University Business Report: Strategy Formulation for Apple Computers

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Apple's strategy formulation, focusing on the introduction of Augmented Reality (AR) technology. It outlines Apple's long-term goals of incorporating advanced technologies to transform consumer lives and become a key player in the B2B market, with a specific emphasis on software compatibility for AR and Virtual Reality (VR) across its product line. The report identifies the target markets as working professionals and students, offering value through improved information availability and enhanced design capabilities, particularly for fields like architecture, tourism, and education. The strategy involves leveraging existing hardware, software, and partnerships with application developers. The report discusses the competitive advantages of innovation, security, vertical integration, and strategic alliances. The organizational chart highlights the collaborative effort needed across departments to execute the strategy, concluding that Apple can achieve its objectives through AR technology, vertical integration, and strategic alliances, thereby generating customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Running head: STRATEGY FORMULATION
STRATEGY FORMULATION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1STRATEGY FORMULATION
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
Long-term goals and objectives:............................................................................................2
Strategy formulation:.............................................................................................................2
Target market:........................................................................................................................3
Value offering for the selected market...................................................................................3
Resources and capabilities for the strategy:...........................................................................3
Value capturing and competitive advantage:.........................................................................4
Business Management Strategy:............................................................................................4
Cost and Differentiation advantage:.......................................................................................5
Organizational Chart:.............................................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6

2STRATEGY FORMULATION
Introduction
The process that helps in selecting the most suitable range of action for accomplishing
goals is known as strategy formulation (Noe et al., 2017). The purpose of the report is to
formulate strategy(ies) based on the established aims and objectives of an organization. The
organizational selected for this report is Apple, specifically Apple Computers. The report will
depict the market that the organization will target by including the unique value offered by
Apple. The differentiating factors of the new strategy will also be depicted in the paper. In
this report, the organizational chart of Apple will be generated. The report will be concluded
by summarizing the purpose and differentiation values of the Apple Computers.
Discussion
Long-term goals and objectives:
The long-term goal for Apple can be incorporating most advanced technologies in the
product and services for transforming the lives of consumers with the aim of offering career
assistance and entertainment options. The objective is generating significant support for B2B
clients and becoming the ultimate source of entertainment and learning. This long-term goals
and objectives can be addressed by the vision of incorporating software compatibility of
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality on Apple products such as iPhone, iPads, MacBooks,
and Apple Computer.
Strategy formulation:
The application of Augmented Reality can be established without the obligation of
buying the AR and VR glasses that can be an additional cost for consumers, instead, the
technological development can be made compatible for the consumers in the form of
softwares and application. Apple devices reflect a positive familiarity amongst the

3STRATEGY FORMULATION
consumers, which can be used in favor of the strategy by encouraging software and
application developers to implement the next generation of design and creativity.
Target market:
The primary markets that will be pursued by Apple with the new strategy are the
working professionals and students. The company will target professionals like Real Estate
and Architecture, Tourism and Hospitality, entertainment and teaching as well as students.
These professional backgrounds will be attracted to the new strategy of incorporating
innovation within already existing products.
Value offering for the selected market
The businesses will be targeted for the purpose of addressing their technical, creative,
and design thinking needs. The value offerings of the company for the selected markets will
be improved information availability and designing projects through easy visualization. The
professionals from the architectural department will use the feature of creating a new plan in
the devices without worrying about the complexity of drawing on pen and paper. The layout
and space utilization can quickly be addressed by AR technology (Fernandez, 2017).
Hospitality and tourism industry can visualize the actual offerings of the space and
experiences, which was only possible while consuming the services by the end consumers.
Teaching and learning areas will be offered with the application of real-time knowledge
consumption without depending on past researched case studies (Huang et al., 2018).
Animators can change the approach of designing concepts, which can be relatable and real
(Hunsucker et al., 2017).
Resources and capabilities for the strategy:
 Hardware and software: High battery life, compatible operating system, high storage
capacity, compatible software, and improved data security.

