Analyzing Apple's Diffusion of Innovation Strategies and Impact

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Apple's diffusion of innovation strategy. It begins with an overview of the company, its product lines, and its market position. The report then delves into the concept of diffusion of innovation, examining how Apple's products, such as the iPad, are adopted by different customer segments, including innovators, early adopters, and laggards. It explores the characteristics of Apple's innovations, the role of communication and time in the adoption process, and the influence of social systems and their consequences. The report highlights how Apple leverages factors like relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability to drive adoption. It concludes by emphasizing Apple's continuous use of new technologies and innovations to maintain its market leadership and influence how technology interacts with people.

Running head: DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION OF APPLE COMPANY
Diffusion of Innovation of Apple Company
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
Overview of Apple.................................................................................................................2
Diffusion of innovation..........................................................................................................2
Characteristics of innovation..................................................................................................4
Role of Communication and Time.........................................................................................4
Social systems and consequences of adoption.......................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Diffusion of innovation helps in communicating an innovation by the use of various
channels. It is shared with the social system members. This special kind of communication is
concerned with spreading the messages of the new ideas. This paper will talk about the
adoption of information system by Apple. The advantages of diffusion of innovation by the
company are also discussed. The diffusion of innovation requires implementation of new
technology. Apple concentrates on its technological innovation in order to increase its
profitability and in turn the customer base. The company has no competition as the use of
technology and other factors of innovations make it a market leader for many years now.
Every product launched becomes obsolete or improved in few years. they use software that is
not possible to duplicate.
Discussion
Overview of Apple
The Company Apple was established in the year 1977 on the 3 of January. It
manufactures, designs and markets media devices, mobile communication, music players and
personal computers. The company sells a range of accessories, software’s, networking
solutions. It is located in America, Europe, China, Japan and major places of Asia Pacific.
iPhone is the chain of smartphones which has an iOS operating system.
Diffusion of innovation
The Apple iPad an innovation of Apple’s technology. The iPad helps users to surf
internet, read and reply to emails, watch videos and movies, play games, listen to songs, read
e-books. It is compatible with the various applications of Apple, which allows users to do

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various activities like storing contacts, mails and notes. The iPad has a touch screen of 9.7
inch. It is extremely sleek and has the Bluetooth devices. It is the latest innovation of iPhone
(Godinho de Matos, Ferreira and Krackhardt 2014). The customers of iPhone fall into three
categories of innovators, laggards and majority. According to the theory of Everett Rogers,
the three categories are also known as diffusion of innovations. It follows S-shaped curve.
Innovators are the first ones in adopting a product. After a while, the early adopters follow
them, followed by the majority. It is then followed by the late majority and in turn by
laggards in order to adapt to new ideas and innovations.
The initials buyers are called the innovators. Innovators have the ideas and knowledge
of the latest technologies. They follow the market trend and are the first customers to buy the
product. The buying decision is independent of the price of the iPhone. They understand the
importance of these information systems. This group of people covers only a small portion of
the entire market. Another group of consumers is the adopters. They are known as the
opinion leaders. They are example setters for everyone in case of making decisions. This
group of people tries products only after receiving a positive review about the product. They
are concerned about the benefits provided by the iPhone. The early majority is keen on trying
new products (Godinho de Matos, Ferreira and Krackhardt 2014). They are not bothered
about the introduction of new technologies or any innovations. The late majority purchases
the product after a certain time of its launch. By the time late majority group purchases the
product, the adopters and innovators have bought a new product. The late majority group is
concerned about the customer support and price of the product. The last group of buyers are
called the laggards (Godinho de Matos, Ferreira and Krackhardt 2014). This category of
buyers wait for the price reduction of iPhone in order to purchase. This group constitutes a
small portion in the market.

4DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION OF APPLE COMPANY
A technology model is developed considering the people factors, product factors and
adoption process interact. iPhone changed the business of mobile phone, the economy of
business in various ways. Its interface idea and the software are based on its iPod, which was
a reinvention of the digital music industry. The point of difference of the iPhone was the
introduction of the new concepts. The developers of the phone used various technologies for
not just making a phone but a handy computer, which can help in calling as well as browsing
the internet. The technological infrastructure of the phone is highly expandable. A full
operating system of a computer is installed in the phone along with various other
applications. The now-ubiquitous app became very popular in a span of 365 days.
Characteristics of innovation
iPhone is not made for lower income group of people. Their target customers are the
higher class and the higher middle class groups of the society. The flexibility of innovations
can withstand changes for providing better fit with the prevailing culture and practices
(Davis, Muzyrya and Yin 2014). These flexibilities involves changes in the characteristics of
innovation for increasing compatibility.
Role of Communication and Time
Agents and channels of communication affect the process of diffusion. Channels of
communication involve mass communication and face-to-face communication. Whereas
agents bring innovations to social system members. Agents of change are the members of the
community present outside the social structure. Diffusion analysis considers the influential
and trustworthy individuals and the people with easy access to different channels of
communication (Davis, Muzyrya and Yin 2014). The matter of concern is the characteristics
of the potential adopters. Factors like education, socio-economic status, gender, culture, race,
age, religion, cultural norms, family ties and social support influences the innovation of

