Apple Case Study

Introduction

Apple was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, both of whom were intelligent young students, extremely interested in building gadgets yet Jobs was the visionary and marketing expert of this duo. Their journey started for them when Jobs & Wozniak visited the Palo Alto research laboratories belonging to Xerox in 1979 and presented a personal computer with a user interface that was not seen before on any other computer out there.

Later during the 80’s, the Apple Macintosh computer was introduced as a personal computer that was consumer-friendly. Apple did not sell or provide their software to any of their competitors and that formed a dent in Apple’s sales as opposed to Microsoft’s. This however, did not hinder on Steve Jobs’ innovative thinking and incentive to make Apple the epitome of perfection. During the late 90’s Apple was revived with the release of the PowerBook line of computers and desktops because they were more reasonably priced, offered exceptional features and used the signature Macintosh GUI.

In 2001, Jobs launched the iPod and later in 2007 launched the iPhone. Doing that meant switching their company’s strategy from a relatively safe industry of premium, innovative and high end computers to the highly competitive industry of consumer electronics.

Apple is now engaged in the manufacturing, design and marketing of mobile communication and media services, personal computers and portable digital music players. The company sells a variety of related software, services, third-party digital content and applications.

Moreover, Apple has established a platform that sells music, movies and TV shows called the iTunes store, in which they have signed four contracts with the largest record labels and various smaller record labels. The company also sells books on iBooks.

Apple remains a leading beacon in the industry of consumer technology products and has become a benchmark brand to its competitors, all the while gaining...