Apple Sustainability Analysis

APPLE SUSTAINABILITY ANALYSIS

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Executive summary

Apple Inc. is probably the largest and most prestigious brand in the consumer electronic industry. The company has achieved meteoric growth in the last three decades. The company has been able to achieve this as a result of having built an impressive competitive advantage, one of the most formidable in the industry. The analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the company reveals the magnitude of this competitive advantage. The company has achieved unparalleled success in such a small time interval. This was achieved through a focused design team and blistering pace of innovation that has seen the company introduce one amazing product after the other, and has kept its consumers enthralled for that long. However, the competitors of the company are slowly catching up with it in terms of design, performance and quality of alternative products. The growth and success of the company does not seem as sustainable as it did a few years before. Recommendations of how the sustainability in its tremendous innovation pace against a backdrop of fierce competition is based on a SWOT analysis and a sustainability analysis.

Introduction

Apple Inc. formerly referred to as apple computer Inc. is a multinational corporation based in America in Cupertino, California. The company is primarily involved in designing, developing and selling consumer electronics such as music players and mobile phones, and computer software and hardware. The best known products that Apple Inc. produces entail its line of Mac personal computers, the iPhone smart phone line, its line of iPod music players and its iPad tablets. Some of the software that the corporation is best known for includes the OS X and iOS operating systems, the safari browser, and the iTunes media library, iWork and iLife production and creativity suites. The corporation was founded in 1976 and christened Apple Computer Inc. in 1977. However, the word ‘computer’ was removed from its name in 2007 as a reflection of the shifted focus of the company towards a broader perspective of consumer electronics as it was primarily invested in personal computers before.

Currently, the company is ranked as the most valuable corporation in the world in the midst of a fierce battles between it and other electronic and software giants such as Samsung electronics, Microsoft Corporation and others such as LG and HP electronic corporations. The company achieved the enviable position of the most valuable company on the globe in terms of market capitalization in august 2012. This was hardly a surprise at all because the company had been the pace of innovation in the last decade has been unbelievable. This innovation spiked up the