SWOT Analysis of Apple Company - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

This essay discusses the SWOT analysis of Apple company, including its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Apple's innovative product designs, brand loyalty, and global reach are strengths, while limited distribution network, high competition level, and unfair business practices are weaknesses. Opportunities for product line expansion, partnerships and acquisitions, and tapping into newer technology are discussed, as well as threats such as high level of competition, global tensions due to coronavirus outbreak, and lawsuits.

Apple

Introduction:
The SWOT analysis is referred as an important business model which supports the
company in identifying its strength, weakness, opportunities as well as threat. It also help the
firm in making future strategies on the basis of strength and available opportunities in external
market. For this essay Apple company is taken into consideration. The company is one of the
most famous technological company in the world which was founded by Steve Jobs in the year
1976. In addition to this, the organisation specialises in various products and services such as
consumer electronics, online services as well as software services. The firm is also known as the
most valuable company of the world. This essay will discuss about the SWOT analysis of the
Apple company in detail.
MAIN BODY
SWOT analysis of Apple organisation:
Strengths
 Innovative and unique product designs.
 Introduction of new services.
 Organisational culture. Global reach.
Opportunities
 Brand loyalty.
 Product line expansion.
 Partnership and Acquisition.
 Technology.
Weakness
 Limited distribution network.
 Lack of compatibility.
 High price point. Unfair business practises.
Threats
 High competition level.
 Global tensions due to coronavirus.
 Law suits.
Brief explanation of above points:
The Apple company is one of the world's most valuable company in terms of revenue as
well as technology (Cheng and et.al., 2021). The one of the strength of the firm is its Innovative
and Product designs, this is considered as its main strength because this shows the ability of
Apple company in designing new hardware or software in the most effective manner. The
company is capable of reinventing new features that is more innovative as well as advanced
from its prior features and designs. In relation to this, the organisation also put more focus on

enhancing the customer experience by changing the designs or features of its consume electronic
products such as mobile, I pads or Laptops. The other recognised strength of the firm is
Introduction of new services, this firm is also way ahead in market in terms of launching new
type of innovative services in the areas of digital streaming or payments. The company is also
successful in launching their own systems which makes it to draw attention of large number of
customers (Lohrke, Mazzei and Frownfelter-Lohrke, 2021).For instance, the apple has recently
launched various services such as Apple one app which supports the customer to get all services
of apple in just one simple plan. The other critical strength of the organisation is its Company
Culture, The Apple firm has one of the most employee centric organisational culture in the
world. This allows the workers to deliver their opinions in the most effective manner. Its culture
puts greater emphasis on attaining creativity and excellence that helps the company to come up
with brilliant ideas and innovational change in their products and services. The other important
strength of the firm is its outstanding global reach, the firm is widely recognised as the worlds
most reliable as well as trusted company due to its wider global operations. The firm is the
globally known brand as it run its operations in more than 25 countries. In relation to this, the
organisation also delivers top class and easily customisable technology solutions to meeting
technological demands of global companies. This allow the company to attract large number of
global customers (Zeng, 2021).
The Apple company also certain weaknesses within its internal operations. The first
weakness of the firm is its Limited Distribution Network, the organisation has the limited reach
distribution network as it usually sells its products through official website or through its offline
apple stores which are scarce as compared to other mobile companies such as Samsung. Due to
the limited market reach, the customers sometimes feel hard to search apple products on the
regular mobile shops. Hence, the low number of distribution networks negatively impacts the
overall growth of the organisation (Zeini Effendey, 2021). The other major weakness of the firm
is its Lack of Compatibility, this is considered as the main weakness because the apple products
are only compatible with only apple made accessories like chargers. In relation to this, the apple
mobile phones is built with less number of ports as well as has no jack port in it. This directly
increases the cost of add-ons. Moreover, the apple products are also unable to run the third part
software which makes it incapable of drawing attention of customers that demand these type of
services. The other type of main weakness is its high cost strategy, the premium pricing strategy

