Apple Inc : A World Of Possibilities

Apple Inc. is part of the electronic equipment industry that designs, manufactures, and markets mobile communications. Apple also creates and sells media devices, personal computers, and portable digital music players worldwide. This company was founded in 1977 and serves various customers. Apple’s top three competitors are Blackberry Limited, Google Inc., and Hewlett-Packard Company (Yahoo Finance, 2014). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the financial health of Apple by using horizontal analysis, vertical analysis, ratio analysis, and Altman’s z-score for the year 2011, 2012, 2013.

Apple products are designed in California USA and manufactured in different foreign countries such as China, Taiwan, Korea, Mongolia, and Europe which produce part of the devices, most of the raw material ‘Earth Minerals’ to produce these items can be found in China. Since technology has a lot of benefits in human’s life, the demand has been increase year by year which make business to expand and hiring more people in the company. From 2005 to 2015 the number of full-time employee’s has been increase more than 80 thousands.

Apple incorporation, previously known as Apple Computer, is a multinational corporation that not only produces personal computers, consumer electronics, computer software, and servers but also a digital distributor of the media content. It has chain of retail stores known as Apple Stores. However, company’s information is summarized below:

Globalization has also had a significant impact on Apple's supply chain. The company earns high profits because it is able to produce its products at a low price and then sell them at a high price (Chakrabotty, 2012). In addition, the company has noted that it assembles its products in China because all of the components are made there this in addition to the low cost of assembly labor. Apple facilitates this by working with logistics suppliers like FedEx who can quickly move finished goods around the world via a number of hubs. All of Apple's products, for example, arrived in the United States in Oakland, California and from there make their way to the customer.

This paper is a business situation analysis of Apple, Inc. Apple a market leader in the consumer computer industry with products including desktop, laptop, and handheld computers, as well phones, media streaming, and now watches. A multinational company, Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976. They specialize in designing, developing, and selling high-end computers, software, and other electronic devices. Because of Apple’s broad product portfolio they compete with many different companies in a range of markets. This analysis will be conducted using historical information, a SWOT analysis, and portions of Porter’s Five Forces Model to understand its business strategies, impact within markets, products and services offered, corporate leadership, and future.

The world’s leading software and electronics manufacturer “Apple” has revolutionized business operations in America. Apple’s “global ingenuity” (Robbins & Judge, 2013, p. 35) or its ability to use comparative advantages to advance its operations is a game changer. In acknowledging Apple’s global stance, we consider the pros and cons for business decisions that propel the company forward, the expansion of its workforce outside of the United States, and the increase of employee diligence and flexibility at manufacturing facilities internationally.

Apple, a multinational corporation operates across many national boundaries in help to maintain global dominance as one of the world’s most successful corporate businesses. Apple known for their electronic products, including Ipods, Ipads and Iphones, is a well-known American corporation. Any given American would agree that Apple has distinctly brought technology to be a huge part of the American culture. As Apple realized technology drives the American Culture, expanding their efforts in globalizing and outsourcing was almost necessary, for technology had advanced and the need for more Apple products increased. Apple has partnered with many different cultures to globalize and outsource there products across the globe creating exceptional gains.

In 2012, President Obama asked Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, “ Why Don't we make iPhones here in America”? It is inferred that Obama was asking Steve Jobs this question because he , Obama, would like these jobs to come to America. Steve Jobs responded to the President by saying “ Those are not coming back [ to America]. After some research, it is very apparent as to why Apple Produces their iPhones in China rather than producing them in America, which can be seen by looking at opportunity costs of moving to America and labor productivity.

On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs and Steven Wozniak invented the technology company, Apple. These two brilliant inventors invented the billionaire company after dropping out of college. Though Apple provides its customers with advanced products, Apple has many controversies that affect its economic stability as well as the company’s reputation.

Apple Inc. is a worldwide American organization that creates PC programming, phones, PCs and shopper electronic items. The extraordinary results of Apple include: the iPod, the iPhone, the Macintosh line of PCs and the iPad. 301 retail locations in 10 nations are worked by Apple in August 2010. The product of Apple comprise on the Mac OS X working framework, iWork suite of gainfulness programming, Final Cut Studio, Logic Studio a music creation device 's suite,

Apple Inc. is a global leader in the personal computer and mobile phone industry. The American company operates as a multinational firm, and has helped in adoption of new technology in the industry in the over 200 countries in which it operates. One of the reasons that has helped Apple Inc. (Fortune 500, 2015) to expand its business operations is its compliance with the financial regulations that are adopted for firms of this nature; that is, firms that operate in the international market. For this reason, the company adopts diverse methods to account for its assets, liabilities and shareholder equity. The first method adopted by the company is the balance sheet or the T-method is a two-sided method in which assets are shown on the left

was renamed Apple Inc. on January 9, 2007, to reflect its shifted focus towards consumer

The company started off as “Apple Computer,” best known for its Macintosh personal computers (PCs) in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Despite a strong brand, rapid growth, and high profits in the late 1980s, Apple almost went bankrupt in 1996 (Kim & Yoffie, 2010, p.1). This can be explained that Apple has become larger and more significant than other competitors put together in 1980. Because Apple failed to innovate in 1996, the company almost went bankruptcy but eventually Steve Jobs took Apple from bad situation to the company that can make billions of dollars through promoted itself as a hip alternative to other computer brands. Apple highlighted its computers as the world’s “greenest lineup of notebooks” that were energy efficient and used recyclable materials. The goal was to differentiate the Macintosh amid intense competition in the PC industry (Kim & Yoffie, p.4).

This paper aims to highlight and discuss the major challenges and opportunities which Apple Inc. faces while bringing innovation in the four primary areas of its business operations; including product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, and organizational innovation. The major focus of the paper is towards discussing the combination of all these processes which this organization follows and the major challenges which it faces in the course of its innovation or change strategies. The paper concludes by summarizing the importance of innovation for Apple Inc. in the light of the whole discussion.

Apple I-phone's final assembly partner in China, Foxconn has been reported to have bad working conditions for its employees and this can have negative impact on Apple's brand image in the minds of the consumer. "Because of large orders, Apple also has to expand its number of partners in supplying parts and that causes Apple to have more difficulty when it comes to controlling quality management" (Cho, 2012). With a focus to spearhead emerging market like India where the consumers are price sensitive, Apple is in talks with Indian government to manufacture I-phone in the country .The aim for this strategy is to bring down the cost of its products, so that the company could increase sales in Indian market which has surpassed US as the No.2 smart phone market after