Strategic Analysis - Apple

                                Strategic Analysis: Apple Inc.

Keerthi Kurra

   SEC 6050

                                         Wilmington University

Executive Summary

Apple Inc. is an American based multinational company. Which designs, develops and sells consumer electronic all over the world and provides best in class customer service almost all over the world. What makes Apple one of the best manufacturer is, the quality of its goods it produce. It can also be said that the company has set some standards for itself and also set benchmark to other companies.

We all know that there are many consumer electronics manufacturers around the world, who manufacture a large range of products into the market every year. But with every passing year since from 2008, Apple has maintained its position as leader. Apple uses talented research development team in order to make its products highly innovative, reliable, performance affective. For a company to maintain its position, it is highly recommended to take continuous review of its strategy from time to time (Apple, 2015).

Strategic Analysis of Apple’s performance and environment will be studied before actual recommendations are made. The analysis includes internal and external factors, SWOT analysis and the vision and mission of the company with its present position in the market and where it want to see in the future.

Competition

Apple basically competes in three different categories of electronic goods namely computers, handsets and music. Apples developers design and develop sophisticated goods of each category crafted with the best hardware for the optimal performance and the unique operating system which works only with Apple Software. By this, Apple ensures software is optimised for the hardware to deliver the best performance.

        During the last couple of years we see the raise of Android Operating system which is directly competing with Apple IOS and we also know the product cost of the Apple is much higher than the equivalent products by the competitors. So apple losing its customers at a fast pace. Not only in the handset industry but also in the computers, due to the high prices.

A complete insight about the challenges faced by the Apple can only listed through visiting the internal and external factors

External Audit and External factor evaluation

• Opportunity

• Apple should concentrate on the china handset market to sell its products. Because china can be the biggest consumer of iPhone, looking at the population.
• Apple should increase its efforts I designing and implementing innovative products basically to the lower income people.
• With the increased number of anti-viruses. Apple proves to be the answer which is said to carry or allow no viruses.
• As with the new guidelines about the file sharing, Apple can gain customers as it use only I-tunes to share with the PC.

• Threats

• The people who use Apple products are more familiar with ITunes software, which allows to share data to Apple devices and connects to server. If any virus kills the iTunes, then the customers loses his money paid for the data downloaded through ITunes.
• Company face a large competition from the Samsung and other companies.
• Many people feel Apple is not compatible with all the software available in the market.
• Apple mostly depends on its contractors for its product supply. Which poses a great supply risk.

• Social Factors

• Apple is successful and sold in all parts of the world. But apple doesn’t have a different strategy for different social cultures and it needs a individual market strategy effective in each market.

• Political Factors

• As, Apple is sold in many countries. It has to make sure it should follow the rules and regulation of the country keeping tax and other points in mind.

• Environmental Factors

•  There are some concerns about the material used in the products back in 2012 which is highly dangerous to the environment. But now the company states that, it changed its material in the products to ensure less impact to the environment.

• Technological Factors:

• Apple is considered to be the best innovative devices across the world and many devices copies apples design and manufacture their goods and compete with Apple’s products

                              Figure 1: Apple EFE Matrix

[pic 1] 

Internal Audit and Internal Factor Evaluation

VRIN/VRIO Model

This model is used to examine whether an organisation can use its resources for competitive advantage

    Figure 2: Apple VRIN Model

[pic 2]

• Value – Apples main aim is to incorporate all the functions into a single device so that the product gets great value.
• Rarity – uniqueness and design of the product makes Apple stand as the successful organisation.

Internal Factor Evaluation

• Strengths

• The iTunes platform is a good revenue and it is also compatible with the windows platform
• The company has no debt to clear. So it will easily invest in the next venture.
• Apple updates its existing devices and able to sell the devices to the existing customers
• Very good marketing strategy by collaborating with the network providers.

• Weakness

• Apple depends too much on the product launch for creating attention in the customers.
• Apple not collaborated with other major companies which halts to reach heights.
• Apple doesn’t have strong market evenly over the world.

SWOT Analysis

It is used to examine the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats within an organisation. Once the SWOT analysis is completed, any business organisation can develop the strategy accordingly. This Analysis is a combination of External and internal factor evaluation. Thereby help improving security and avoid threats