Company Report: Analysis of Apple's Strengths and Weakness

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Apple, specifically focusing on its iPhone. The report highlights two key strengths: the iPhone's superior security features, particularly the iOS platform's robustness against hacking and unauthorized location tracking, and its powerful performance due to excellent hardware-software integration. The report also identifies a weakness: the high pricing of iPhones, which can be a barrier to entry, especially in price-sensitive markets. The conclusion recommends that while Apple should maintain its premium pricing strategy, it should consider adjustments to become more competitive in Asian markets. The report uses data from various sources to support its findings, including the impact of the iPhone on mobile internet traffic and the evolution of mobile phone features.

Running head: COMPANY 2 – APPLE
Company Report (Company 2 - Apple)
[Mobile Phones Industry]
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1COMPANY 2 – APPLE
Executive summary
The purpose of this report was to discuss about Apple concerning its two areas of strength and
one area of weakness. The report reveals that Apple's iPhone is more superior to its Android
counterparts in terms of phone security and powerful performance. However, the study
recommends Apple's iPhone to adopt competitive pricing, especially for Asian markets.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
2. Company Report (Apple)............................................................................................................3
2.1 One aspect the company excels at.........................................................................................3
2.2 Another aspect the company excels at...................................................................................5
2.3 One aspects that the company is criticized for......................................................................6
3. Conclusion and recommendations...............................................................................................6
Recommendations........................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

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1. Introduction
Approximately, 1.4 billion smartphones were sold worldwide in the last five years. In
spite of this, there is growth potential in the smartphone market, especially in India and China.
The probable stagnation in the smartphone market should not affect these regions particularly in
the coming years (Statista.com 2020). The report will discuss two points of strengths and one
point of weakness for Apple. The findings of the discussion will be used to recommend few
points of suggestions to Apple.
2. Company Report (Apple)
The section discusses the aspects where Apple excels at and the aspect Apple is criticized
for.
2.1 One aspect the company excels at
The iPhone took Apple’s business to another level and drove a massive growth for the
company. The business grew ten times for the company in the last decade (Vox.com 2020).
Personal Computers (PCs), laptops and notebooks used to be the platforms to access the internet.
However, the iPhone has changed it significantly by putting the internet in everyone’s pocket.
People found it a handful of devices, which they can carry easily to any place. It revolutionized
the world of the internet by boosting mobile internet traffic (Vox.com 2020). Since then phones
no longer stayed a device for making calls only. Instead, it became a device where people could

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do many things. Photography became their daily habits. Gradually, people could skip from
carrying professional cameras.
The iPhone that influenced the phoning experience of people has few qualities rarely
possessed by any other phone brands. One of these is unbeatable security features on the
iPhone. The iPhone uses the iOS platform as its operating system. People generally know how
more secure is iOS in comparison with Android. The iPhone uses two separate chips for
encryption and phone unlock feature. It is the arrangement of this chip that makes the iPhone
hard to hack for hackers. The security features in the iPhone have proved robust on several
occasions such as one where the FBI could not unlock an iPhone following the fuss over at San
Bernadino country (Ahvanooey et al. 2017). It was difficult to avoid unscrupulous apps from
detecting the location of the phone. However, the iPhone has managed it now effectively with its
new iOS 13. Gone are the days when tracking the phone location was easier without asking
permission to do so. Phone location tracking was possible by taking note of the publically
available Wi-Fi networks people to pass by. iOS 13 does not come with this feature, which
means users will have less to worry about unauthorized access to their phone location
(Wired.com 2020).
“Sign in with Apple” is another new feature in the iPhone that prevents users’ data from
reaching to the third party. The iPhone customer can now sign in with Apple to discourage such
activity if they don’t want this to happen. If required temporary email addresses will be created
for users in case they struggle to make one. The moment customer starts receiving unwanted
messages, they can just walk away by shutting the temporarily created email addresses
(Ahvanooey et al. 2017).

