at least heard of Apple products. We will be looking at the macroeconomic variables that impact Apple’s business as well as how the current developments in the industry have impacted Apple’s financials and we will also look at how Apple competes with other firms in the same industry.

2008-09, RIM‟s market share kept on escalating with it acquiring a good deal of market while also expanding its product portfolio to cater to the need of people at the same time.

Established in 1976, Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II and the Macintosh. Today, Apple designs, manufactures and markets personal computers, portable digital music players and mobile communication devices as well as related software, services, peripherals and network solutions. Apple sells its products worldwide through its online stores, retail stores, direct sales forces and third party distributors to its core customers—consumers,

Apple could make future strides in the smartphone industry, if it can figure out a way to steal away some market share from BlackyBerry users. Many business users prefer the BlackBerry to all other smartphones in the industry.

Nowadays, Apple has positioned itself to be an innovator in the personal computer industry and Apple has developed by offering modern products compared to its competitors. According to Apple’s mission statement last year, “Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.” (Business Management,

This paper presents a case study of Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is a technology based corporation with emphasis on computer software and hardware (MAC and Apps), tablets (IPad), smart phones (IPhone), and mp3 plays, (ITouch). Apple Inc. has grown tremendously over the years and ever since 2001 has expanded its brand and retail stores to over 375 stores/outlets globally. The business has seventy two thousand eight hundred employees in thirty eight countries. Apple Inc. has truly become one of the most efficacious corporations within its field behind or competing with Microsoft and Google Inc.

One of the competitive strategies for Apple Inc. lies in its string Sales and Marketing positioning all across the world tough its exclusive Apple stores or in the form of franchise stores. Another competitive advantage of the company lies in its Research & Development capability. This strategy has long been a source of competitive advantage to beat the competitive rivals, both in the domestic market (like Microsoft Windows operating System and Apple’s Macintosh), Google Inc. (Android mobile operating system and Apple’s iOS) s well as in the international competitors like South Korean giant, Samsung and Finnish mobile maker, Nokia Inc. (University of Oregon Investment Group 2012).