Corporate Level Strategy in Apple: A Strategic Management Perspective

This article discusses the corporate level strategy of Apple from a strategic management perspective. It covers the company's diversification, market and product development, and use of vertical integration. The article also mentions the core competencies of Apple and its mission statement.

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STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

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Corporate Level Strategy
Corporate strategy is related to gaining a mix of business units that enable the
organisation to success as a whole and thus examine success from a higher level. Hence, it
defines the future of the company as a whole (He, 2008). At the corporate level, it usually
means entrance into promising business outside the scope of the present business units.
Apple corporate level strategy is generally innovation of the various products with the
help of corporate classical innovation, internal process and merchandise innovation. Sorescu
et al (2011) stated innovation as the means to maintain the competition level. The core
competencies of Apple are its technology that is based on software and innovative designs.
These competencies of Apple are leveraged by the company across its different businesses
products and units.
Apple is known to be a Dominant Business type of diversification where the company
earns more than 80% of its revenue from a single business (Ritala, Golnam & Wegmann,
2014). Considering this strategy, Apple able to penetrate the computer market share at the
beginning. For instance, there is a low-level diversification in the year 1976-1996 such as –
Apple II to Macintosh, application on computer-associated industry, sole dependability on
particular product line, driving organisation at risk as of high competition.
In relation with corporate level strategy, Apple undertakes both market development
and product development. In market development, the company could adopt diverse
promotional approaches so that to trade present products/services to fresh marketplace and
raise its profits. To achieve this, it can be done by either increasing to other geographic zones
or by seeing for customers that will use the product in an other way. For example, Apple is
making its product available to various countries other than U.S. and in 2010; the company
gained $24, 298 from the sales of America and $30,929 from global sales. With regards to
this, when Apple come out with new products to the marketplace, it leaves the previous one
for some time in the market so that low income customer group can buy it. With this strategy,
the company attain new market and build out lesser profit.
Apple also undertakes product development and develop new products for the present
consumers. The enterprise has a strong connection with its existing customers and the
company knows their need and specification for developing a new products. Hence, it help

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them to innovate its products to make the customer satisfied and beat its rivals to take a
competitive position in the market. For example, in 2001, the company introduced its first
ever iPod and this was known to be as first entertainment tool from Apple help individuals to
listen to their favorite music (West & Mace, 2010). However, the capacity to store song was
only 5 GB and so the company introduced iPod with minimum 5 GB capacity in the year
2003 and nowadays, it is more developed into a new version supporting many features such
as multi-touch display, Wi-Fi and many other features. These changes represents Apple
product development attracting existing customers by replacing new product with the old.
Apple use vertical integration as it gives an overall competitive advantage as they
own oversee manufacturing, chip manufacturers and emphasis on high-end software
standards within an ecosystem of enterprise owned retail stores. All the aspects help the
company to control over its value chain and thus fulfill the demand of its new products
effectively. Diversification is considered as an Apple strategic option as the organisation has
to consider of new products and make them introduce into very new markets. However, the
company manage to meet customer expectations by appropriate marketing and management
strategies. Taking instance of Apple diversification, iPad introduction in 2010 aims in taking
the customers who used the internet all the time and did not want to carry a notebook with
them. Hence, with these corporate level strategies, the company is able to achieve its mission
statement in an effective and efficient way.

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References
He, H. W. (2008). Corporate identity/strategy interface: implications for corporate level
marketing. European Journal of Marketing, 42(1/2), 10-15.
Ritala, P., Golnam, A., & Wegmann, A. (2014). Coopetition-based business models: The case
of Amazon. com. Industrial Marketing Management, 43(2), 236-249.
Sorescu, A., Frambach, R. T., Singh, J., Rangaswamy, A., & Bridges, C. (2011). Innovations
in retail business models. Journal of retailing, 87(1), S3-S16.
West, J., & Mace, M. (2010). Browsing as the killer app: Explaining the rapid success of
Apple's iPhone. Telecommunications Policy, 34(5-6), 270-286.