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2.2 Another aspect the company excels at
The iPhone of Apple has few remarkable features rarely available to any other phone
brand. Great coordination between the software and the hardware is one of these. Since several
manufacturers use the Android platform they rarely match up with the iPhone in this regard.
Apple’s iPhone effectively maintains a robust integration between the hardware and the software
of a phone. It is due to this the iPhone offers a better battery life and exceeds the quality of the
performance as offered on the rest of others. The iPhone comes with fewer bugs and faced with
fewer performance lagging issues (Heracleous and Papachroni 2016).
Anything that Apple does to lead in regards to product differentiation can be credited to
its ability to maintain excellent integration between the software and the hardware. The iPhone
can offer superior performance and a smoother experience using lower specs than high-end
featured android phones. The overall experience as said before is much better than on Android
phones. For example, Samsung, Redmi, Vivo and others have to work hard towards their phone
features like processor cores, RAM and several other things to provide users a smooth phone
experience. These features cannot optimize on the in-built skins to run smoothly as possible with
the iPhone. To offer users a smooth experience android phones are to increase the battery size for
their device. It only results in improved battery performance, not in terms of performance
(Kapoor and Agarwal 2017).
Microsoft supports many vendors for its hardware and software segment of the business.
On the other hand, Apple centrally controls all these. Apple has a long network of a hardware
team that knows how to work closely and excellently with the vendors to hardware. For example,
the first version of MacBook Air had the processors custom built by Intel. Thunderbolt, an open
technology was distributed only with Apple devices. The software team at Apple is well-versed

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with the core of OSX. UNIX designs custom-built software OSX for Apple (Ahvanooey et al.
2017).
2.3 One aspects that the company is criticized for
An iPhone can be considered one of the most popular smartphone companies in the world
(Misra et al. 2016). There are numerous reasons due to which an individual might choose to
prefer an iPhone over any other smartphone. Apple iPhones are flagship devices from Apple.
The company has been specified in terms of the development of the iPhones as niche products
that comply with the needs that are associated with the niche customers. However, the high
prices of the iPhones can be considered as a point of critique of the iPhone. The prices at which
new iPhones are pitched in the market can be considered a little too high for the masses, even if
they target only the niche segments (Phantratanamongkol et al. 2018). The phones are offered in
the market at high prices and the next generation of similar iPhone is launched in the market
within the next year. The price is further bumped up. It can be opined that the latter is a strategy
that can be adopted to increase the turnover that the company is subject to. The latter has been
identified as a point of criticism of the iPhone which is backed up by the fact that the products
have little to no difference with certain tweaks. Thus, the lack of difference in the products and
the high price rises that are carried implemented by the company. Hence, the price of the product
is the main point of criticism of the iPhones and Apple as a whole.
3. Conclusion and recommendations

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Therefore, it looks certain that Apple’s iPhones are superior to android phones in terms of
several phone features. This includes powerful performance and smooth overall experience of
the phone. The security features of the phone are unmatchable. The only thing that Apple should
pay attention to is the pricing. Apple should not compete with other phone brands for pricing.
People buy it for paying premium prices. However, any consideration from Apple concerning the
pricing should make it more appealing to Asian markets.
Recommendations
Fair Pricing: Few of Apple's phones are highly-priced despite showing less progress in
terms of innovation. iPhone X and iPhone XR, for example, have more or less similar features
showing less progress with regards to innovation. The pricing should improve as this will help to
attract more customers in price-sensitive markets such as Asian countries.

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References
Ahvanooey, M.T., Li, Q., Rabbani, M. and Rajput, A.R., 2017. A survey on smartphones
security: software vulnerabilities, malware, and attacks. Int. J. Adv. Comput. Sci. Appl, 8(10),
pp.30-45.
Heracleous, L. and Papachroni, A., 2016. Strategic Leadership and Innovation at Apple Inc.
SAGE Publications Ltd.
Kapoor, R. and Agarwal, S., 2017. Sustaining superior performance in business ecosystems:
Evidence from application software developers in the iOS and Android smartphone
ecosystems. Organization Science, 28(3), pp.531-551.
Misra, S., Cheng, L., Genevie, J. and Yuan, M., 2016. The iPhone effect: the quality of in-person
social interactions in the presence of mobile devices. Environment and Behavior, 48(2), pp.275-
298.
Phantratanamongkol, S., Casalin, F., Pang, G. and Sanderson, J., 2018. The price-volume
relationship for new and remanufactured smartphones. International Journal of Production
Economics, 199, pp.78-94.
Vox.com 2020. How Apple’s iPhone changed the world: 10 years in 10 charts. [online] Vox.
Available at: https://www.vox.com/2017/6/26/15821652/iphone-apple-10-year-anniversary-
launch-mobile-stats-smart-phone-steve-jobs [Accessed 18 Jan. 2020].
Wired.com 2020. The iOS 13 Privacy and Security Features You Should Know. [online] Wired.
Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/ios-13-security-privacy-features-settings/ [Accessed
18 Jan. 2020].

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