International Business Analysis of Apple Inc

Running head: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS ANALYSIS OF APPLE INC
International Business Analysis of Apple Inc
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INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS ANALYSIS OF APPLE INC1
Introduction
Apple Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics company that actively
operates in Australia and its business operation includes manufacturing and marketing mobile
communication and media devices, personal computers, and portable music players along with
software, consumer electronic accessories and applications. The company has successfully
established its business in Australia where its online services include Ios Application store,
iTunes, Apple TV and cloud (Apple (Australia). 2019). The objective of the essay is to analyze
the international business of Apple Inc that is a consumer electronics company. Focused on such
objective, host country analysis along with international strategies evaluation of this
multinational company will be carried out along with analyzing its global special responsibility
and action plans.
Discussion
Part 1: Background and Competitiveness of Apple Inc
Answer 1
Apple Inc is a multinational American company that has business operations dealing with
new technologies of communication and consumer electronics. The country of origin of the
company is America where it is based in California that was created by Steve Jobs and Steve
Woznaik. The consumer electronics company has a vision of changing the manner in which its
consumers view computers (Beamond, Farndale and Härtel 2016). Moreover, this consumer
electronics company initially lacked certain important human interface devices built in like the
keyboard. However, with time the company started introducing its products as consumer goods

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through introducing Macintosh classic, the LC and the later Performa budget series. More than
20 years Apple Inc remained a manufacturer of personal computers for which it faced unstable
sales as well as low market share issue (Bhatti, Larimo and Carrasco 2016). In the current years,
this multinational company positioned itself as one of the largest consumer electronics company
with approximate revenue of $60 billion per annum. The products and services of the company
includes iPhone, iPod, Apple Watch, Apple TV along with a portfolio of professional and
consumer software applications along with operating systems, cloud, Apple Pay along with a
range of accessories, service as well as support offerings. Being a multinational company, Apple
Inc has its business operations spread in several nations including Australia, India, Belgium,
Canada, China, France, Singapore, Sweden and Taiwan (Borda et al. 2017). Every year the
multinational company decides to expand its business in new international location for attaining
international growth.
Answer 2
Brannen, Piekkari and Tietze (2017) stated that core competencies and resources are the
skills and capabilities of a company that if unique can offer its business with increased
competitive advantages. These include its unique competencies of knowing when and where to
market its consumer electronics, innovative as well as domain expert human resource,
developing brand image of offering innovative and unique design of its offerings and utilization
of growth opportunities available within the IT industry. High performance if its selected
products such as iPhone, Store, iPod and iPad are observed to perform well than its competitors
in the industry that is difficult for its rivals to imitate (Cantwell 2017). The core resources and
capabilities of Apple Inc. that supported its international business operations success are robust.
Among these there are certain unique resources and competencies that facilitate the company in

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attaining competitive advantages within global consumer electronics industry. These include the
fact that Apple Inc. invests within research and development to develop products in a unique way
in comparison to its consumers. The company has unique competency of developing attractive
design as well as simple usage that attracts consumers towards its products and all the Apple
products are relied on the latest technology (Elia, Petruzzelli and Piscitello 2019). Such core
competencies of maintaining a unique product portfolio development process has ensured the
company’s high responsiveness to changes brought in by competitors. Human resource and
expert resources in different domain attained by Apple Inc. are rare in the market. In addition,
latest technology, powerful architecture, and attractive design along with latest software that is
valuable and unique.
Part 2: Host Country Analysis and International Strategies of Apple Inc.
Answer 3
The America multinational company Apple Inc. has expanded its business in
international market and one of its host nation in which the multinational company operates
successfully is China. The culture of the host nation “China” and its home country “America” is
companied through employing “Hofstede’s five dimensions of culture” model in analyzing the
effectiveness of business operation of Apple Inc (Hamilton and Webster 2018). in the
international marketplace. Power distance dimension analysis of this model indicates that China
has higher rankings in comparison to America which signifies the society believes in inequalities
among employees in the company are acceptable, whereas Americas’ business culture believes
in workplace employee equality. The employees in China are influenced by formal sanctions and
authority in contrast to America. In individualism aspect, China ha low rankings than America