I. Supply, Demand, and Market Equilibrium
a) Determine the extent to which the supply and demand of your chosen product or service are sensitive to changes in price by applying the concept of elasticity. In other words, what is the price elasticity of supply or demand for your product or service?
Apple does a very good job of always seeming to create a demand for their newest product. They try to keep enough supply on hand so that the customer doesn’t have to wait a long time to get the new product. They have created a pattern of coming out with a new phone that people “need” every year. I believe the supply and demand are usually about 6/7 months before people tend to want to wait for the new phone. If the demand goes down and then the
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This will allow Apple to keep the demand high.
c) Select two non-price factors that impact the supply of your chosen product or service. Justify your selections. Apple makes many of the parts needed to make the iPhone in other countries. This could become a problem if those companies ever change their laws or regulations. Also if the demand gets higher than the current supply, it could take longer to get the parts needed from those countries to make the phones. Apple choses to make many of its parts on China. In China the regulations are very different than in the U.S. This allows them to pay the workers less than they would if they were to use U.S. workers. Apple does its best to endure that workers are taken care and paid well but that is still up to debate for some. I believe this helps Apple keep their price lower which helps to keep the demand high.
d) Define the industry and the market equilibrium associated with the product or service.
The mobile market has continued to grow over the years with more and more of Apple’s competitors entering the smartphone market. It has also created more competitive prices (other than the iPhone) for customers who don’t want to shell out the big bucks to get an expensive phone. For the most part people know what type of phone they like or what company they prefer to do business with. IPhone is still very high on the top selling smart phones in the cellular
availability of substitutes, and justify how you determine the price elasticity of demand for your firm’s product. b) Explain the factors that affect consumer responsiveness to price changes for this product, using the concept of price
Describe three macroeconomic variables in the United States that impact the supply and demand of your chosen product or service.
The iphone is such a popular phone to have . the demand for this product would be high when a new one comes out and the demand would be low when people stop buying the phones.
* How do the concepts of macroeconomics help you understand the factors that affect shifts
THE STRENGTHS OF BEST BUY Good customer satisfaction levels, especially with women, who have the most consumer electronics purchases in the United States. An ability to retain customer loyalty. Marketing expertise in the electronics sector.
Once again Apple has been the first to the market when it comes to new features such as the touch screen, which has helped to keep its competition at arms length. Like all other Apple products, the smartphone is seen by many consumers in the industry as fashionable and a must have. Also Apple’s online music store support has also been a huge lift to its smartphones, as consumers can download music and thousands of applications.
It is widely believed that the main reason to manufacture in Asian countries is because it's 'too expensive' to manufacture in America even though it would only cost about $60 more dollars to make an iPhone in the USA. It is believed the reason is America doesn't produce enough workers in need of these jobs. It would take months for America to find these workers but in China it would take as little as 15 days.
With Apple being so far ahead of their competition, the only problem one can foresee in Apple’s future is how long they can sustain such innovation before they plateau. Apple does a phenomenal job at releasing their innovative products before their competition, but if their innovation cannot hold steady, this may lead to changes in demand for their products considerably. This can be seen with their release of the iPhone, the first successful touch screen cellular phone. Although people swarmed to the iPhone when it was first released because of its advanced technology, as the years have passed, other similar designs, including those with android and windows based operating systems, have drawn a considerable portion of the market. A clear representation of Apple’s attempt to regain some of this market can be seen when the iPhone was released to Verizon Wireless’ customers in
A total of 96.8 percent of phones out in the word are either iphones or androids according to the 2015 recorded phone sales. Since 2010 apple and and android has been fighting and competing with each other trying to achieve that top of the smartphone market. It all started when Samsung released their bread new Galaxy S. This phone was identical to the iphone, having similar looks and similar icons. Many people consider this new Androids product better at this moment because android has been out for a longer time, and still provide mind blowing devices like this one. This situation made apple very furious because this new android device was a replica of their iphone. The market prices went crazy and people started favoring androids because how they looked and acted just like an iphone and it was and a completely different price range. There forward androids started selling more than their own iphone. This made apple step up their game in production and started listen to people 's comments. This is when the real fight begins. This is when people started seeing that apple in general is better than android offering more to the people and offering what they asked for.
