The Product Lifecycle: An Analysis of Two Successful Products

The short product life cycle in this industry requires competitors to continuously evolve. This continual innovation is difficult for new entrants to achieve. Also, existing products, such as Apple’s iPhone, have built brand loyalty and associated switching costs for consumers, which pose as barriers to entry for new competitors.

For a product of your choice, discuss the characteristics of each stage of the product lifecycle and explain the marketing strategy you would implement.

Apple Inc. is an American Multinational corporation that designs, develops and sells consumer electronics, Software and personal computers. Apple Inc.’s best known hardware products are the iPhone smartphone, ipod media player, the mac line of computers and the ipad tablet computer. Apple Inc. is the world's second-largest information technology company by revenue after Samsung Electronics, and the world's third-largest mobile phone maker after Samsung and Nokia . Apple Inc.’s success in recent years can be attributed to its emphasis on Innovation. Apples Inc.’s iPhone, iPod touch and iPad were some of the most innovative consumer electronic products the market had seen in years. The purpose of this report is to analyse the innovative environment and technology development process that set the scene for apple to dominate the consumer electronics market.

This Preliminary Marketing Report has been prepared upon being commissioned by Apply to provide the company with an analysis of the market and an overview prior to launching the iPad product into the Australian market. The report will give an overview of the current situation along with strategies for the future. It looks at observing the current competitors that are aimed against the iPad and defining the industry in which the product is planned to be launched in.

The company develops and creates new products on a yearly basis for all its categories to keep itself in the spotlight, ahead of the game, and constantly moving forward. However with the death of Apple’s founder and innovator Steve Jobs, this has proven to be a great handicap to the sustainability of the company and consumers has become sceptical and concerned about maintaining the uniqueness of Apple devices. Recently there has been the perception of a sacrifice in hardware capabilities for better design and better seen quality thus ruining Apple’s reputation in the eye of tech savvy consumers, who claim other competitors have better technology for a cheaper price (Yun Qing 2012) such as Samsung (Datamonitor 2011).

Introduction Stage – This stage of the cycle could be the most expensive for a company launching a new product. The size of the market for the product is

In the twenty-first century everyone is exposed to technologies and thrives to keep up with the current technological advancements, regardless of social status or nationality. With a fast cycle consumer electronics market, new inventions enter and dominate the market frequently. Apple is the second most valuable brand in the world (Brown, 2014) and has been shaping and innovating technologies over the past two decades. Originally founded in 1976, it was not until 1990, when Steve Jobs was officially announced CEO of the company that the firm started to see great progression. Along with the introduction of the iPod in 2001 and the iPhone in 2007 as well as the continuous development of the Macintosh came Apple’s breakthrough

A new product which is being introduced in the market such as YBS must have undergone over various different stages, which starts with a preliminary concept of product, evaluation, development, testing and then launch in the market (Booz, Allen & Hamilton, 1982). This array /flow of activities can also be view as a series of information collection and evaluating stages. In the contrary, the new product evolvement management lead to increase in more knowledgeable stage about the product .then it assesses again for its initial decision to undertake the product launch. (Ulrich & Eppinger, 2011; Wind, 2001; Cooper, 2001; Crawford, 1987; Scheuing,

There are many ways for the product manager (PM) to gather information on their way to creating a successful business plan to present to upper management to justify the funds and support for new product initiatives, projects and activities. The research methodologies of quantitative, qualitative and experimental research are important processes to assess, identify and refine the many variables which help define the path to decision-making for new product development, product lines and product portfolios.

the impact that it is going to gain for your company, for instance when Blackberry makes new

This is the launching step in which the firm commits to introducing the product into the marketplace. During this stage, heavy emphasis is placed on the organization structure and management talent needed to implement the marketing strategy. Emphasis is also given to following up on such things as bugs in the design, production costs, quality control, and inventory requirements. Importance of time Over the course of the last five years, companies have placed an increasing emphasis on shortening their products’ time to market. Time to market can be defined as the elapsed time between product definition and product

“The cost of Apple’s product differentiation acts as a barrier to entry, thus preventing the threats of new entrants.” (Kelvin, 2012) Apple also applies patent for its inventions which in turn, helps Apple to limit the new competition. Apple targeted on customers with high salary range and priced its products at a highly price due to the high quality of products. Yet, new entrants usually will target on the market towards customers with a lower price range as they are using market penetration pricing in order to gain more market share. Therefore, Apple no need to worry the new entrants may threaten their market share because the targeted market are different. “There are several large, well entrenched players that have high brand recognition and loyalty, including Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Apple among others currently in the market.” (Brian, 2009, p. 4) Through profound R&D and an emphasis on product innovation, Apple also successfully developed its brand name and achieved high brand recognition. When new firms enter the market, they might have difficulty to develop a successful brand in the market. “Economies of scale, in microeconomics, are the cost advantages that a business obtains due to expansion.” (Justin Horn, 2010) With the economies of scale, Apple is able to keep its cost of production down by producing the next unit of output at lower cost. Economies of scale state that by expanding the scale of production, the

In this assignment, I am going to describe and explain how Apple uses the marketing mix for one of its latest product, a mini IPad.

Starting a new product is never easy for a company. The difficulties they face are diverse in nature, and often they lack initiatives so that customers are not interested in the product.

The launch of a product is an exciting time especially to a company because it signifies the success in the long process and expenses spent in developing a product. Launching also needs to be strategized for its success (Indounas, 2016). The process involved: