Strategic Management Analysis: Apple Inc.'s Strategic Intent Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Apple Inc.'s strategic intent, examining the company's background, including its founding and evolution into a global technology leader. It delves into Apple's strategic intent, particularly focusing on its vision to be a hub of the digital life and how it has employed strategies like cost leadership and differentiation to achieve its goals. The report also critically assesses the failures of Apple's strategic intent, such as the limitations of its customer-centric approach and the challenges in product innovation. Furthermore, it offers recommendations for improvement, including suggestions for expanding its customer base, enhancing differentiation, and fostering innovation. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of high-quality design, technology, and a customer-centric approach for Apple's continued success in the competitive market.

Running Head: APPLE INC. 0
Strategic Management & Theory

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Contents
Background of Apple Inc........................................................................................................................3
Strategic intent used by apple...............................................................................................................3
Failure of strategic intent of Apple........................................................................................................4
Recommendations and conclusion........................................................................................................5
References.............................................................................................................................................7

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Background of Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is a multinational technological company that has headquarter in Cupertino,
California. In the year 1976, Steve Jos, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak have founded the
corporation. In the year 1980, Apple first issued its public offering of the investment stock.
Apple is involved in designing as well as developing the hardware products such as iPads,
iPhones, and Mac along with its online services and software development. In the starting, it
has developed and sold the personal computers (Gobeli and Brown, W.B. (2014After some
time, it has shifted to the consumer electronics. Apple is also regarded as the top most brands
among all the billions of brands. In the recent time, Apple is serving around 25 different
countries worldwide. Considering the figure of year 2018, Apple revenue was founded to be
around $53.3 billion.
Apple is also known for its revenue and size. Apple is the World’s biggest information
technology company as well as third biggest mobile manufacturer after the Huawei and
Samsung. It is also founded Apple employees around 1,23,000 employees of full time. Every
year, Apple launches its variety of model in order to bring innovation. Apple TV also
connects to the television of customers and enable them in getting access of digital content
directly in order to stream the high definition video, playing games and music, and viewing
photos. The TV of Apple runs on the tvOS operating system. It is basically based on the
applications that are built for the television (Lockamy, 2017).
Strategic intent used by apple
Strategic intent is the high-level statement by which every organization is able to achieve the
vision. It is the vision of the company that it wants to achieve in the long run. At the
development of statement of strategic intent, strategic focuses is the point of starting. It is true
that strategic intent should specify the competitive factors that are essential for getting
success in future.
Apple is the perfect example of using strategic intent in an effective way. In the year 1996,
Apple was just having 4% market share in the business of PC. After this, Steve Job has acme
back in the business in the year 2000 and set the intent for company in order to become the
great and effective hub of the digital life. Steve Jobs have seen the future trends including the

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internet, new digital media form that is used by individual as well as computing power that is
available in one pc. In this way, Steve Jobs wanted that Apple computer remains to be
epicentre of each person’s digital universe (Spence, 2018).
By following such intent, Apple has given emphasis on the updating of iMac platform.
Following this, iPods and iTunes have also hitted the market for transforming the personal
digital music. Later on, iPhone came for allowing the mobile commuting access on the one
device. Apple was required to create the various new competencies in the last 15 years for
achieving the intent hardware software, designs, and touchscreens. The hard work for
achieving such strategic intent is the result that it is the most valuable brand and company all
over the world (Montgomery, 2018).
In order to achieve its strategic intent, Apple uses the cost leadership strategy by ensuring
success and competitiveness in the technology industry. By strategizing on the cost
efficiency, sustainability as well as success is enhanced in the company. By minimising the
operating cost as well as putting tight control on the labour cost, it is able to execute the cost
leadership strategy. For achieving its vision, it also uses the differentiation strategy for
making its product attractive and unique for the customers (Norman, 2015). Besides the high
competition, Apple is able to succeed in the creation of demand, ensuring of brand loyalty,
and innovation in advertising around the launch of new product. Apple sells most of its
product through the third party and through its online and retail stores. In this way, the vision
statement of the company is to be the most customer centric company as well as building the
place where people can easily come to discover and find out anything that they want to buy
online (Baroto, Abdullah and Wan, 2012).
Product differentiation is also one such feasible strategy that includes the feature of premium
product as well as the brand image as innovator. By considering the differentiation strategy,
Apple includes several kind of products such as iPod digital music player, power Mac Book,
peripherals as well as other software that are introduced by the Apple. This content helps the
Apple to gain competitive advantage in such a competitive environment (Heracleous and
Papachroni, 2016).
Failure of strategic intent of Apple
It is founded that the main vision of Apple is to follow the customer centric approach. It leads
to somehow failure because it is not targeting all the customers for its brand. It usually target

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the high level customers by keeping higher prices for its products. It has stated that its vision
is to be the customer centric by providing easy online access to the customers. In addition to
this, in the last year, stock of Apple fell due to decline in the iPhone demand. Besides this, it
is also founded that the intention of purchase was down across the board especially in the
China and US. Due to failure of targeting all kind of customers, its strategic intent is also
failing. Additionally, most of the customers are keen to buy the less expensive model. Most
of the new expensive models are 70% of the mixture of both sales as well as purchase intent.
Considering this, the new models fell by the 59% of the mix.
In addition to this, Apple differentiation strategy is also failing to some extent in the market.
The recent new models of Apple do not have many modifications in it and are offering the
almost similar services. In this way, in some aspect of its vision, it is failing to innovate and
in providing differentiate products to customers (West and Mace, 2017). Due to this,
customers are also feeling that they are wasting some of their money by purchasing such
higher price phones and getting no such benefit. It is true that company tends to fail in some
aspect when it does not follow its vision statement properly. Similarly, by stating the
customer centric approach, Apple still lacks in following this approach.
iPhone XS perfectly highlights the failure of Tim Cook in order to innovate. By looking all
the details in the last week launch event of iPhone’s, it will tell everything. It was not able to
grow the sales of iPhone because there was very little difference between the Android feature
and iOS. The strategy put total reliance on getting more money with the help of its current
user base. In this way, iOS is losing the ground of Android in the market place each day
(Spence, 2018).
Recommendations and conclusion
Apple Inc. is quite strong and competitive company due to its massive market using retail and
online stores. However, the vision of Apple may be failing by not including all kind of
customers for its brand. However, Apple can also consider the new development in its recent
product offering such as powerful and smarter camera lens technology or new version of 64
or more than that gigs memory. By opening its more manufacturing units, it can bring the
improvement in its strategic failure. It should also include the some middle customers by
slightly lowering down its prices. By doing so, it can also add various benefits on the side of
customers. In conclusion, Apple can be positioned as the high quality=high price. It is true

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that companies can perform the par with high-class design, striking new technology and by
including all these; Apple can get the very bright future (Owen, 2018).
Apple should also put emphasis on its differentiation strategy by offering unique features
every time it launches its new phone or product. It is because innovation is the essential
aspect of the Apple Inc. It can also stretch the iPhone product in both ways like by releasing
the device with low price with the increased efficiency as well as by coming up with new
models. It can also more effective conduct the research and development in order to ensure
the proper analysing of customers demand. By effectively researching the problem, it can
bring innovation in its new product. Adopting of more and more physical store can also bring
various improvements in the Apple Inc.

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References
Baroto, M.B., Abdullah, M.M.B. and Wan, H.L. (2012) Hybrid strategy: a new strategy for
competitive advantage. International Journal of Business and Management, 7(20), p.120.
Gobeli, D.H. and Brown, W.B. (2014). Technological innovation strategies. Engineering
management journal, 6(1), pp.17-23.
Heracleous, L. and Papachroni, A., 2016. Strategic Leadership and Innovation at Apple Inc.
SAGE Publications Ltd.
Lockamy III, A. (2017, July). An examination of external risk factors in Apple Inc.’s supply
chain. In Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal (Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 177-188).
Taylor & Francis.
Montgomery, C.A. (2018). Putting leadership back into strategy. Harvard business
review, 86(1), p.54.
Norman, D. (2015) How Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name [ONLINE] Available from:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name/ [Accessed
06/02/2019].
Owen, M. (2018) Apple's latest iPhone X ad uses Face ID to ease password worries
[ONLINE] Available from: https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/07/08/apples-latest-iphone-x-
ad-uses-face-id-to-ease-password-worries [Accessed 06/02/2019].
Spence, E. (2018). iPhone XS highlights the Tim Cook’s failure to innovate. [online]
Available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2018/09/17/apple-iphone-xs-max-
iphone-xr-revenue-share-strategy-failure-mistake/#41a4d4e29dc8
West, J. and Mace, M. (2017, February). Entering a mature industry through innovation:
Apple's iPhone strategy. In DRUID Summer Conference (pp. 18-20).