Apple Case

How high can apple still fly ?

By Bo Shen 2011-9-25

If someone asks what is the most expensive apple in the world, the answer must the one which was bitten. On the day of the September 21, 2011, Apple's market capitalization was about $ 358.3 billion, which is about equal to the GDP of Austria, and has surpassed the Exxon Mobil as the the world's largest market capitalization companies. According to the world bank data of 2010 for ranked countries according to GDP, Apple's current value can be ranked 29th. among the world's 224 countries and regions. Taking a look at the share price of Apple in the last 10 years, it looks exactly like something which is taking off against gravity.

It took Steve Jobs only one year to achieve $ 309 million of profit from 1997's $ 1 billion loss. After Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he has made a series of steps to reshape this company. He shut down the not profitable divisions like Newton PDA, which has made loss in the last consecutive years. And most surprisingly, he decided to reconcile with Microsoft and set up new cooperation programme. He has found new people to fill in the management team, like Tim Cook, who is currently the successor of him.

Another change in the operation was the closing of all the factories and warehouses outside of US. to hold the inventory low and thus to free the company's floating capital. The operational focus was shifted to R&D and marketing, while all the manufacturing processes were outsourced to OEMs like Foxconn from China.

But what makes apple so successful is more than this, here are some important factors from my point of view:

1, High ability to integrate available technologies and innovation

As an Apple employee said that the secret of Apple is to put the best software in the best hardware. As Apple has it's own software and hardware know-how, it makes Apple flexible to position itself on the highly competitive PC-market. If we take a close look at Apple products family, you seldom find genuine innovations from Apple itself, there are mostly taken over from other company's products and modified. To mention is that in the process of pursuing perfectness, Apple still can keep their products approachable for the customers in terms of operation. The Apple designers must all believe in 'Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.' ( Leonardo da Vinci). One example for that, an one year old boy of an Apple customer can learn to unlock iPhone by himself within short time.

2, Successful marketing to build a strong brand

In fact, Apple doesn't invest that much on advertising as other PC-manufacturers like Dell and HP, but the Apple marketing team has obviously outperformed the peers from the competitors. The core of the marketing can be summarised as maximization of the customers' Imagination and expectations. It was kept top-secret every time Apple launches a new product, and that was even to Foxconn,the OEM manufacturer, and high level managers from the operation company like AT&T. All this boosted the fans's room of imagination and guesses about the new product. In most cases on the day when the new product came to light, it turned out that the fans have only tipped the namely correctly. On the market it was not unusual that people found the newly launched apple products out of sale,it leads to even higher expectations for the fans.

3, Customers are over everything.

Apple really cares about customer experiences, that's why they set up the 330 Apple stores which mostly locate in the highly known streets in the downtown of big cities worldwide to let customers have opportunities to feel the apple culture and to be attracted by their uniqueness. Together with the symbolised details like the whole metallic outlook the logo the seamless design of key buttons apple triggers 'religious' reaction in fans' brains, as stated in a BBC documentary series that sites neurological research.

4, To have good people

All above activities have to be carry out by the people. As Jobs once mentioned in his