Why Apple Is So Successful - Free Essay Example

Apple Inc. is a successful technology company that produces digital electronic devices. The company is US-based specifically located in California.The company is involved in the design, development and the sale of consumer electronics, softwares of computers, and online services. The software products that Apple Inc. sells which include Classic Mac OS, macOS, iOS , tvOS,watchOS, audio OS ,Core Foundation ,Developer Tools ,Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, QuickTime, CarPlay, HomeKit. The hardware that the company has are Mac(iMac, iMac Pro, MacBook family, Mac Mini, Mac Pro),iPod(Classic, Nano, Shuffle, Touch) iPhone iPad (Mini, Air, Pro) Accessories,Apple TV, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod. The company also deals with professional applications such as Xcode, logic pro and Final Cut Pro. The online services offered by Apple are IOS App store, Apple music, iTunes store and Mac app store.(Apple 2017) Apple Inc.started its operation in April 1st, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, the company was founded to develop and sell the computer that was designed by Wozniak which was the Apple I and Wozniak also designed the Apple II which appeared in 1977. From 1976 to 1980, the company concentrated on the production and sale of the Apple I and Apple II computers. The sales revenue in 1978 increased from$7.8million to $117 million in 1980, the sales went up 1500 percents.The company became publicly known. In a few years time, the company started hiring designers of computer and they had a production line. Thought out the rest of the 1980s, the company was still doing great and getting stronger at the time, In 1990s the company posted the highest profit.(Macworld, 2006). The marketing of Apples commercial products received critical acclaims that spread all through..However, the high prices of products and the limitations of software titles caused some problems (Zadesky, 2006). Due to their competitors charged lower prices, the market for the computer are increased and the sales in Apples computer are deceased. In 1983 Wozniak left apple due to a diminishing interest. Then jobs hired formerly president of PepsiCos John Sculley to be president. At that time,Jobs was struggles the power between one of the founders to resign from Apple and create his own company which he named NeXT. In 1985, Jobs left the company went to a new things, NeXT software Inc. However, there were too many shuffles of the excutive in the company, Therefore the new CEO, Gil Amelio, decided to ask some help from an old friend: Steve Jobs, by buying NeXT. Jobs agreed, he regained his position as CEO after which he began to rebuild the status of Apple Company (Andre, 2007). Jobs ha ve figured out many ways to rebuilding the status of the company such as opening retail stores, acquiring numerous companies to create a portfolio of software titles, and changing some of the hardware used in its computers.Because of Jobs restorative efforts,under the leadership of Jobs, the company become a profitable company once again. Jobs later announced that the company would be renamed from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. This is because Jobs wanted the company to reflect on the focus shifted towards electronics of consumers. Jobs also announced the introduction of the iPhone which most people started using leading to the financial success of the company. Job later resigned due to health problems and Tim Cook took over as the CEO. In the world of information technology, Apple is one of the largest companies by revenue and the second largest mobile phone manufacturers while their competitor, Samsung, dominates the worlds mobile phone manufacturer. It poses a huge threat to Apple because they are both competing to reach maximum sales. Apple became the first corporation to ever be valued at over $700 billion in 2005 (Gillespie 2005). This posed a threat to Samsung because the Apple Company seems to be winning the competition. Apple Company has 123000 full-time employees and 499 retail shops in 22 countries in the world. It has its operations based at the iTunes store, which, at the time, was the largest music application and mobile device manager in the whole world. Apple products are actively in used worldwide. In 2017, Apple reported an annual sale of $229 billion. The Company enjoys brand loyalty from its customers and it has been ranked as the most valuable brand in the whole world. The products from Apple Co mpany are highly esteemed and are said to be of high quality in comparison to other brands. However, the Company receives critics from all corners regarding their labor problems with child labor and harsh working conditions, poor environment and illegal business practices. It was revealed that Hon Hai Precision Industry, Apples main supplier in Asia, has been taking advantage of student interns with the assembly of IPhone X (Hao 2017). The structural organization of Apple Company is what has contributed to its success. The Board of Directors of the Apple Inc comprises of eight members who have a leadership background in various industries, with three active CEO and two former chairman and CEO of global companies. The structure of Apple Inc. with its presence globally and the different domains in the electronic industries requires an effective information system, which ensures that information is delivered to the right people at the right time, thus the decisions made will always be consistent and backed with the right information passed to everyone . The Apple Inc. aims to be innovation leaders in the technological world. The same philosophy is used even in the manner used to manage internal communication, which depicts the superiority of the company. In relation to this concept, many of the processes in Apple Inc. are virtualized; a factor that the company believes provides a competitive advantage in the future market. The information system in the organization enables their employees to acquire required information from the comfort of their position. Apple Inc. has an extranet enabling them to converse with their suppliers and developers of Macs applications. As a result, they are able to c reate an unlimited value chain in the world of information by connecting the supplier and the units of production, which are linked to the retail stores in return. Information available at the retail stores is communicated to the department of customer service, who already has the information regarding the details of production and the suppliers. As a result, information is available in every department, which simplifies the companys ability to offers services efficiently. The information system has also improved the sharing of important information with their staffs as well as rendering important information to the customers and the suppliers. Without a good information system, the company cannot be able to communicate effectively with its customers, suppliers or even the staff, which may lead to a reduction in profitability. Initiating, planning, execution, and close down are the processes of managing information system at Apple Inc. At the first stage of