Research paper
sleepy_joy
career_research_report.docx
Career Research Report on
Apple Inc. and Google Inc.
Prepared for
Instructor
Linguistics and Language Development Department San Jose State University
Prepared by
Student name
University
October 21, 2015
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………… 3 MY CRITERIA……………………………………………………………………
COMPANY 1: APPLE INC.………………………………………………………
BACKGROUND, PRODUCT AND SERVICE, COMPANY RELATIONSHIPS, AND CULTURE…………
SWOT ANALYSIS……………………………………………………………………
MY OPINION………………………………………………………………………..
COMPANY 2: GOOGLE INC……………………………………………………
BACKGROUND, PRODUCT AND SERVICE, COMPANY RELATIONSHIPS, AND CULTURE…………
SWOT ANALYSIS………………………………………………………………………
MY OPINION…………………………………………………………………………..
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………… RECOMMENDATIONS…………………………………………………………. REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………
INTRODUCTION
As an international student who is going to enter his Optional Practical Training (OPT) within a year, I would like to choose the right company to start my career because last minute rush can be very tiring and time consuming. In order to put my career on the right path I must research well about companies I am interested in working with.
This research narrows down to two high tech companies namely Google and Apple. To complete these comparisons, I have collected information from various online sources such as company websites, SJSU and University Library databases, and major magazines such as Forbes, Journal of accountancy and Wall Street Journal.
After critically analyzing these two companies I should be able to choose the appropriate one for me.
MY CRITERIA
Making a decision on the company to work for is influenced by several factors. But before one can chose which company to work for, everyone tends to take the opportunity that is readily available. While still working for a certain company, the search for an opportunity to work in a company you contemplate as an ideal company continues.
One factor in my criteria for choosing an ideal company is the work environment. The working environment that a company provides to its employees determines to a greater extent the level of productivity of its employees. A conducive working environment is one which encourage employees to do quality work by providing outstanding services and trusting the employees. Such an environment would encourage employees to go to work effortlessly while feeling happy.
Another factor in my criteria is the stability of the job and the salary paid. A stable job will eliminate any fears suffered by employees during work. In such a situation, employees do their work comfortably and freely while enjoying their job. Employees develop a positive drive for the company and thus would be ready and willing to offer their best on behalf of the company. A good salary encourages employees to do more work so as to continue earning. This enables employees to grow financially, physically and also property wise. The relationship between the company and the employees becomes better and the overall result is company growth.
The third factor is the reputation of the company business. A noble reputation develops for a company that maintains its industrial leadership. A company that has an influence in the industry has a better reputation than a company that is not consistent. A good reputation would also be as a result of high annual sales and profits. A company with high annual turnover will be able to settle its dues on time and pay its employees a good salary. Such a company would also be able to provide incentives to its employees and other stakeholders. The result of such a company is growth and development of employees and close relationship with its stakeholders.
Company I: Apple Inc.
Background, Product and Service, Company Relationship, & Culture
The founding of Apple Inc. (Apple or the “company”) Dates back to the year 1977, by co-founders Steven P. Jobs and Steven Wozniak. The company brought into existence its first Apple I computer a year before its incorporation. Like any other company still in its initial stages, Apple Inc. began to experience competition from the Personal Computer (PC) market, and lack of success of its Apple III version computer only added insult to injury. With multiple companies at the time striving to create a name for them in the computer market, other companies had manufactured relatively affordable clones of computers and Microsoft had introduced the Windows 3.0 by 1990. These alone only worsened the competitive situation for Apple Inc., which meant that change was necessary to evade this. By the mid-1990s, Apple Inc. had incurred heavy losses amounting to millions of dollars, prompting one of the co-founders of the company, Steven P. Jobs, to occupy the position of interim C.E.O. His efforts were mainly focused on doing away with the company’s losses, and aiming towards realizing more and more profits.
