Marketing Assignment

Company and Product Analysis

Over the years, Apple Inc. has been a key player in the technology industry through their outstanding product designs that they offer to their customers. Apple Inc. was founded in 1976 through a partnership between Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. It is a multinational technology firm with its headquarters in Cupertino, California, in the United States. The main objective for the establishment of this company was to design, develop, and sell personal computers that could help individuals and businesses improve the quality of their work (Kaputa, 2012). In 1977 Apple Computers, Inc. was incorporated only a year after its formation. As a result, the name changed to Apple Inc. which has held up to date. The company has managed to achieve significant growth levels over the years, by being able to offer a wide range of electronics, software systems, and personal computing products. Apple Inc. has been a publicly traded company since 1980 as NASDAQ: AAPL, which contributed to its financial success and in 2015, the company joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average Component.

Apple Inc. is one of the largest technology companies in terms of revenue and assets. The company runs more than 500 retail stores spread across the world, which has enabled Apple to reach out to global consumers. Apple employs more than 132,000 employees both in fulltime and part-time employment (Nielson, 2014). As of the financial year 2018, the company’s revenue averaged at US$265.59 billion with a net income of US$59.53 billion (NASDAQ.com, 2018). The company’s operating income was $70.9 billion and its assets were valued at US$365.7 billion while the total equity of the company was US$107.2 billion during the financial year 2018. These values indicate that the company has been growing over time making it a market leader in the industry. The company stocks is currently trading at $171.06 (wsj.com. 2019). In 2018, Apple Inc. became the first publicly traded company to be valued at more than $1 trillion US dollars which is an indicator of the growth that the company has attained over the past decade despite the intense competition in the global market.

The vision of a firm forms the basis of the success of the company. A clearly stated and strategic vision statement ensures that the firm can become a leading player in its industry. The vision statement of Apple Inc. is followed to ensure that the company maintains the competitive edge in the market (Price, 2012). The vision indicates the direction taken by the firm in attaining growth and development of unique products that meet the needs of their customers in the global market. This vision statement provides the future direction to be followed by the company as it is comprehensive. The vision statement of Apple Inc. states that seeks to influence the strategic management of the firm by enhancing effective decision making by the management in order to reach the set future goals (Price, 2012). The company seeks to create change in the world by being a market leader in the technology industry. This vision statement influences the company’s strategic management by providing specific details that guide its operations as a multinational organization.

Market differentiation has been at the core of Apple’s success over the years. Apple Inc. offers unique and outstanding product designs to their consumers, which has enabled the company to achieve significant growth over the years and become a leading firm in the industry with their unique brands. Most of the strategies adopted by Apple Inc. are geared towards global expansion and dominance in the market (Nielson, 2014). Apple adopted the intensive growth strategy as a way of ensuring that it is able to expand to other market locations unlike in the past where the firm had focused on serving the American market. In addition, generic strategy has helped determine the company’s competitive advantage against its closest competitors such as Samsung, BlackBerry, Microsoft, and LG among others (Khan, Alam, & Alam, 2015). Thus, the intensive growth, pricing, marketing, and generic strategies adopted by Apple Inc. have enabled the firm to enhance its growth and maintain a strong position on a global scale.

Apple Inc. deals with a wide range of products such as computer software, consumer electronics, and online services that have enabled it to generate a lot of revenue and making it the largest company in the industry in terms of revenue. In addition, the company has been an outstanding manufacturer and distributor of hardware products among them being the iPhone smartphones, Apple computers such as the Mac Personal and iPad tablets, media player, smart watches, and televisions (Kaputa, 2012). These products have attracted the attention of global consumers, with increasing sales across the world. In addition, the company offers software products and services to the consumers such as the iOS and OS X operating systems, web browser, iTunes media player, and iLife among other online services. The iPhone XR and iPhone XS Max are the latest products launched in the global market by the company (Khan, Alam, & Alam, 2015). In addition, Apple Inc. is one of the leading manufacturers of mobile phones in the global market, focusing mainly on the high end market segments.

Apple Inc. has various strengths as a market leader in the electronic and technology industry. The strengths of the company include a strong brand name that is well established among consumers in the global market. The company offers high quality products with continuous improvements, innovative and creative products, a strong brand image, as well as the presence of a strong and able research and development team within the company (Khan, Alam, & Alam, 2015). In addition, the financial strength of the company has been increasing as they are able to widen their market share in most products, both computer hardware and software. Moreover, the company has benefited from the loyalty of its customers, who focus on quality of the products offered by the company. On the other hand, the weaknesses of the company include the high priced products, which make it hard for some consumers to afford them. The lifecycle for most of their products is small, which forces the company to rely on new products and services as a source of revenue (Nielson, 2014). The company has failed to offer products suitable for the corporate consumers as most of their products are directed towards individuals. In addition, the company has continuously had to deal with the challenge of weak presence in the business sector, where they have limited retail store in some regions where the potential customers are situated.

The opportunities available for Apple Inc. include the technological innovations that have continued to increase allowing the firm to develop new models of computer software and hardware that are capable of meeting the needs of their consumers (Khan, Alam, & Alam, 2015). The industry is also growing at a faster rate as the company has been able to advance to other sectors such as music industry, smart phones, personal computers, laptops, and iPads, and the establishment of online music stores, which are all opportunities that the company can utilize to enhance its market dominance (Kaputa, 2012).. With the advancement in online marketing, selling and buying products from an online platform offers Apple an opportunity to achieve greater growth. In addition, the company may reduce the prices for their products to match those of their competitors whose products are cheaper and able to serve a wider population. On the other hand, the threats facing the company include its fierce competitors in the technology industry, declining flow of revenue, and the onset of economic crisis that affects the performance of the company within newly established markets as well as the existing ones (wsj.com. 2019).

The strategies adopted within the company has enabled the company to maintain its competitiveness and increase its profitability. Pricing is one of the key strategies that has enabled the firm to generate a lot of profits through the sale of its high end products (Nielson, 2014). A low-price strategy caters for various categories of customers, since there is no homogenous market for the highly priced products. Apple should consider developing products that cater for all market segments to ensure that the upper, middle, and lower classes of the consumers are included in the market share. Product differentiation is another strategy that Apple has applied to ensure that they do not rely on price to maximize profits entirely but also provides quality products to all the customers. Cost control to focus on particular sections of the consumers is a strategy that is applied to lower the occurrence of losses by targeting the smaller market sections as Apple has been doing in the past (Kaputa, 2012). This will enable Apple to increase and distribute the sources of its revenue thus increasing profits through the sale of their latest phone models to more customers in the market.

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