Essay about Apple Inc. a 30 Year Business Strategy

The PC industry has started to develop fast in the 80 's when IBM launched its first PC series and later on when numerous small companies entered the market. PC is a new product and companies had to create the demand to it from the scratch.

The personal computer has been credited for many of its strengths. A PC is easy to shop for, since most computer retailers rely heavily

Apple has been on the cutting edge of technology for many year. However, their leading competitor Samsung has begun to close the gap. Apple has several major and minor issues that should be addressed in order to corner the market and pull ahead of their competitors. In the past, Apple has been able to generate a buzz with their revolutionary products and top of the line technologies. However, in the past few years , their lack of product innovation has caused a drop in the companies popularity. Apple needs to reinvigorate their imagine in the eye of the public and improve their business strategy. Outlined below are several of the major and minor issues facing the Apple corporation, as well as recommendations to help the corporation regain its share of the market.

The first strength of the Apple Inc. company is the financial position. The Apple Inc. developed to number one company in the globe and conquered the capital market. Yoffie and Penelop, 2012, states that Apple Inc. holds a solid financial located with a total assets of $162.90 billion. He also claimed that the Apple Inc. is the company that holds biggest trade out hand up to $116 billion. The Apple Inc. are financially strong enough to invest more in research and development to retain their outstanding position and their net revenue of 46%. The second strength of the Apple Inc. company is the separated products. The Apple Inc.’s personal computer operating structure is well secured. It were built free from viruses and hackers which tend to attack the Windows programming of Microsoft. Besides that, the Apple Inc.’s products are structured to address the interest about consumer’s ways of life which make the realistic framework and create of Apple’s products better than their competitor’s products in a similar market sector. Meanwhile, the Apple Inc. company holds the upper class sophisticated software products which is diverse from the other competitors. Each Apple Inc.’s products are produced from high quality products, such as aluminum, which consolidated with unique designs. These elements in their unlimited cluster of products make customers to sense that they have an expensive and glamourous product when they carry any Apple Inc. product. Weaknesses The first weakness

electronics industry. This report will analyze Apple’s history, its business strategy, and the way it

Apple is a multinational organization borne in America and was mainly started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the year 1976. It deals in the designing and selling of computer software, a collection of hand-held devices like mobile phones, tablets, iPads, iTunes and also deals with personal computers. The major brands associated with Apple include MacBook, Macintosh hardware products, iPads and iPhones and this has been the driving force behind Apple’s success. This organization has come to be seen as one of the iconic consumer electronics designer in today’s world and despite Apple having a wide product range, the organization handles each line of the product in a unique manner. Every Apple product is handled as a lone individual business unit.

The technology industry is one predicated on constant innovation. Products within the field must provide a compelling value proposition for consumers in order to properly maintain both margins and revenue. Technology companies, particularly those who manufacture products are realizing decreasing margins as the competitive environment matures (Bodie, 2004). Competition for foreign competitors has reduced margins and subsequently profit margins. Cost conscious consumers are now purchasing product based primarily on price rather than specifications. Combine this fact with the macroeconomic factors prevailing in the market and the industry has significant headwinds going forward one year from now. This is particularly true of Dell who has seen an erosion of market share due to the influx and demand of tablet computers. Less demand for traditional laptops has also decreased the profit and operating margins of the firm. Even within its own market, Dell has encountered significant competition for rivals such as HP, IBM, and Microsoft who recently announced its own tablet (Scheck, 2008). Below is a chart indicating markets share within the PC market over the last decade. Notice that market share gains after the housing market collapse have deteriorated. This reflects changing consumer sentiments regarding the overall purchase of PCs and heightened demand for alternative products such as tablets and notebooks.