The partnership between Apple Inc. and Microsoft, its alliance with Ericson and Sun Microsystems and the launch of the iTunes music store are just but a few of the many great leaps taken by this company that handles its current success (COMPANY PROFILE: Apple Inc., 2015, p.8). From there, the rest may be regarded as history as the company boasts of having its operations in America, Asia Pacific, and Europe. The company's main competitors are Google Inc., Dell Inc., and Fujitsu Limited.
Apple Inc. is a designer of mobile communication devices and operating systems (OS) to go with them. It also designs PCs, televisions, portable music players and operating systems for desktops. Upon designing these products, Apple Inc. Manufactures them and sells them around the world. The company also offers various services, such as the offering of solutions to network matters and also offers applications as well. Its ability to establish its own online and retail stores has made it easier for Apple Inc.’s products and to be marketable. The company also boasts of a unique ability to establish its operating system software and hardware, something that not many companies today can brag about being able to do successfully (COMPANY PROFILE: Apple Inc., p.25). Apple Inc. Server a high-value customer base, and has been successful in exercising control over the experience of its consumers when using their products and services. With the help of the company’s sales force and third-party retailers and wholesalers, the marketing of their products has been of great impact and has helped in retaining a loyal customer base. Its consumers are mainly education institutions, businesses of all sizes (both small and mid-sized), enterprises and the government. The company has successfully been recruiting and retaining a loyal, skilled and competitive workforce, with the employee count being about a hundred thousand. The management within this workforce has acquired great experience that it has used when running Apple Inc.
SWOT Analysis
The company enjoys certain opportunities, especially those of growth in the near future. Such opportunities are brought about by Apple Pay, the expected growth in the smartphone market as well as that of tablets and the increased use of the company’s products in the enterprise markets. The company’s threats include the possible impact that the reduction of smartphone subsidies could have on Apple’s shipments, the negative impact of their high pricing on their growth rate and the highly challenging and competitive market the company is situated in.
My opinion
There are various facts about Apple Inc. that I find impressive. One of these is the ability of this company to maintain a significant growth, despite the fact that its products are highly priced. Today, many people tend to be price sensitive, an observation that seems not to have greatly impacted on the company’s overall sales. It also fascinates me that Apple Inc. has been able to maintain high average selling prices while most of its competitors have instead displayed a declining nature in their product pricing. I, however, feel that the company should try and come up with an alternative that could eliminate its weakness by reducing it's relatively high reliance on the iPad and iPhone product lines.
Company II: Google Inc.
Background, Product and Service, Company Relationship, & Culture
Sergey Bring and Larry Page founded Google Inc. in the year 1995. They met at Stanford University. By the year 1996, the two had already built a search engine that was initially called Backrub. The search engine used links in order to determine the importance of the individual webpages.
In the year 2000, the first ten language versions were released for Google.com (Google, 2015). They included French, Italian, German, Swedish, Spanish, Finnish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish and Dutch. Today, the Google search is available in more than a hundred and fifty languages and Google News including more than five hundred thousand news sources in seventy regional editions in various languages. The company has packed great young lives and grown to serve millions of people all around the globe.
Google Company provides a variety of products and services for businesses and people (Schmidt & Rosenberg, 2014). With all employed technologies; Google search, Chrome and Gmail, the company’s goal is to ensure ease of finding any information needed and get the required things done.
Google provide various tools to help all kinds of businesses to succeed off and on the web. The programs form the backbone of the company’s business. The advertising programs help businesses to find customers, and also help publishers to make money from their content. With products like Android and Chrome, people make faster and simpler work online.
For Google Relationship, & Culture, the company is committed to the open web, and thus it is involved in various development projects to ensure that developers contribute to online ecosystem and thus moving the web forward. The company has various campuses and offices around the world. The offices are designed for encouraging interactions between Google’s across and within teams. Google allows its software engineers intellectual capital in order to design their workstations or desks (Google, 2015).
The company hires determined and smart people and usually favors ability over the experience. Google strive to maintain an open culture is usually associated with startups and feels comfortable when sharing opinions and ideas.
