Background Information
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak established Apple Inc. in 1997. It was formerly known as Apple Computer, Inc., before diversifying its operations and adopting the name Apple Inc. The company was later incorporated in California on January 3, 1977. The few years that followed saw a slow growth and marginal profits for the company.
This continued until Steve Jobs came back to the company as CEO after several years of running his own business, NeXT. As the company’s CEO, Steve Jobs revolutionized Apple Inc. to be the multinational company we know today. Currently, Apple’s dominance in the technology industry cannot be rivaled.
Apple specializes in designs, manufacturing, and marketing of mobile communication and media devices as well as portable digital music players. In addition, it sells a variety of related software such as operating system software (iOS), peripherals, network solutions and third party digital content and application.
Some of its popular products include iPhone, Mac (portables and desktop), iPod, apple TV, and variety of accessory services. The company’s client base is broad and ranges from household consumers, small and midsized business, educational institutions, and enterprises to governments. The company has strived to remain relevant, therefore, commanding a sizeable market share since its inception.
This it has achieved through thorough research and development of market trends and technological advancements, production of quality products, and aggressive advertisements. Since its inception, the company has set foot in almost all the continents, America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and even Africa. It is prudent to acknowledge that Apple exists in an intensely competitive industry.
The company continues to face aggressive competitors in all its spheres of business operations. Notable competitors include Google Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, and Research In Motion Limited. The technology market is characterized by frequent product innovation, and technological advancements. Apple Inc. has made tremendous strides to level these challenges.
However, its continued market dominance relies on its ability to develop and offer new innovative products and services. The technology industry is rapidly growing. More and more people continue to accept the importance of technology in improving the quality of life and making work easier. This has ensured significant market growth. As a result, strategically placed and innovation oriented companies in the industry are a going concern.
Apple is one of such companies with high possibility of future growth. Despite having several revolutionary products, the company has continued to finance several research projects aimed at inventing other new products. In Mach 2012, for instance, the company launched an LTE-enabled iPad tablet.
What exactly has propelled Apple to be the giant we know about? According to Sam Walters, the company’s regional sales executive, the firm’s fortunes have been propelled by excellent strategic decisions (personal communication).
Strategic decisions
Strategic decisions vary from one organization to another. This depends on the entity’s economic strength and globalization efforts. To that effect, resource sharing and competition for the available market necessitates a strong corporate image coupled with an effective strategic plan.
Strategic management is a company’s objective over the long term that seeks to gain it a competitive advantage against the other companies trading in similar wares. Consequently, Apple must use its own resources and manage them well to achieve their goal. The world displays volatility and thus it changes depending on the factors surrounding it.
Apple is one such company whose strategic management techniques aid it in brand positioning and exploration of new markets globally. It is often advisable to set company targets with keen interest on the input of the internal and external markets. This discussion limits its findings on how Apple makes strategic decisions, how the personnel apply the very decisions and the external environment’s reaction towards these changes.
Strategies often refer to organizational history since the past often has a way of shaping the future. From eligible founders one of whom receives accolade posthumous, Apple makes huge profits irrespective of the costly computer hardware and software they trade in. This is because of a unique strategy that does not fully depend on monetary projections but rather a strong corporate image.
Since its inception, the company showed tremendous growth in consumer base, fiscal returns, and general company reputation. This means that apple unlike other business entities invested most of their energy on building an indispensable corporate standing in a changing environment. As such, the company formed a niche in an environment with enormous competing entities.
According to Walters, the company’s image has continued to propel it despite turbulences in the technology world and cut throat competition (Personal communication).
As such, the company’s management has continued to commit funds in promoting the company’s image through advertisements and social responsibility projects. This strategy seems to have worked well so far considering the company’s positive reviews by many bloggers, scholars, critics, and the public. A strong brand image and a reputable founder of the entity make the company proud.
When organizations formulate strategic decisions, they probably focus on beating competition and keeping at par with a changing environment. This has been the case with Apple too. Apple formulates an effective environmental scanning plan in a bid to understand both micro-environmental and macro-environmental factors likely to affect the organization.
