Strategic Planning and Management: Apple Inc. Capability Analysis

This report provides a detailed internal capability analysis of Apple Inc., focusing on its resources and skills to determine its competitive advantages. The report examines Apple's vision, mission, and strategic plan, highlighting its differentiation strategy. It employs the VRIO framework to evaluate the value, rarity, imitability, and organizational aspects of Apple's resources. The analysis discusses the value of Apple's resources, particularly its brand and ease of use, and identifies both strengths and weaknesses. It explores the rarity of resources like the iPhone brand and the challenges of imitation. The report concludes that Apple has a sustained competitive advantage in its brand name but could benefit from better exploitation of software and third-party compatibility. It also notes the temporary advantage of its hardware, which is protected by patents, and the importance of consumer electronics and online services as revenue sources.

Running head: MANAGEMENT 1
Strategic Planning and Management
Name
Institution
Author’s Note

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Capability Internal Analysis for Apple Inc.
Introduction
Apple Inc. is one of the most reputable organizations recognized in almost all parts of the
world. This organization has been able to emerge as one of the most competitive organizations
across various local and international markets (Forkmann et al., 2016). Moreover, its
management team has been in a position of adequately utilizing various resources that are
attached to the organization, which has made it move top-notch higher compared to several other
organizations. As a result, this report is therefore focused on determining the capability internal
analysis for Apple Inc. by adequately identifying its resources and skills to give a clear
illustration of how the organization is capable of operating at the internal level.
Organizational Information
Apple Inc. is one of the most recognized American multinational technology
organizations whose focus has always been on a wide range of markets that are situated across
different parts of the world. Apple Inc. is one of the world’s recognized organization in terms of
revenue, which totaled $265 billion in 2018. On the other hand, the main headquarters for this
organization is majorly situated in Cupertino, California. The organization has always been
recognized for its ability to adequately design, develop and even sell different types of
electronics accompanied by online services that are geared towards meeting the needs of various
customer segments attached to the company (Ioriatti & Lucchi, 2016). The vision statement for
Apple Inc. provides a clear picture of what the whole organization is all about. The vision clearly
postulates that “We believe in our connection to the earth to invent a variety of products that
cannot change" This motivating vision statement from the organization highlights that they are

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always focused on delivering quality products and services for all its clients who are situated in
various places across the universe (Winston & Weinstein, 2016). On the other hand, its mission
is to come up with one of the best user experience to all its customers by coming up with
efficient, innovative hardware, software together with several other services. As far as its
strategic plan is concerned, it implements a differentiation strategy as one of its primary
international policy when it comes to delivering high customer value.
Theoretical Spine
Apple Inc. is connected to an interesting success story in the world of computer
technology and several other market platforms, irrespective of all the challenges that it has been
able to encounter in the global market. Moreover, this impressive performance record reveals'
Apple's utilization of its primary competencies, which have been captured in the VRION
analysis. As a result, the model of VRIO analysis has the capability of adequately evaluating the
nature of value, rarity, imitability, together with the organization structure that is associated with
the business (Laudon & Laudon, 2015). One of the major aims that are associated with this mode
of internal is to perfectly determine some of the major competencies, together with the
competitive capabilities of the whole organization, concerning variables that are all connected to
the VRIO model. In such a situation, the whole of Apple Inc. carries out fundamental
exploitation of its significant competencies to obtain a long term condition of competitive
advantages against all its existing competitors within various market platforms. Some of the
well-organized objectives together with planning are majorly concerned with the scaling up of a
business, for example in specific places where certain competitors are not active. When it comes
to giving a response on Apple's VRIO analysis, various mangers have an opportunity of coming
up with the best strategies aimed towards strengthening their respective businesses.

