Apple Inc. Marketing: Analysis of Industry and Competitive Environment

Apple Inc.

MARKETING 1
Introduction
Strategic manufacturing management is method of taking the best decision on structure and
infrastructure that must be coordinated and support the competitive strategy. In
manufacturing organisation, management of the process is necessary for the effective results.
It is essential for a company to analyse the environment before taking the decision regarding
the best decision for the organisation. The organisation develops the strategies to attain the
market share by gaining the competitive advantage (Morden, 2016). It is essential for the
companies to analyse the environment before developing the effective strategies. There are
many strategic tools which can be used by the companies to analyse the market environment
such as Porters Five Forces Framework, PESTLE Analysis, and SWOT Analysis. These tools
help to analyse the factors which affect the policies and environment of the organisation such
as political, competitor’s behaviour of suppliers and many others. In this report, Apple Inc.
has been taken into consideration to analyse the environment of the company to develop the
appropriate strategies.
Overview of Company and Industry
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company which has headquarters
established in Cupertino, and California. It was founded in 1979 by the owner of Steve Jobs,
Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. It comes under the top four technology companies such
as Amazon, Google, and Facebook. The company provide the technology products to the
consumer such as the iPhone smartphones, the Mac personal computer, the iPad tablet
computer, the Apple Watch smart watch, the Apple TV digital media player, the iPod
portable media player, and the HomePod smart speaker. In the year of 2016, the company
earned high revenues for an amount of $241 Billion. It is one of the world’s richest
companies in the industry and as per forbes, it was marked as the most valuable company in

MARKETING 2
the market. The company operates under different industries as it offers different services to
consumers such as consumer electronics, Computer hardware, Digital distribution, corporate
venture capital and many others. It is the first company of US whose value is over US $1
trillion. It is the world’s third largest company in terms of manufacturing of Phones after
Samsung and Huwaei (Reuters, 2018).
In this report, Consumer electronics has been taken to analyse the market of the company.
There are many products of electronics which is offered by the company to its consumers
such as iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod and now it is also offering the Apple watch to its consumers.
Consumer electronic industry has become an essential part of the consumer’s life because
these products are used by the consumers in their daily life routine. It has been seen that the
market is growing rapidly in the past few years. It is also expected that the industry will also
grow in the near future with the rapid growth. Further it is expected that the revenue of the
industry will grow to $2976.1Bn. Consumer electronic industry became the primary choice
for the middle class and upper class due to extensive use of smart electronic devices. The
global consumer electronics market is segmented on the basis of device types. There are
mainly three device types such as consumer electronics device, smart home device, and
wearable device. These devices attract different type of consumers and the revenue amount of
the market is also based on these devices.

MARKETING 3
(Source: Persistence Market Research, 2016)
The global consumer market is highly competitive in terms of demand and revenue. There are
many companies which operate in this industry such as Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics,
Sony Corporation, Pansonic Corporation and many others. The number of competitors are
increasing day by day due to strategic acquisition and merger procedure.
Key components that affect the product functionality
Apple Inc. manufactures the multiple products to provide the services to consumer. There are
many key components which affect the product functionality such as product design, quality
and cost control, Inventory control, Maintenance and Replacement of machines. Apple Inc. is
a technology company which offers the consumer’s electronics that is why, software is a
major component which the product functionality. These components discussed are as follow:
Quality and Cost control
Quality and cost controls are the two aspect of the product which has inverse relationship
with each other. These are the important factors in the competitive world because consumers