Apple Company: Market Analysis and Operation in Different Market Structures

APPLE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
1. Description of Apple Company...............................................................................................3
2. Analysis of Market..................................................................................................................4
3. Operation in different market structure in the past..................................................................6
4. Discussion and suggestion on the basis of industry’s nature in which Apple is operating.....9
(a) Is operating in different market structure is optimal for Apple Inc.?.....................................9
b. Suggestion regarding governmental intervention..................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Apple Inc. is known as an American MNC operating in technological sector and specialises in
online services, consumers electronics and computer software (Tasnim, 2018). Therefore, in this
report, discussion will be done Apple’s history and its various products and services along with
the analysis of in which market the operating and the reason of why a particular market structure
has been chosen over the others. Further, it would be discussed that whether the company has its
operation in different market structure or not along with the reflection on the characteristics of its
previous market structure. At last, by giving consideration to the nature of industry in which
Apple is currently operating, discussion will be done regarding whether operating in different
market structure would be optimal for the firm and suggestions will be made regarding greater or
lesser government intervention.
MAIN BODY
1. Description of Apple Company
Apple Inc. is an American based multinational technology company which was founded in
the year 1976 and having the experience of 45 years in information technology. Apple is a public
company having headquarter in California, US and also traded in Nasdaq-100 stock exchange.
The company is basically one of the largest and most valuable company by its revenue. The total
revenue earns by the company from the sale of its various products and services in the year 2021
is US$ 365.8 billion. The various products of Apple Inc. include iPhone, iPad, iPod, Macintosh
etc. and the various services offer by the company includes Apple store, Apple music, iCloud,
iTunes Stores etc. The financial performance of the company is getting better day by day with
having operating income, net income, total assets, total equity in the year 2021 is US$ 108.949
billion, US$ 94.680 billion, US$ 351.022 billion and US$ 63.090 billion respectively (Liu and
Lv, 2021).
The company have its operation all over the world with around 516 stores worldwide as
per the 2021 annual report. The total number of employees working in Apple company in the
year 2020 is 147000 and as of January 2021, there are around 1.65 billion products of Apple are
actively used by the consumers.

2. Analysis of Market
Market structure refers to the characteristics of different market that helps in the
determination of relation between buyer and sellers of the companies. The four types of market
structure include perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly and monopoly. For
example, Apple Inc. is operating in the oligopoly market ever since its inception. The market
structure of Apple company basically changes over the period of time depends upon the products
and services they offer to the consumers. Based on its smartphone products i.e., iPhones the
company operates in the oligopoly market because the number of firms at the starting stage
dealing in the smartphones in quite low. At the starting stage, there are mainly two firms which
focus on the manufacturing of smartphones and that is Apple and Samsung. It is because other
firm players like Dell, Lenovo is focusing over the production of computer systems, laptops etc.
The oligopoly market structure basically arises in the case of imperfect competition which means
there are very few firms that supply the similar products (Moreno Belloso, 2021).
Apple company operates in oligopoly market structure because the number of firm sold
similar product i.e., smartphone is limited at that time. The company have the ability to dictate
and change the prices and supply of the iPhone and other smartphones. Few firms with large
market share is one of the reason behind the oligopoly market share of the company. The
oligopoly market means that top three firms of the industry has combined market share of more
than 50%. For example, top three electronic brands of US are Apple, HP and Dell whose
combined market share is around 86% as per the October, 2021. The market shares of Apple in
the year 2021 is 24% while market share of HP and Dell is 35% and 27% respectively (Van De
Vliert, 2021). This is the reason behind oligopolistic market of Apple. The Apple company
operates in the oligopoly market is because at the initial stage they maintain their position in the
market through imposing number of barrier in the market position.
Top Companies in Electronic industry of US with its revenue and market shares
Companies Revenue (USD Billions) Headquarters
Apple Inc. 260.17 USA
Samsung 221.6 South Korea