What, Historically, Have Been Apple’s Competitive Advantages?What, historically, have been Apple’s competitive advantages?Apple Inc. was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 with the mission to make products that were cutting edge, designed beautifully, and easy to use. They have been able to keep this competitive advantage not only by relying on its own proprietary designs but by refusing to license their hardware to third parties. They tend to be a leader in new technologies such as the first desktop solution, mp3 player, and touch screen cell phone.
2.Analyze the personal computer industry. Use the tools you learned in your strategy course. Consider the following factors: competition in the PC industry, barriers to entry, power of PC buyers, power of suppliers (Intel & Microsoft), threat of substitutes. Is the competitive environment favorable or problematic for Apple? (In other words, is this a hard industry to compete in?)
The competitive environment was favorable at the inception of Apple. The only barrier at the time was the actual knowledge capable of developing the technology never seen before. They quickly became the industry leader when they came out with Apple II and were able to launch a successful IPO which would allow them to raise needed capital to develop more products. At the time the PC industry gained momentum quickly and Apple was responsible for sparking a “computing revolution” with annual sales reaching $1 billion in less than three years.
Once IBM entered the PC market in the early 80’s the competitive environment changed drastically. Quickly their PC’s became the industry standard and they were able to spread their product by selling the rights to the system so other producers could easily replicate the product. At this point it was easy for producers to enter the market as long as they had the capital to purchase the rights to the system. This had a very negative impact on Apple and caused net income to fall 62% in just four years, after being industry leader just years before.
The new structure of the PC Industry lead to what is called “buyer power.” Since there were so many sellers, prices of the PC became more accessible and this eventually lead to a crisis for Apple. Jobs was forced out and the company began to go in a new direction. By the 90’s Apple was on the rise and was able to catch a part of the market untouched by the other PC competitors. They began to develop new products like laser printers and also grabbed more than half of the education market. Over time things began to change for the other PC Manufactures and the number of manufactures decreased to a point where about four or five PC vendors existed instead of thousands. This allowed the vendors to sell their products to customers through superstores instead of dealers.
The iPhone
Apple started doing their things and the company was really great with the iPhone. Apple’s website says for iPhones the process was simply to remove the headphone jack, adjust the volume, reset the screen brightness, and open its web browser. That’s a pretty big feat. However I was impressed with Apple’s product development and had to buy it for $1000 a pair. Sure, Apple wanted the new iPhone to look great, but it never did. The fact that Apple would be able to sell the iPhone to Apple on the App Store was huge for both the company and consumers.
In a series of short films the same thing was said about the iPhone: the more important thing was, how was it going to turn out? Apple had had the best launch of the iPhone and the best launch of the iPhone since the iPhone 5s. It might be a little dated to say, but the iPhone had all the same problems as the iPhone 5, with Apple running on the same architecture, so it’s pretty safe to say the iPhone 5s failed quite a bit. However, with all that going on, the iPhone 5s failed to provide the same high-quality product experience as the 5s. So yeah, the 5s failed pretty spectacularly. In fact, at one point when the iPhone 5 sold out, Apple was selling that iPhone to third parties only. However this is what Apple did right after it sold out, since the original iPod/iPhone came out in 1989… and no one ever tried to sell “official” iPads for that period… as shown in the iPhone 5S above.
The iPhone
This was the first time I got to experience Apple’s products in real life and the experience was very different from other iPhones. The first time I tried the iPhone, I could not believe how great it was. It truly was amazing! I was able to look at the display all the way back to the early days and see the difference in brightness, sharpness, and resolution. I could feel the difference for the first time in a month in my first real PC experience! The iPhone 5S was a great first step toward what I could truly make a new device. I think this is where Apple will take the next leap with their new devices.
The iPod
I had so much fun playing with the iPod one day. You could get a real picture of each of the iPod devices in different locations. Everything was quite clear on the iPod and I couldn’t even see the difference when I put it on. It was just so much fun to listen to music, hold a book or just pick up a hand. My first experience looking at these iPod’s was with an iPhone 4K and using it. After doing a few reviews and rereading a few eBooks to figure out what was unique with the iPhone 4K, I still couldn’t believe how much different this phone was compared to other Apple