Apple Computers Success and Failures

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Success and Failures of Apple Computer

Apple is known as a multinational company that is best known for its iPods, iPhones as well as the Mac line of personal computers.  They are one of the top three brands in the world and while they are one of the top three, they have had both successful runs as well as failures.  There biggest concern is with innovation that will bring changes to products that will ultimately satisfy the needs and preferences of all of their products.  In addition, they have been concerned with the development of its reputation and brand name over the years.  They set the standards enabling them to provide the most up to date technology to provide the highest level of competition with its competitors.  They are focused on implementing the Apple brand which has given them a huge customer base with a huge demand of their products specifically the smart phone.        

        All of these qualities and strategies have helped Apple establish a strong foundation of customer loyalty and trust that is based on the quality of their products.  However, along with their success, they have had many failures.  In 1995 they had tried to get into the traditional gaming console with a product known as Pippin, which was also a network computer.  Unfortunately, its inability to gain fascination with gamers ultimately made it a huge mistake (Heisler, 2016).  They also tried to get into the PDA market with the Newton in 1993 which failed largely in part because of its handwriting inability that was advertised as one of the top features.  A future release had fixed this issue; however, this device was already tainted and soon after Jobs came back to Apple this line was terminated (Heisler, 2016).   Since Apple is always celebrating some type of anniversary, they decided on its 20th anniversary of the Mac, to come out with the TAM or Twentieth Anniversary MAC.  This computer was very intriguing during that time because it had a sleek design along with its all in one design where most computers were bulky this on was thin in its design.  The problem was its outrageous price at $7499.  When sales did not go as expected, they dropped the price down to $3500 then again to $1995 none of which improved the sales, this computer was soon discontinued (Heisler, 2016).  

        With every failure, Apple has managed to turn it into a success. They have learned from their mistakes by understanding what had gone wrong and instead of following their customers they lead their customers (Dormehl, 2015).  By this they mean instead of the traditional way of running a company, they rely on groups and customer feedback to drive their business, instead Apple’s way of thinking is if the consumer cannot envision it, they cannot tell you what type of product they want.  Additionally, many companies will sell dozens of models of a certain product in order to try to satisfy the vast majority of consumers, whereas Apple will focus on just a few products in each area (Morrison, 2009).  An example of this is the iPhone, while there are many different types of smart phones out there, Apple’s focus is not on making their phone better than their competitors, rather better than their last model.  By doing this, Apple is illuminating the competition as it is ultimately competing against itself.  Their success in the international market is linked to its culture and the decision to focus on certain products like the iPad, iPhone and iTunes bringing those devices to new innovative levels.