Apple Inc. was started by Steve Wozniak, and it has grown into a multinational company. The Company is located in California U.S., and it designs and manufactures IT software and hardware. The current CEO, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded the company in April 1976.
The success of Apple Company in the early 1970s and 1980s made the company to become a bench market for the industry. This essay will reference Apple Inc. by specifically explaining how the Apple launched and diversified their iPhone products, its distribution and promotional approaches to advance these products.
The introduction of the iPods, iPhones, and the launching of the table computing with the iPad was what led to this success. The success of Apple was through the company’s detail strategy management, which is a process of thorough understanding of their organization, competitive environment, and implementing their strategies.
The research involved the company creating objectives, which aided in accessing the organization resources and capabilities as well. It also leads to the exploration of the external environment competitive opportunities and threats. Apple achievement was through focusing on providing high-quality products and services, and at the same time, cultivating good public relationship with their clients in every business deal (Capozzi, Kellen, & Smit, 2012).
They made sure that they applied those principles of the business to maximize their profits and brand reputation. They remained honesty and truthful to their clients, and they handled their customers and suppliers with due respect.
They also protected their product copy right by not revealing the company’s confidential information to the outsiders and especially their business rivals. Finally, they conducted businesses in a way that benefited the communities they served by employing high work performance team (HWPT) that remained royal and devoted to the company.
Moreover, the Apple Company had to deal with other forces that affected the PC industry. These included; long term growth, lifestyle and social concern as well as globalization. Additionally, there evolved some key factors that were required by the company in order to obtain compelling profits. These included marketing, skill, technology, manufacturing, and distribution. After considering all these factors, the company was able to compete in global industry.
Moreover, Apple used the macro-environment to determine its success. Internet growth enabled Apple to provide a strong competition to its competitor by staying tuned to customer’s demands and by updating their research through creating new technologies such as Smartphones and tablets (Tariq, Ishrat, & Khan, 2011).
Furthermore, the Apple Company used a type of business model known as “Porter’s Five Forces Model”, which they used as an analysis taken to examine the pressures that were applied to the PC Industry. This enabled Apple to build a loyalty brand with its consumers. Consequently, as the new market expanded due to globalization, the cost of products lowered resulting to rivalry among the competitors.
According to Karlgaard (2012), Apples’ prices are quiet higher compared to other PC industry competitors. For example, in 2009 and 2010, Apple’s average net profit margin was 0.2, while HP was 0.07 and Dell was 0.04. The popularity of Apple’s software and hardware systems, as well the iPhone and iPad, resulted to this competitive advantage to the company in the market.
Another pricing strategy that Apple Company planned and employed was a continual investment research and development, which assisted in improving their current products. The company is also looking forward to expand its distribution methods in order to yield increased and quality sales. The idea behind this move is to provide consumers with quality value products (Helft, 2011).
Owing to the researches of different technologies, various companies have come up with new opportunities that enable low cost manufacturing and innovation.
This new trend is seen with PC companies like Apple, Amazon, and Android. Through these technologies, quality products are produced leading to increased product cost by the end user. Internet growth is making it easier for consumers to have access to direct sales all over the world. Apple Company own such retail outlets, which allow for constancy of brand image and reputation of product; and this enhances local instant feedback
In addition, Apple Company enjoys a competitive advantage over reputable brand recognition. The ability of the company to maintain this based brand recognition is the prime power in their brand. Through revolutionary of computer to mobile device, brand recognition enabled the transfer of company’s image from product to product.
Most of the large consumer electronic companies suffer thin profit margins, which is brought about by global competition. Some companies are initially accepting lower profits so as to attain volume sales. Apple Company, together with other top computer makers in the U.S., underwent such distress while they were in the process of product innovation and differentiation in order to raise capital needed for the innovation (Schlender, 2012).
Rival companies, such as Microsoft, started producing their own tablets version, which doubled the opposed PC market. To deal with strategic rivals, the Apple Company focused on smaller devices. Further, it had effectively made use of online advertising to advertise and utilize campaigns on its brand, and hence increased the product awareness.
Apple Company is also looking forward to attaining prospective profitability. Finn-Enrik says that despite the company being huge, for a large growth, there are some opportunities for tablets and other media devices in the near future in some parts of America and Asia.
The Apple is also faced with macro-environment such as global factors due to economic conditions, technological factors, legal, demographic societal and lifestyles as well as natural environmental factors. Due to these macro factors, the company suffered a stiff turn down in 2008 and 2009, but it gained a slight recovery in 2010 (Fisher, 2011).
The US government employed certain measures by encouraging local manufacturers through incentives. The government has employed some measure on cutting down the pollution, which led the Apple Company to set up a recycling plant. These measures of restricting hazardous substances have regulated the production of quality products.
Apple Company went on the fore front campaign, by showing social and environmental concerns and challenging on waste disposal. These shifts yielded to vast move on the success of the company because it attracted customers, who supported its efforts to reduce pollution.
Conclusion
The future of Apple Company is bright. The company should go ahead with the growth strategy in order to increase and expand the current operations and increase their profits and competitive edge. The company should concentrate within the same business area, make innovations and improve the quality of their products to expand their market globally.
References
Capozzi, M., Kellen, A., & Smit, S. (2012). The perils of best practice: Should you emulate Apple? McKinsey Quarterly, 4, 8-11.
Fisher, D. (2011). Buy Apple (And Aetna). Forbes, 188(7), 56-58.
Helft, M. (2011). Steve Jobs’ Real Legacy: Apple Inc. Fortune, 164(5), 59-65.
Karlgaard, R. (2012). Apple Without Jobs First Trillion-Dollar Company? Forbes, 190(8), 34-34.
Schlender, B. (2012). Apple’s not-so-secret weapon. Fast Company, 168, 31-32.
Tariq, M., Ishrat, R., & Khan, H. (2011). A Case Study of Apple’s Success with iconic iPod and iPhone. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 3(1), 158-168.