Apple Inc. in 2011: Can It Prosper Without Steve Jobs?

1. What are the chief elements of Apple’s overall competitive strategy? How well do the pieces fit together? Is the strategy evolving?

The chief elements of Apple’s strategy are built upon its value chain activities. All activities of its functional areas fit tightly to serve the overall Apple strategy. Apple has done an outstanding job of developing a very separate strategy through industry leading innovation. Apple has employed a differentiation strategy in an attempt to meet the needs of a global market by offering customers innovative new products and improved existing products. An important part of their strategy involves meeting the needs of the evolving digital electronics and computer markets.
Apple has chosen to implement its strategy by designing and developing its own operating systems and software technologies. This has allowed them to be very flexible in developing new products as they have complete control over the software and hardware. Apple is firstly technology driven , their main focus are on things that are hard be achieved by other companies . The pieces fit together very well for Apple.
Yes, the development of many competitors make the strategy of apple has to evolve to against rivals

2. What are the key elements of Apple’s strategy in computers, personal media players, tablet computers, and smartphones? Have its strategies in its core businesses yielded success? Explain.

3. What does a competitive strength assessment reveal about Apple’s computer business, as compared to the leaders in the computer industry? Use the methodology in Table 4.3 to support your answer. Does it appear that the company’s competitive positions in personal media players, tablet computers, and Smartphone are stronger or weaker than its position in computers?

Based on the table below, Apple’s computer business is quite weaker than HP but stronger than Dell and Acer. It appeared that the Apple’s competitive positions in personal media players, tablet computers, and smartphone are stronger compared to Dell and Acer but weaker than HP.

4. Does it make good strategic sense for Apple to be a competitor in the computer, personal media player, smartphone, and tablet computer industries? Are the value chain activities that Apple performs in computers, personal media players, tablet computers and smartphones very similar and “compatible” or are there very important differences from product to product? Which of the four products lines --- computers, tablet computers, personal media players, or smartphones --- do you think is most important to Apple’s future growth and profitability? Why?
Apple’s strategy is evolving through time to respond and react to changing conditions in the external environment and industry competitive landscape. It makes sense for Apple to capture the rising tide and expand its product offerings into digital music player, and later mobile phone industries.
The value chain activities in computers, digital music players, and mobile phones are very similar and “compatible”. All three product categories emphasize on product innovation, strategic alliance, distribution, and additional product support from iTunes and app stores. Apple has been able to dictate a premium in the market and gain above average returns from utilizing the similar and “compatible” of its value chain activities across the products.
Going forward, iPhone would be the most important product to Apple’s future growth and profitability. The demand for smartphones is being fueled by a consumer desire for ultimate converged devices that support functionalities such as touchscreen, camera/video support, dual SIM card, Wi-Fi/4G, and integrated GPS. According to market research, manufacturers shipped more smartphone than personal computers in the fourth quarter of 2010. The growth in smartphones will continue to surge, as high end products like iPhone improve functionality and become more affordable. The iPhone would evolve to a substitute for PC and MP3 player. Users can easily download music to their iPhone through iTunes.

5. What is your assessment of Apple Computer’s financial performance the past three years? (Use the financial ratios in the Appendix of the text as a guide in doing your financial analysis.)

6. What recommendations would you make to allow Apple to strengthen its position in its most important markets? What steps should it take to ensure that the iPad becomes a major contributor to the company overall performance?

* Continue the expansion of Apple stores. Apple stores represent an important source of revenue for Apple and serve as an interactive advertisement for the Apple brand. Apple’s success has been unmatched by any other industry player.

* Emphasize the integrated system in advertisements. Apple’s integrated system holds a significant advantage over other industry systems relying on Microsoft Windows, yet some customers have not experienced the seamless interchangeability of all Apple products. This marketing angle will result in cross selling of more products to new and existing customers.

* Develop close relationships with suppliers because there are few suppliers of key components required in tablet computer manufacturing developing close relationships with suppliers is of utmost importance. Rather than searching for the supplier of lowest cost, maintaining a collaborative and exclusive business relationship will help mitigate the power of suppliers and help to lock in attractive component prices.

* While the tablet computer market has grown increasingly crowded with competitors and customers saturated other areas of consumer electronics continue to grow. Developing complementary products in other categories provides broader sources of revenue by accessing more customers in markets with less intense competition.

* iPad as the major contributor of company's total revenues. It was given that Apple’s iPad tablet computers were the company’s second-largest contributor to total revenues with sales of more than $6 billion during the third quarter of 2011. For the iPad to be the major contributor to the company's overall performance, we recommend that Apple should focus first on iPad sales because analysts said that tablet computers like iPad will prosper the market for electronics for the next years.