SWOT ANALYSIS
A company SWOT analysis is an analysis about its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The Google Company strengths come from its dominance in global search engine and success in android mobile market (COMPANY PROFILE,GOOGLE Inc. , 2015, p. 4). It has a leading technology for its search engine, which greatly contributes to the market share it has. This is achieved through upgrading its search algorithms consistently. The development of Google News on the Google search page back in 2001 was as a result of the company giving major news outlets. The company search engine is highly competitive in the market due to its accuracy and improved features that outdo those of competitors. Google search engine has the capability of image search, video search, news stories and other information. One of the most competitive features about Google search engine is the Google Instant. This feature provides the user with results immediately they start typing. Another feature that makes Google search stronger than competitors is voice and native language search whereby users can ask questions and listen to answers as they are spoken back. The company’s strength is also portrayed by its capability to configure with several devises and Apps for iOS, android, browsers like Chrome for desktops and laptops. Google Search engine dominance is measured at 71% of the global website traffic and 90% of mobile search (COMPANY PROFILE,GOOGLE Inc. , 2015, p. 5).
The success of Android in the mobile market has enhanced the growth of Google Company. Android is a feature used on smartphones whose demand has grown in recent years. The capability of Android Operating System to be used by many devices has enabled Google to beat most of its competitors in the market. Android OS has been made more competitive due to its partnership ownership by the Open Handset Alliance companies. This makes it the preferred OS on a range of phones that increases the competitive advantage of Google Company (COMPANY PROFILE,GOOGLE Inc. , 2015, p. 5).
Google Company weaknesses lie within its excessive dependence on advertising and limited success of its social networks. A major part of the company’s revenue is from advertisements. The cyclical advertising pattern of the advertisers has some negative impact. Another factor that can have a material negative effect to the company is the adverse macroeconomic conditions, which can reduce demand for advertising. The limited success of the company social networks like Pyra Labs, Orkut, Google Wave service and Google+ is a competitive disadvantage compared to its competitors (COMPANY PROFILE,GOOGLE Inc. , 2015, p. 6).
Google Company Opportunities lie within the positive outlook for the market of smartphones and tablets, display and mobile ad spend and growing online video consumption. Smartphones and tablets market is still growing at a strong pace, which increases the company’s opportunity for market growth. The mobile advertising space is also growing at a tremendous pace, which is a prominent growing opportunity for the company. Demand for online video viewing is also rising at a forceful pace. This is through the growth of You Tube demand, which support video uploading and sharing online.
The company’s threats can be seen from the intense competition and intellectual property infringement claims. Competition comes from introduction of new products, shifting user demands and changing technologies from companies seeking to connect people with web information and provide relevant advertising services. Technology has become disruptive while mobile markets have become more competitive for mobile OS (COMPANY PROFILE,GOOGLE Inc., 2015, p. 8). The company faces some infringement claims from other companies owning large numbers patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets basing their cases on allegations of violations and property rights (COMPANY PROFILE,GOOGLE Inc., 2015, p. 9).
MY OPINION
I like all the products from Google Company. Their products are quite affordable in terms of cost and services. The capability to configure their products with many devices enlarges their market worldwide. I like the fact that I can access the company services in places worldwide and on different devices. The ability of the company to beat its competitors no matter the threats in the market is quite commendable.
Conclusion
Both Google and Apple are worldwide Companies. They provide competing products in the market. They face almost similar threats and weaknesses. They also have some similar opportunities in terms of opportunities like growth in the future. On the centrally, Google Company has more strengths than Apple. The size of market share of Google is larger. The range of products provided by Google is also huge. My choice would be to work for Google Company.
Recommendations
Reference:
Contributors' names (Last edited date). Title of resource. Retrieved from http://Web address for OWL resource
COMPANY PROFILE, GOOGLE Inc., (2015, March 5). COMPANY PROFILE, Google Inc. Retrieved from
COMPANY PROFIE, APPLE Inc., (2015, May
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