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 Value- Most of Apple's resources have been able to add value by providing the
company with an opportunity to exploit a vast range of possibilities. Due to this, the
resources that are attached to the entire organization have enabled it to utilize unique
opportunities that are associated with artificial intelligence implementation (Van Alstyne,
Parker & Choudary, 2016). Nearly all the resources that are attached to Apple Inc.
appear to be valuable except the ability of the IPhones to get compatible with different
types of third party applications that exist in various markets. Currently, the iPhone is not
able to support certain types of web interfaces, which include things like Adobe flash
(Liou et al., 2016). Moreover, iPhones that are produced by Apple Inc. always require the
installation of iTunes in a PC to enable data synchronization to take place most, so if use
is not able to manage the subscriptions of the iCloud services. As a result, this
compatibility level has been able to put Apple Inc. at a competitive disadvantage across
different regions that constitutes of a variety of markets. On the other hand, when
viewing Apple Inc. in the form of a brand, it emerges to be one of the second largest
technology companies in the world (Teece, Peteraf & Leih, 2016). As a result, it has been
able to emerge as a recognized leader within the technology industry.
 Rarity- Different resources that can only be attained by one or few organizations are
always viewed to be a rare type of support. As a result, those resources that are rare have
the capacity of granting a given organization a competitive level of advantage that will
always be temporary (Ross, Beath & Sebastian, 2017). The unique brand name that
Apple Inc. decided to give iPhone together with its ease of use across few other firms has
gone to the extent of providing it with a more temporary level of a competitive advantage

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which could be well sustained if they appeared to be very difficult to imitate such as what
is captured in the brand's name. Moreover, the ease of use is a condition that emerges
from the touchscreen's interface, its compatibility with what is known as iTunes, and also
the ability of iPhone to get synchronized when an adequate connection is carried out with
iTunes (Tidström & Rajala, 2016). This is a technique that is likely to be imitated by
other manufacturers available in the market since a vast range of mobile phones have the
capacity of shipping with their software that has been attached to these functions
(Marshall et al., 2016). However, at the current moment, none of these are capable of
having the ease of use when compared to the iPhone.
 Imitability- An essential resource is always very costly when it comes to its imitation,
most so when other organizations that are not able to gain access to it or even substitute it
at some reasonable price. Currently, IPhone's brand name, hardware, together with its
software, stands to be among the most challenging resources to be imitated by any other
organization (Miller, Cafazzo & Seto, 2016). This has majorly been as a result of Apple
Inc. purchasing different companies known to have the capability of producing the
hardware-software. At the same time, the company has also gone further to protect their
software through the use of various patents. Additionally, the organization's brand name,
together with its hardware, has been able to provide Apple Inc. with a high level of
competitive advantage. To some extent, the software could also be in a position of
providing the organization with the required competitive advantage if Apple Inc. was in a
strategic area of exploiting it mostly by deregulating the entire App Store and also by
making sure that they are capable of providing the customers with greater and reliable
compatibility of the third party.

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 Organization- Nearly every available resource within an organization cannot be able to
confer any added advantage for a specific company most so if it is not adequately
organized with the intention of capturing a preferred set of values. Due to this, any given
firm should always be in a position of perfectly organizing its management systems,
policies together with organization structures to get a perfect opportunity to adequately
realize the potential associated with its value, rare and even costly when it comes to the
imitation of various resources together with capabilities. As a result, the organization can
raise a lot of questions as to whether Apple Inc. is in a position of adequately exploiting
the resource (Ramírez & Selsky, 2016). Some of the areas in which it is not able to do so
are in terms of their software and also in the compatibility of the third party. Apple is
capable of doing this kind of exploitation by approving a large number of apps, most so
for the ones that are attached to the App store. Also, it has gone as far as providing the
necessary support for several other PC applications, which might include the windows
media player and several different types of web-based contents that generally depend on
the Adobe Flash.
Conclusion
Apple Inc. appears to be having a more organized and sustained advantage that is firmly
attached to its brand name but could be in a position of benefiting a lot by carrying out adequate
exploitation of the possible conditions of competitive advantage through scaling up the nature of
their software and also increasing the level of compatibility. Moreover, the temporary advantage
as a result of its hardware is likely to become sustained since a vast range of subsidiary
organizations that are attached to Apple, most so the ones who are well versed in hardware
production, spend a lot of money on R&D and have also been in a position of protecting a

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variety of their products through the use of patents. Most of the operations that have been
currently implemented by Apple Inc. have majorly concentrated on consumer electronics
together with a wide range of online services, which have also proved to be the significant
sources of revenue. However, a good number of strategic plans associated with the company
already incorporate some of the significant opportunities geared towards developing business in
several industries.

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