Apple a summary
- 1. CASE : APPLE A APPLE INCORPORATED In 4th quarterof 2011 APPLEover tookthe record of IBM. There isa growthof 16% of salesinthat year.The total revenue is46.30 million.APPLE buildthe hardware andsoftware andthe services.It isa blue oceanstrategy.Itis vertical integratedcompany,because itfocusonsegmentation. APPLE was bornin 1976. Theyfoundand angel investorMarkmakkula. IBM CHALLANGE Apple first challenge was faced when IBM introduced personal computer. There was a commercial failure as the failure of the marketing department. The introduction of "Lisa " the computer named after Job's daughter was supposed to overtake the APPLE-2., but it failed. Then Job bought in John sculley at this time. The reason for Lisa failure was it was overpriced, but it was the first one to introduce the GUI and the mouse technology. John taught MAC would be the future of the company. The failure of establishment of MAC as 3rd most standard product in company would result in decreasing the apple revenue curve. It is because Ibm has taken lot of market share.IBM positioned itself as education cum home product. So penetrating into the market is a long term goal for APPLE now. Moreover IBM had a strong value proposition FUD.( fear, uncertainty and doubt) . These characteristics influence purchasing power than product characteristics. However APPLE is still strong in product quality, which the company taught would help to compete with IBM. It worked as well. Apple could create lot of loyal customers for its premium products. Ibm actually produced itself as desktop for homes but it actually for the corporates. But on the other hand apple was for home desktop and wanted to position the same and target that segment. In the mean time Jobs believed that the direct to customer business model has to be introduced. But John insisted in the old distributor - retailer model. This created lot of internal conflicts in the organisation. The board decided to throw Jobs out of the company. There was no cohesive product strategy, when Jobs exited the company. Later Jobs made his own company by selling most of his shares in APPLE. Yet the company remained stable due to the continuous demand for the APPLE-2. THE SECOND COMING OF JOBS There was a problem of investing on hardware and software. When Microsoft started creating their own O.S and outsourced the hardware, APPLE share came down in market share. So they are trying to revive. Microsoft introduced windows 95. So Jobs stared convincing people to buy APPLE, still it it don't work. Then NEXT was acquired. SO the senior management of next moved to apple. Jobs convinced Bill gated to invest and got 150 billion dollars. He then restructured the organisation. It was r&d was reduced to half
- 2. product line was increased. they did not outsource and nor did they ask others to design their interface. distributors were totally cut off. online store came ad's were made better- Think different campaign. Then APPLE revived. and revenue of 300million dollars. DIGITAL HUB It's about strategy after Jobs returned. By then it has only 3% of market share is held by APPLE. The strategy is Jobs tried to introduced APPLE'S products in all the digital devices. It means he tried to make IMAC as the hub. He wanted to make this by HUB and SPOKE. The strategy was disclosed to the market yet the competitors could not do it RETAIL DIFFERENT Jobs tried to sell the products direct to customers through his apple stores. He used promote this buy using celebrities and had caption THINK DIFFERENT. The ambiance of the stores was also worked out. The competitors expected this ambiance strategy would fail. More over Jobs targeted highly expensive places and locations. Jobs didn't want his product to be placed with other products. This might give the customers a chance to compare his product with the others. The normal stores i.e gateway stores has low foot count, but on the other side apple could get high foot fall. There was also a high drastic increase in the revenue.( data is supported in the case). The other products and growth of the company is also discussed. In1993 there was a problem with mp3 player . They were short battery long download limited storage etc So job grabbed this market opportunity and capitalised on it. He designed the I-POD. In the market it is compatible with MAC it had a better start. Later IPOD mini and many versions of this variants was introduced. It had an attractive offer that on the release day of the DVD is released through APPLE STORE.
- 3. VISIONARY In 19990's in electronic industry a study is made on electronic companies success. They got on how do you get market. It was also observed that most of the companies take the idea of the some company solve the challenges and adopt it and make money out of it. APPLE said i am going to wait for the next big thing. was the answer of Jobs when the same question was put to him. There was also a hint that there was also alliances with the music companies to provide better services to the "I-CUSTOMERS". So the whole case talks about the strategy APPLE adopted to become the market leader and to create the loyal customers.