     In this paper I will discuss the industry structure and the behavior of firms in the Personal Computer Industry. The personal computer industry has five leaders: Compaq Computer Corporation (CCC), Dell Computer Corporation, International Business Machines (IBM), Hewlett-Packard, and Gateway, (Industry Survey, Apr. 2000). The PC industry, as discussed in the paper, is comprised only of home/business use machines, not mainframes, databases, or any kind of servers or super-computers. The PC industry is a fast-growing, consumer-based oligopoly. I will prove the latter through the use of industry characteristics and firm behaviors by giving an overview of each leading firm and their behaviors', then

These are customized products at low prices, plus fast delivery and perfect customer service. With the direct business model, all of Dell's products are manufactured by customer’s order. This approach help Dell Computer Corporation become the world's largest leading manufacturer and direct distributor computer systems. A customer can call to branch or access to www.dell.com Dell to order your computer which you want. Within 5 days the computer will be delivered to the customer with the same computer configuration, Dell offers lower price about 10-15 % than the prices of competitors. Besides, a maintenance service of Dell is considered perfect. Dell is a leading company with reliable products and perfect service with 40% of world PC shipments in U.S’s owned computer makers. Distribution form one - one from customer’s needs helps Dell does not get bogged down with the computer that nobody wants. With direct model sale, Dell should not have to pay for intermediate distributor. Thus Dell offer prices below the average up to 12 % compared to competitors. Nearly 2/3 of Dell’s products are sold to government, large corporations and educational

In short, at the time of the Matching Dell case study the PC industry was essentially in a boom, and particularly in the United States. Steady growth and expansion continued from the first waves created in the mid-1970s by firms like Apple, and exploded in the 1980s with IBM’s first PC offering. Companies likely envisioned a huge potential for growth due to the fact that PC had become attainable as a household commodity, and was almost certainly on the path to become a household necessity in relatively short order. In the early to mid 1980’s, I would argue that the industry was at its attractiveness peak to new start-ups and existing firms that already had a foothold. By the time 1998

Hewlett-Packard faces intense competition in all its business segments in terms of price, quality, brand, technology, reputation, distribution, range of products etc. The company faces stiff competition in the PC market. The company has become the market leader in the PC segment in the third and fourth quarter of 2006, relegating Dell to the second position. With Michael Dell returning as Chief Executive Officer, Dell is likely to come back strongly and make a fierce bid for market leadership. Other significant competitors in the PC market include Acer, Apple Computer, Gateway, Lenovo Group and Toshiba Corporation. Moreover, Acer’s acquisition of Gateways has made it the third largest PCs supplier in the world. In some regions, the company faces competition from local companies and from generically-branded or white box manufacturers. The company’s competitors in enterprise servers and storage include broad solutions providers such as IBM, focused competitors such as EMC Corporation in storage, Dell in industry standard servers and Sun Microsystems in UNIX-based servers. The imaging and printing group’s key competitors include Canon USA, Lexmark International, Xerox Corporation, Seiko Epson Corporation, Samsung Electronics and Dell. Hewlett-Packard’s inkjet market share expanded as Lexmark and Epson discontinued their unprofitable printer bundling arrangements with personal computer and retail partners, under which printers were given free with PC

Based on these numbers one can assume that consumer demand was initially exceeded by Windows 95. However, Microsoft headed by Bill Gates was not satisfied and they had experienced success and they wanted a lot more of it. One man, also in the computer industry, had some say in this pursuit of ultimate success. This man, Steve Jobs, was the mastermind of the computer giant Apple. Both had no intention of giving in and losing the industry race. Many people picked their side of the battle by choosing what computer they enjoyed more and were unbelievably loyal to that side throughout the generations. Loyalty ran so deep people started to trash talk about the other side like Vic Sussman, an American newspaper and radio journalist. She

Due to a changing market environment and existing product life-circle there is a need for the company to revise its present business units and to think about further expansion. There is a shift in customer demand and therefore it is crucial for Dell to recognize in what ways best to satisfy the customers?needs.

Apple’s main focus is on technology. This is simply because technology propels a company to higher levels hence remaining very competitive in the industry. As such, most of its products are mainly based on technological innovations. The main challenge of this industry is therefore continued technological innovations. The time that the product remains very competitive in the market is very short as compared to any other product from other industries. The product stays in the market competitively for less than a year if there is no improvement in technology (Gross, 2012).

Before 1981, all firms use their own platform and not a single firm at that time controlled the interface standards, the hardware architecture and also the operating system. Most firms started using the IBM “compatible” PC which creates product standardization. This again contributes to economies of scale and the drop in cost and price. There are few contributors to the increase in sales and the further drop in prices in the PC industry, by the introduction of the following technological advancement: