1. Industry Competitors
There are a number of competitors for apple products on the market today. Android phones are in direct competition with i-phones, Microsoft software and operating systems are in direct competition with Apple's Mac brand. Samsung is their major competitor in production of hardware such as smart phones, tablets and laptops.
To respond, Apple has found a way to re-engineer a number of products focussing on design and usability to increase the demand over competitors. They put relentless effort into Research and development to ensure they will always be the first with new products on the market.
Apple has managed to avoid a lot of the price based competition as it tends to stay away from the low end markets where the prices is the main differentiator by producing high end products. Apple products never go on sale. By producing a superior product it competes primarily on quality and service.
2. The Bargaining power of Customers
Apple keeps it's switching costs high by keeping critical product features the same between products and ensuring they are easily transferable among devices. With easy transferability between their own products they have increase difficulty of transferability with competitors. This increases the cost of switching as consumers would then have to purchase these features again or find alternatives to purchase on a competitors devices.
Because Apple targets customers with emphasize on quality they continually develop high end quality products, staying away from the low end quality products of their competitors.
Apple has developed a high brand loyalty with their consumers. Consumers enjoy the high end products with transferable features and continue to return and upgrade products over buying new products from competitors.
3. The bargaining power of suppliers.
Apple has reduced the power of suppliers by making and designing their own products. eg. Apple produces its own