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Final Project I Milestone I

/in /by

Southern New Hampshire University

Final Project I Milestone I

5/21/2017

APPLE INC. COMPANY OVERVIEW

  1. Market

Apple Inc. is a company incorporated in the United States in 1977, and the company majorly focuses on the manufacturing of smartphones and smart watches (iPhone and Apple Watch), computers and accessories (MacBook, iMac, iPad), and media devices (iPods). Besides the wide range of product offering, the company also offers a wide range of services which include complementary software for its smartphones, computers and media devices; all of which operate under the iOS operating system. Additionally, the company’s service offering includes iTunes, a platform that makes available for purchase various digital content such as music and books. (Reuters.com, 2017)

The worldwide Apple Inc.’s market share of smartphones in the First Quarter of 2017 per the International Data Corporation (IDC) is 14.9%, ranking second after Samsung at 22.8%. The statistics shows a decline in market share by 0.5% from 15.4%. Huawei, Oppo and Vivo collectively follow with a combined market share of 22.4%. (Rogers, 2017).

  • Customer

Apple Inc.’s customer base is large given the broad base of product and service offering. The target market for Apple Inc.’s products range from smartphone users to enterprises as well as authors and artists who sell their work and music through iTunes.

The top competitors for smartphone users are Samsung, Huawei, Oppo and Vivo. The top competitors for the MacBook, iMac and iPad are Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer Group all who own a larger market share than Apple, with the market leader being Lenovo, per IDC analysis of PC vendors in the Third Quarter of 2016.

  • Resources

The key inputs required by Apple Inc. to manufacture its products include batteries, hard disks, the CPU, keyboard, hinges, screen, and adapter, as well as the operating system and software. Also, an invaluable input is Human capital, which is the employees who deal with product designs.

The key resources include the company’s array of assets which includes the company’s plant and equipment used in the manufacture of its products, as well as the company Goodwill, which is possibly arises from the company’s brand, store location and trademark. Additionally, capital arising from both equity and debt makes possible the production process. For continuous innovation of its products as well as mass production, the company should always ensure the working capital should sustain the budgeted production levels.

  • Trends

The key market trends for the smartphone industry stems from the increase in m-commerce by vendors and thus the company should focus on improving iPhones to incorporate top-notch features that support m-commerce. (Research 2016) Additionally, the increasing demand of smartphones by the Africa and Middle East demands that the nature of the smartphones fit the demand by these markets.

Additionally, issues of storage space with regards to media storage calls for innovation formats that still maintain the same level of quality such as replacing Mp3 file formats for music to more compressed formats. This will pose a risk for the obsoleteness for Apple Inc.’s electronic product range as this would mean that the company ensures that all of the electronic product offering interphase supports these emerging compressed media file formats.

Additionally, the company should find a way to make its products significantly more affordable, as opposed to being a premium product. This could possibly be one of the reasons why Samsung is outperforming it as well as has a higher market share. The risk also fall with the numerous emerging smartphone brands that are much more affordable, with similar are-minimum features as the iPhone, that threatens to diminish Apple Inc.’s market share.

References

Research, P. M. (2016, September). Global Market Study on Smartphones. Retrieved from Persistence Market Research: www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/smartphones-market.asp

Reuters.com. (2017). Apple Inc. Company Profile. Retrieved from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=AAPL.O

Rogers, A. (2017, May 4). Apple Proudly Reports ‘Strong March Quarter’. Retrieved from Market Realist: http://marketrealist.com/2017/05/where-does-apples-iphone-stand-in-terms-of-market-share/

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