SWOT analysis on Apple company Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

SWOT analysis on Apple company - Research Paper Example SWOT Analysis Strength Apple has been known for its innovation strategy and is one of the most successful companies. The company is known for its innovation, its unique ability to design and develop the company’s operating systems. The strength of the company lies in providing the customers with new product and solutions with a superior ease of use. The company investment in the research and development along with marketing and advertisement also adds on to the list of its strength (Apple Inc.-a, 2011, p.1). The company products are in high demand for example, sale of iPod increased and about 100 million iPods were sold making it the fastest selling music player in history (Apple Inc.-b, 2011). The sale of its notebooks products are also very strong and represent a huge contribution to Apple’s income. Apple is one of the most influential and established brand in the world and thus has a set of loyal customers who advocates the brand. The brand not only attracts new cust omers but also retains them. Weaknesses It was reported that Apple iPod Nano had faulty screen. Apple has admitted that there was problem with its new iPod Nano due to a manufacturing problem. The company claims that this problem has affected less than a 10th of 1% of all the Nanos shipped (BBC News, 2005). The music industry have demanded to increase the price of its music downloaded file as many of the music industry makes money from iTunes rather than from the sales of the original CDs. According to Steve Jobs, Apple has made a sale of more than half a billion songs with its iTune Music store capturing about 82% of the market share in US (Cohen & MacCentral, 2005). The product life cycle of the products of Apple is very short and thus revenues depend on the launch of new products and services. Market share of Apple is behind from its competitors such as Microsoft. Opportunities As more and more consumers are getting individualistic and conscious about a brand, Apple’s oppo rtunity is to target those set of consumers. Apple can introduce more new models to cater to the needs of its customers. Apple has an opportunity to develop its iTunes into mobile phone format. Downloads could be available through USB cables, new technology and strategic alliances which would offer a wide opportunities for Apple. The music can be downloaded from Podcasts and played on the iPods where the listener can subscribe for free and revenue can be generated from sales of various other downloads. Another opportunity lies with Apple is with the company’s smart phones. At present Samsung has outshines Apple smart phone thus giving an opportunity to Apple to come up with new features and capture the market share (Whitney, 2011). Since the PC and mobile industry is growing at a steady rate, thus Apple being one of the successful brands has a wide opportunity to explore and expand itself into other countries such as into Asia. There has been an increase in the demand for onl ine music and other applications such as the cloud making a room for Apple to expand into these sectors and generate high revenue. Threats The biggest threat for Apple comes from the high level of competition from the technology markets. A successful market attracts competitors and Apple works hard on its Research and Development and in its marketing tool to retain its competitive position. The popularity of