Français : Logo de l’iPad (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
English: The logo for Apple Computer, now Apple Inc.. The design of the logo started in 1977 designed by Rob Janoff with the rainbow color theme used until 1999 when Apple stopped using the rainbow color theme and used a few different color themes for the same design. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Macintosh 128k, the first Macintosh model, introduced in 1984 and discontinued in 1985. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
English: A 1st generation Apple iPad showing iBooks, with the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
1. What are the chief elements of Apple’s overall competitive strategy? How well do the pieces fit together? Is the strategy evolving?
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 4.4 to support your answer. Does it appear that the company’s competitive positions in personal media players, tablet computers, and smartphones are stronger or weaker than its position in computers?
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?
English: Apple iPad Event (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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’s overall performance?
Here’s my Pinterest Board:
http://www.pinterest.com/socialmediaevie/apple-strategy/
Apple IPad Product Development Strategy:
1. Apple has achieved 70% market share in the music download business. To what do you attribute this level of success?
2. Apple implemented a strategy for iPod and associated products similar to its approach for launching the PC products. Why do you think the proprietary strategy is working this time?
3. In what way is the iPod strategy different from Apple’s PC strategy? What do you think Apple learned from the PC experience that has allowed it to be more successful with the iPod system?
4. The iPod system has evolved over the past several years. What do you think is apples current competitive advantage, how was it achieved, and how can it be protected?
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