is considered as the main reason for the organisation to be not able to draw significant attention
of medium class population present in global environment. The Apple basically put more focus
on tapping the needs made by elite class people and not give emphasis on the demands made by
medium class customers. This negatively affects the firm to attract large number of middle class
populations present in developing nations like India. The other major weakness that has came
across is its Unfair business practice, the firm has been charged for doing illegal practises by
using the tracking applications or software that unethically collects their personal and
confidential information (Valsamidis and et.al., 2018). This situation has negatively impacted its
market position in the global environment.
There are also many opportunities available in front of the company which can allow it to
enhance competitive position in effective manner. The one of the opportunity present is Brand
Loyalty, the delivery of top innovative products and software services has allowed the firm in
developing a premium image in the global market environment. In addition to this, the company
also adopts effective marketing campaigns that makes customer to connect more properly with
the product and services. This allows the organisation to further enhance its customer retention
rate by keep inventing new products in innovative manner. The other important opportunity is
Chance of product line expansion, the specific product range of Apple company only allows it
to tap only global consumer electronic market by launching mobile phone, laptops or I-pads.
This restricts the firm to attract only limited amount of customers that are interested in
purchasing electronic items. In order to gain more market position, the company must add new
products or services in their portfolio (Li, 2020). For Instance, the company can launch Apple
Pay just like Google play in order to gain more competitive position as well as customer base.
The other possible opportunity in-front of the company is Partnerships and Acquisitions, the
firm can enhance its innovational and technological level by acquiring or partnering with the
company who invests its money greatly in the new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence or
Machine learning. By doing this, the firm can easily adopts new technologies which can support
the company to further improve its product quality. The other critical opportunity available for
the Apple firm is tapping into newer technology, due to rising technology, the firm has bright
opportunity to shift their attention towards developing new range of products beyond available
products range. The practising of new technologies related to Artificial Intelligence can allow the

firm to improve its profit margin as well as higher market growth by drawing attention of large
number of customers.
The significant threats are also their for Apple company which the firm should reduce it
in order to ensure smooth operations (Pronello and Kumawat, 2020). The one of the main threats
for the firm is High level of competition in market, the high growth of competition in the global
consumer electronics industry is one of the major reason which threats the future market growth
strategies of the firm. The large number of key players in global market such as Samsung and
Dell also holds a significant market share like Apple company. It is also seen that still the
android users are way more compared to the apple users. The other important threat is Global
tensions due to coronavirus outbreak, the rise in uncertainty as well as global tensions due to
coronavirus can negatively affect the profitable operations of the company. This can increase the
tariffs rates in importing raw materials from china which can make its product more expensive
for general customers. The other main threat is Lawsuits, the apple firm can encounter critical
lawsuits in its business tenure which can pose financial loss for the company. The customers of
the firm can file a lawsuit due to any any reasons such as low battery or slow CPU. This can
become a trouble situation for the smooth operations of the company.
Conclusion:
From the above report, it has been analysed that SWOT business tool supports the
company in framing future growth strategies by considering its strength, weakness, opportunities
as well as threats in the most effective manner. This essay has given a detailed description about
the strength, weakness, opportunist and threats of the Apple company which is the world's most
renowned and technologically advanced company.

References
Books and Journal:
Cheng, L.C., Chen, K., Lee, M.C. and Li, K.M., 2021. User-Defined SWOT analysis–A change
mining perspective on user-generated content. Information Processing &
Management, 58(5), p.102613.
Li, Y., 2020. Analysis of Huawei’s and Apple’s laptop marketing strategies (Doctoral
dissertation, BCE).
Lohrke, F.T., Mazzei, M.J. and Frownfelter-Lohrke, C., 2021. Should It Stay or Should It Go?
Developing an Enhanced SWOT Framework for Teaching Strategy
Formulation. Journal of Management Education, p.10525629211021143.
Pronello, C. and Kumawat, P., 2020, September. Smartphone applications developed to collect
mobility data: a review and SWOT analysis. In Proceedings of SAI Intelligent Systems
Conference (pp. 449-467). Springer, Cham.
Valsamidis, D., Pappas, D., Ferelis, V. and Nikolaidis, M., 2018. Best strategies for the ideal
business model. Scientific Bulletin-Economic Sciences, 17(1), pp.24-38.
Zeini Effendey, F.Z.E., 2021. Technology Entrepreneurship Project (ENT 600): Apple Inc.
Zeng, L., 2021. An Analysis of Apple’s Internationalization Strategy. International Journal of
Frontiers in Sociology, 3(17).