Apple Inc Marketing Case Study

History

In 1970s, a pair of courageous colleges students; Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak decided to step out from a normal human life cycle, and built their first product- Apple I - instead of studying in college. With all the difficulties and challenges, starting from worked in Garage to was kicked out from own company, to revitalized the dying companies and to face global imitations (See Exhibit 1), Steve Jobs managed to go through all hard times with his belief, visions and embedded strong culture within company. Even after the big loss of technology industry and perhaps, the whole world – Jobs passed away- Apple Inc, has been and is still one of the most valuable company in the world with a trillion-market capitalization. (as of 2019)

Overall Analysis

Apple Inc had been through several billions of losses, changes of several leaders, and muddled change back and forth in strategy. With the past presence of Jobs and also presence of current CEO-Tim cook, Apple Inc. consistently adopt differentiation strategy through premium price (pricing power), good quality and design, advanced innovation, strong supply chain, outstanding marketing campaign, distinctive image branding, and ability to predict customers’ needs while targets in broad market. Its competitive advantage is multidimensional and based on complex bundles of resources and capabilities. For example, its focus in R&D, even though the cost is massive, it's still lower and more efficient than others in industry (see exhibit 2a). R&D cost has been in an upswing for years, but it is more related to the income of the company (see exhibit 2b).

PC Market Industry

As the first mover in PC industry with desire to introduce easy to use electronic devices, the company became notable within tech industry. However, its position as a leader in industry changed when IBM entered the market and introduced the “open” system. Over 1980s, with insufficient of R&D and too intractable to license its software to third parties, Apple started to lose their base to other competitors. Turned out that it was not the right and glorious time to use “close” system for PCs. However, 20 years later, it turns out to be pervasively admired and accepted which is one of the key factors in Apple’s success. Moreover, with lack of human resources which can help the company grew further compared to Microsoft in 1970s-1990s, the company lose its direction in doing business. After that, the company underwent many changes of CEO and strategy; between cost leadership and differentiation strategy, that affected its sales in PCs and culture within. However, under control of Jobs to hold onto only differentiation strategy to offer simply but elegance products in premium price, the PCs market share started to increase over times from 2.3% in 2002 to 6.4% in 2014.