In attaining their mandate, Apple realized that the vision, mission, resources, competition, media, clients, suppliers, employees, and their performance needed analysis. That was for the internal environment. For the external environment however, social, economic, technological, and legislative functions played a huge role.
The essence of environmental scanning is to identify the limitations within the industry that deter it from achieving its mandate. An environmental survey requires Apple to do a comprehensive situation analysis. Often a situation analysis focuses on four major functions.
They represent the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The former two entities signify internal sanctions that are under the organization’s control whilst the latter two are external to the organization. Environmental scanning has given the company a competitive edge over its main rivals.
Additionally, the company has invested in excellent production and marketing hence making profits in return. The Mac book, IPad, IPhone and other computers make Apple stand out from the rest. Their high quality products gave them a unique brand whose competitive nature still thrives even in the absence of Steve Jobs.
While these products display a myriad of benefits to the consumer, they represent a vital tool that necessitates communication across the globe. Additional they encompass the greatest asset in the business world today. Apple IPad makes teaching a completely new experience and entertainment an entire revolution. By committing itself to high quality products, Apple has won over millions of customers across the globe.
Commitment to high quality production remains the company’s principal strategy. Any of the firm’s products are industry leaders. Some of them are revolutionary, while others are top performers. Despite producing many leading products, the firm has continued to invest heavily in research and development to find better ways of improving their product performances and inventing completely new ones.
Apple’s diversification strategy has worked well too. The company has invested in several lines of business, which all contribute significantly to its income and growth. The company produces hardware such as the Mac computer and gadgets such iPhone and iPad. The company also runs the biggest music store in the world, iTunes. Most importantly, the company’s diversified products complement each other.
Those who purchase iPad and iPhone purchase music to listen to on their gadgets from iTunes. The company’s iStore provides software and advice for buyers of its computers and gaming consoles. This way, Apple has created a society of customers, and developed for them platforms to help them with their products.
The company has been able to retain most of its customers because of loyalty developed through complimenting products. If you use an iPad, buy music from iTunes, run a Mac in your house, what does that make you? Clients who find themselves in such situations often develop a tendency to buy upgrades form the company despite the existence of competing products.
These varied products have also ensured that the company is discussed on various media platform at least daily, which constitute marketing. If people are not discussing music, they discuss the ways of communication or technology. Apple is involved in all these lines and will most certainly surface in the discussions.
Apple has applied consistency as a marketing strategy. The firm’s products have a common basic architecture, which makes those who have bought any of their products to know how to operate new ones easily. Moreover, customers like purchasing products with easy usability.
This strategy has continued to propel the firm to greater heights. Another strategy the firm has used for years to its advantage is the use of proprietary formats. The company’s products are often encoded to discourage cross platform usage, which is associated with declining sales in many sectors.
This has hindered consumers from using apple’s products with other company’s products. As a result, consumers have often opted to buy upgrades and new products from the company to continue enjoying services.
In conclusion, Apple’s strategic plan takes into consideration the above-discussed factors. Apple maximizes on its strengths, capitalizes on its opportunities, reduces the threats to its operations, and avoids its weaknesses dragging it downwards. Often, this is an uphill task but being a big entity, it can configure its resources and attain the company’s collective goal.
The plan must aim at improving the corporate image so that they translate the benefits into fiscal gains. The strategic plan must hence use information as the greatest tool of improving the company’s internal conditions before moving to the external realm.
Consequently, competition must always exist and gaining a competitive advantage revolves around quality, efficiency, innovation, and communication technology as displayed by this company. An effective plan ensures that the company becomes fully independent even in the absence of the founder. This is evident with Apple’s strategy. Though the co-founder is in demise, the entity still runs successfully.
Apple only needs to maximize on marketing in order to garner the biggest consumer base and in order to gain an international accolade. Otherwise, the company’s strategic plan provides them with the best platform to scale the heights of stardom.