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iPhone. An essential aspect of the diffusion model is the time consideration. It also affects the
close connection of adopter’s analysis. The adoption of innovation takes time, which varies,
from one person to the other. Innovators are considered as creative individuals. The early
adopters are included in the social system (Clayton, Leshner and Almond 2015). They are
close to various sources of communication. They have high opinion of leadership and are the
role models. Diffusion occurs when community members adopt the innovation. The early
majority interacts with the peers and has different sources of information. The late majority
are removed from the key channels of communication (Clayton, Leshner and Almond 2015).
They adopt due to economic necessity. The laggards adopt the innovation much later than the
other groups. These people are marginalized and distant. These members are removed from
various communication channels. They lack resources that include money, time and
opportunities. They are isolated from the society.
Social systems and consequences of adoption
Apple uses the diffusion process within a social system. Apple considers the social
systems that include groups, organizations and individuals. The social system of Apple
consists of the economic, political and geographic characteristics. The structure of the social
system has certain rules and laws. Apple considers the social structure in order to make
decisions. They also consider the opinions of their customers and potential customers. Social
factor can decide the rejection of adoption. Decisions depend on individuals, on communal
group or on the authorities. In general, social system structure can impede diffusion of
innovations. Thus, it influences the adoption rate for innovation. The various factors that
influences Apple to adopt innovation are-

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 Relative Advantage- Apple considers that their innovation is better than the previous
one. For example: The iPad is much better than other laptops or any other Amazon
products (Kooti et al 2017).
 Compatibility- The compatibility level of any innovation needs to be assimilated into
the life of an individual. iPhone users finds it easy to integrate these innovations in
their lives. The users get the accessibility of thousand songs in their pockets.
 Complexity- Apple believes that if the innovation is difficult, it is likely that the users
will not adopt the innovation. For example: The multiple menus versus the touch
screen interfaces. iPhone’s application is very intuitive. The iPhone users belong
from the age group of 12-65 (Kooti et al 2017).
 Trialability- It implies the experimental innovation and its quick adoption by the
users. In case of difficult innovation, the rate of adoption by the users will be less.
Apple uses this strategy in order to increase its customer base. It also increases its
profit and revenue generation. Apple has made the retail stores for the customers to
interact with the devices casually. This helps the users to get a fair idea of the iOS
technology (Kooti et al 2017).
 Observability- An innovation is made visible to every potential customer. The more
prominent and visible the innovation is, more is the adoptability and it drives
communication among the peers and various personal networks. The visibility of
Apple is very prominent and clear. This helps to create negative and positive
reactions. For example: The print campaign of Apple in which the white ubiquitous
headphones were showed depicts the visibility of the company’s products. This
helped in differentiating the white headphone and the iPod from similar products of
other companies (Kooti et al 2017).

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Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that Apple uses the diffusion of innovation for adoption of
its new products. It considers the social system, time and other factors in order to
introduce an innovation. The different groups of people adopt the innovations in different
ways. These groups are named as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority
and laggards. The buying decision and the buying structure are different for every group.
Apple realized the importance of the technology innovation (Farahani et al 2014). Its
vital function in the market is to provide consumers with computing services and
products that are premium. Apple is pushing new technologies to penetrate the market. It
is also concluded that Apple will continue being the market leader by using new
technologies and various innovations. Apple’s immense control over the tech market of
the customers has influenced the technology and the way technology interacts with
humans (Farahani et al 2014).

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References
Godinho de Matos, M., Ferreira, P. and Krackhardt, D., 2014. Peer influence in the diffusion
of the iPhone 3G over a large social network.
Davis, J.P., Muzyrya, Y. and Yin, P.L., 2014. Experimentation strategies and entrepreneurial
innovation: Inherited market differences in the iPhone ecosystem. Technical Re port.
Clayton, R.B., Leshner, G. and Almond, A., 2015. The extended iSelf: The impact of iPhone
separation on cognition, emotion, and physiology. Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication, 20(2), pp.119-135.
Kooti, F., Grbovic, M., Aiello, L.M., Bax, E. and Lerman, K., 2017, February. iPhone's
Digital Marketplace: Characterizing the Big Spenders. In Proceedings of the tenth ACM
international conference on web search and data mining (pp. 13-21). ACM.
Farahani, R.Z., Rezapour, S., Drezner, T. and Fallah, S., 2014. Competitive supply chain
network design: An overview of classifications, models, solution techniques and
applications. Omega, 45, pp.92-118.