Technology is a sector which grows very rapidly and keeps the organisations such as Apple always on their feet striving to develop their products continuously to compete in the fast competition. Apple having launched their product in Europe saw that the mobile phone industry in Europe was much more advanced than the U.S. People in Europe want their phones to do much more than just make calls and iPhone only capable of running on GSM technology lacked the potential to dominate and further acquire the market share in the telecom industry in Europe. Thus Apple came up with the newer model of its product, iPhone 3GS to meet the needs of the consumers and stats show that the move helped Apple maintain its growing user base. In the future too Apple needs to lay a lot of focus on working on it's tradition of bringing out something new.
Apple also sources from various Asian countries – mainly China. The major benefit of souring to Asia is a source of certain problems. As Asian manufacturing plants make every effort to reduce their costs of production, they sometimes appoint in unethical practices in business. Asian manufacturing plants are flagrant for exploiting their workers. Workers usually work for long hours but are paid very less. Apple makes use of its main market position (buying power) to obtain these services at the lowest possible price when it comes to workers' working conditions and wages, therefore keeping the major share of the profit for itself and giving the lowest probable share to the employees. In the past half-decade 17 workers have killed themselves because they worked so hard yet got paid so little that it became hard for them to support their families. Apple's uncommunicativeness was deeply criticized in May, when as a minimum of 62 workers fell sick after breathing in n-hexane which is used at a Wintek electronics factory in Suzhou to clean touch screens. In order to improve their flaws, Apple should build a more environmentally friendly effort, should look after the safety measures carefully, should increase the workers wage rate and should have a better relationship with their
Almost everyone around the world know of Apple iPhones and one of the most anticipated release of the company was last week. Apple, announced that they are releasing two new version of the iPhone (iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus) on September 12th, 2014 and was available in nine countries (U.S., UK, Germany, Canada, France, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan) on September 19th, 2014. They estimate that by the end of this year the new iPhones will be available in 115 markets around the world. The prices of the iPhone 6 ranges from $199 (with contracts) to $ 849 (unlocked with maximized memory) and the prices of iPhone 6 Plus ranges from $299 (with contracts) to $ 949 (unlocked with maximized memory). These prices ranges is currently in the U.S. However, the prices change greatly in three countries where Apple decided that the phones are not available until later this year. For this media report assignment, I looked at three different new sources that talked about the outrageous prices of the iPhones (because of the name of the phone and the dying fans who wants to be the first to own one.)
After 2004 the company started to fall shortly. The revenues from the business unit dropped from $28billion to $12billion in a period of 2006 to 2008. The number of mobile phone sold during the period dropped from 217 million to 100 million. Apple iPhone became the dominating brand. Recession of 2008 led to excess and useless inventory.
Without saying, the iPhone does no less of a job than any of the smart phones out in the market. More importantly, Apple has re-demonstrated to the world that their logo represents innovation and reliability. The advantages of having a big brand name means that people know your product, and believe in it. What Apple has over small companies and startup companies is a financial leverage over them. Instead of mass advertisement, apple can feed more of its money into R & D which can allow them to fuel the economy with new innovating idea’s and products. Strengths: 1) Brand name- Highly recognized name from previous products like Apple computers and iPod & iTunes. Known for offering multi-functional, reliable and cutting edge products- that is design capabilities of products. 2) Capital- profits from its long established operations give iPhone financial leverage or R & D Startup Company’s lack. Weaknesses: Like almost all products, the iPhone is not entirely flawless. Its major weakness is its limited channels of distribution. Unlike the IPod, which are sold through many retailers, the iPhone canonly be sold in AT&T stores, T-mobile, and Apple stores. Although AT&T is the largest phone service provider in the United States, they only currently serve 58 million out of 2.14 billion cell phone subscribers. Besides for their poor channels of
Some experts mentioned that the affordability of smartphones must contribute to the growth of smartphones in global market. Few previous reviews already projected that different vendors like Samsung, Apple & HTC have already sold out more than one billion units by the end of year 2012.