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 Partnership: Application developers
 Financial resources
 Sales and marketing personnel for demonstrating the application of the new strategy
in the target markets.
Value capturing and competitive advantage:
Apple will capture value by addressing the needs of the selected markets, which is to
simplify the business processes of the professions in regards to the creative approach and
updated data-driven designing. Satisfying the customers without any frills by the
understanding about their primary purpose and by collaborating with application developers
can capture value from selected markets (Ansoff et al., 2018). The competitive advantage of
innovation and security can be maintained by building strategic alliances with application
developers, using the emotional connectivity of existing customers with Apple ecosystem and
by the method of vertical integration, which will remove the middlemen from the supply
chain (Ansoff et al., 2018). Vertical Integration strategy will enable the company to own
every process of the supply chain, thereby decreasing the cost and connecting with the
consumers directly for the understanding of usability responses. The strategy of the strategic
alliance will cover the partnership with the application developers for wide-ranged offerings
for different targeted professions. The marketing communication content should focus on the
depiction of values without any frills or the hassle of buying another equipment, as it can be
used with the step of downloading applications and/or updating the compatible software.
Business Management Strategy:
The company needs to incorporate the existing relationships with application
developers for executing the plan of AR compatibility for a large scale in the market. The
budget for the new strategy will only be concentrated on developing technological
compatibility and application development rather than investing in hardware, thereby

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minimizing wastage. The application will be developed through strategic alliances but will be
sold directly through marketing communication amongst existing and potential customers.
Cost and Differentiation advantage:
The company will enjoy the cost advantage by improving the software and application
compatibility in the existing produced devices like Mac and iPhone. The offerings will be
differentiated amongst customer by communicating the advantage of adopting a single step
for the value of AR. The differentiation point needs to be maintained by exclusively alliances
with the application developers for different professions.
Organizational Chart:

Running head: STRATEGY FORMULATION
Fig. – Organizational Chart of Apple
(Source: Created by Author)
Tim Cook (CEO)
Katherine Adams
(Senior VP and
General Council)
Eddy Cue (Senior VP-
Internet Software
and services)
Craig Federeghi
(Senior VP- Software
Engineering)
John Giannandrea
(VP- Machine
Learning and AI)
Jonathan Ive (Chief
Design Officer)
Sabih Khan (Senior
VP- Operations)
Luca Maestri (Senior
VP and Chief
Financial Officer)
Deidre O'Brien
(Senior VP- Retail and
People)
Dan Ricco (Senior VP-
Hardware
Engineering)
Philip W. Schiller
(Senior VP-
Worldwide
marketing)
Johny Srouji (Senior
VP- Hardware
Technologies)
Jeff Williams (Chief
Operating Officer)

Running head: STRATEGY FORMULATION
The organizational chart of Apple depicts the division for every function and
expertise. The AR technology can be handled under John Giannandrea as he looks after AI
and Machine learning with the alignment of Eddy Cue, Craig Federeghi, Luca Maestri, and
Philip W. Schiller. The new strategy will require the collaborative participation of all these
functional departments for efficiently targeting the selected professions through the strategy
of vertical integration and strategic alliance.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded from the paper that, Apple Computers can address the
objective of introducing career assistance offerings by the strategy of introducing AR
technology by aligning to software updates. The objective will be supported by the strategy
of vertical integration and strategic alliances, which will help in the lead to cost and
competitive advantage for the organization. The company will address the actual purpose of
the target customers for generating satisfaction. Customer satisfaction develops value for a
particular product, thereby increasing the customer loyalty.

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References
Ansoff, H. I., Kipley, D., Lewis, A. O., Helm-Stevens, R., & Ansoff, R. (2018). Implanting
strategic management. Springer.
Fernandez, M. (2017). Augmented virtual reality: How to improve education systems. Higher
Learning Research Communications, 7(1), 1-15.
Huang, T. K., Yang, C. H., Hsieh, Y. H., Wang, J. C., & Hung, C. C. (2018). Augmented
reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applied in dentistry. The Kaohsiung journal of
medical sciences, 34(4), 243-248.
Hunsucker, A. J., McClinton, K., Wang, J., & Stolterman, E. (2017, May). Augmented reality
prototyping for interaction design students. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI
Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems(pp. 1018-
1023). ACM.
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2017). Human resource
management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
Education.