As the business manager of the Apple Corporation, I would need to look at the business and determine who are my direct competitors and determine where I am going to seek opportunities for a competitive advantage in some aspects of the business. It is impossible to speak of Apple and not associate the vision, charisma, and innovation of Steve Jobs (http://www.biography.com/people/steve-jobs-9354805#synopsis).
He brought Apple back into the public interest in the 1990’s after he was rehired by the company he cofounded. The strategy to maintain the success of the company would involve staying close the ideas that brought the company to its current status (McGraw-Hill Irwin, Page C-188).
The momentum left by Jobs will continue to carry the company, as long as Apple continues to provide new and popular products to its loyal customers.
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Issue 01: It’s hard to follow in the footsteps of genius. Apple CEO Tim Cook’s challenge has been to maintain the momentum as the world’s largest and most famous technology company, following a decade-long period of turn-around and innovation with few parallels. Over his career, Jobs fundamentally led Apple into numerous industries including personal computing, computer operating systems, music, mobile phones, and tablets (McGraw-Hill Irwin, Page C-188).
To stay ahead of the competition, it will be important to make sure our loyal customers stay loyal to our brand. As competitors spend money on advertising campaigns that describe their opinions on how much better they are, we will focus on highlighting the uses of our loyal customers. Recognizing the size and success of the company, we still want to include the people that actually use the products in our campaigns. I will open and ideas website that allows users to provide feedback on specific features they may want to see either through updates or apps. Issue 02: Apple is a wildly successful company that generates billions of dollars in profits every year. This is one of the strongest examples of how a company with the right strategy, great products, a strong leader and the willingness to take some risks can become vastly successful.
The Essay on Steve Jobs Rhetorical Analysis
Steve Jobs lived a life unparalleled by the common man. Raising some of the most successful corporations from the ground up, being at the forefront of the technological revolution, and battling pancreatic cancer for a number of years were all things that he succeeded in accomplishing throughout his 56 years of life. He also happened to deliver a brilliant commencement address to one of the finest ...
The market in which Apple is strong has intense rivalry for market share. Apple is challenged with staying ahead of its competitors and maintaining long-term relationships with its customers. In order to stay ahead of the competition Apple is forced to keep product innovation a top priority. I would maintain a Blue Ocean Strategy to market our product and maintain our competitive advantage (McGraw-Hill Irwin, Page 152).
The company has a strong and loyal customer base which will allow Apple to concentrate the focus to highlighting the features of our products. I will not focus on what our competitors can and cannot do; I will focus the attention to the benefits of having Apple products. Strategic marketing campaigns highlighting the different uses and features of the popular iPhone and iPad will headline the campaign. Issue 03: The weak area of Apple Inc. is the fact that most of its products are all available in the market. Consumers around the world have many options to popular hardware and software devices and operating systems. Since PCs are the one that are mostly found in the business world, it would be important to find the niche that would provide Apple with some type of competitive advantage.
Another challenge is that they are significantly more expensive to the products created by its rival companies IBM, Hewlett Packard and Dell which design their products for business and office purposes running Microsoft Windows operating systems (McGraw-Hill Irwin, Page C-188).
The Business plan on SWOT Analysis of Apple’s iPhone 5s
The situational analysis of a company’s product is essential to understanding where a product can best succeed and, often more importantly, where it will fail. To conduct a thorough analysis of a product involves examining the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that a product brings to a company. In the case of Apple and the iPhone 5s, these four qualities are simple to ascertain. ...
Issue 04: The smart-phone showdown is important because Apple and Google are advancing radically with different business models. Google entered the handset segment of the smartphone industry and the tablet computer business through the $12.5 billion acquisition of the Motorola Mobility (McGraw-Hill Irwin, Page C-197).
With the clear success of the iPhone sales in 2011 and 2012, it would be matter of keeping stride with the technology that Google would try to implement to attract or bargain away from Apple.
It is clear the Google look to lure away by selling comparable devices at lower prices. The strategy I would implement would include increasing marketing campaigns for the iPhone within peak times for TV commercials. I would also implement a sale of the previous model iPhone to entice potential new customers that couldn’t initially afford the device. The company already has the capability to engrave on purchased Ipods and Ipads; implementing these services to the iPhone as an incentive to potential new customers may entice the decision to buy our device and not the competitors.