initiation, there is the development of a team meant to establish a relationship with the customers, initiate project plan, procedures of management, management of the project environment, and project charter. Initiation is an important step because without it the organization cannot succeed. The next process is planning. In this stage, the projects are split into many manageable tasks to help the organization accomplish the goals efficiently and in a timely manner. A preliminary budget is also developed and the communication plan is revisited. Apples Inc. milestones and deliverables should be identified to achieve planning. Execution of the plan is what follow, where plans are put into action. These actions include the execution of baseline plans, progress monitoring, and maintaining workbook project. The last phase of these processes is close down. At this stage, the project is completed. Contacts with the customer are closed. They would engage in a post-project review to discuss new opportunities for future projects being developed. The team at Apple Inc. is responsible for information system and technology by managing the important business and the technical infrastructure at the company. The teams are responsible for taking orders online, experiencing the technology in the Apple retail stores, understand capacity needed around the world, processing of credit cards and the functions of iTunes. Among the team, there are project managers and business analysts. The role of the Apple team typically consists of preparing the documentation according to the size of the project, allocation of resources to project team, communication of the status of the project, management of risk, monitoring the readiness of change of the business as well as conduction of implementation reviews. Alignment of the information management strategy is a important objective The importance of positioning the information management strategy of every business is definitely essential. An information management strategy describes your agencys planned approach to information management to meet current and future organizational needs and regulatory requirement. â‚ ¬NAA, 2018)From this strategy, it can helps an individual gain competitive advantage in his or her business. In a highly competitive business market in technology, company like Apple Inc have maintain their position in the market because the company was able to keep their information management strategy on standard. There are several benefits they received when they achieved their success. One of their major benefits was that when Apple CEO, Steve Job, decided to rework their iPod. He wants to control the primary technology in everything he does. For Example he was obsessed with control, he wants iPod playing songs encoded by Apple only, but it will limit the iPod market. He then came up with the idea landing with a windows compatible and that made iPods sales went up. His decision to change was fundamental to the exceptional success that Apple has over the past ten years.(UKEssays, 2013) Another management strategy that apple used was strategic alignment. strategic alignment is the process and the result of linking an organizations structure and resource with its strategy and business environment. (Hertz, 2018). Apple has adopt this method of strategy to target their customer in a unique way. Apple limits the innovation in each new product generation. They focus on a few that sparkle while reusing much of the original product design. By focusing their resources on a few highly differentiated innovation, Apple brilliant marketing surprise the customer by inflating the innovations contribute while controlling cost, resources and maintaining stability. (Meyer, 2010) Information Technology system which also known as the IT system, IT system played a significant role in business in now a days, if an individual want to start a business then IT system is a must, IT system which help business manipulate almost all the operation that a business need. For example, it can help a business increase its efficiency and also improve the overall performance of the business economically. The development of IT system also help an individual have a more competitive advantage than others in their job market. Therefore, in order to to have a successful business, individual should use IT system strategically. There are a variety of successful technology company in the world. However, Apple Inc stands out out of these company because their business carries several major factors to let them achieve their success. One of the major factors was their marketing strategy, they have their unique design and their own processing system which can be easily differentiate from others and they let their customer think if they have a iPhone then the customers will feel special among the others. Apple Inc was the highest rating company in the world and they promote their product by letting customer know their phones holds a different value and their products have a higher quality then others. Every year Apple Inc will always announce their new products, they always improve their products by adding new features and improve their products to fulfill customers need. One of Apple Inc competitors ,Samsung, have been improving their performances recently. However, to counter that Apple Inc have to work on the ir performances significantly.

Concurrent Engineering Essay - 1100 Words

Concurrent Engineering (Essay Sample) Content: Topic: Concurrent engineeringName:Course:Instructorà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s Name:Date:"What are the major challenges to managing projects in a concurrent engineering processà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ?IntroductionConcurrent engineering is the process of together task performance thus a combined process in the product performance. Through such tasks, the companies involved in the task performance usually have the capabilities in the differentiated groups. Through this, the task performance is usually co-relation in the sense that there is the distribution of the duties among the companies.This process enhances the cost effectiveness in the products produced. The amount of the costs incurred is usually shared among the companies involved thus reduction in the amount of each companyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s contribution. The approaches used in the development of the project in the design process of the project. The integration of the development project helps in the reduction of the time used in the product ion process that is required for the product manufacture into a useable product.This is a new design for the management system designs thus improving on the management strategies (StjepandicÃÆ'Å’, 2013). However being a pool of teams to conduct the process, it offers various threats in the management as the interested parties want to be the heads. This makes the project to pose conflicts among the parties as they try to struggle for the seats. The success of the venture brings the conflicts in the struggle for power among the various companies used.No training in teamworkIn the involvement of the team engineering, there is the lack of the teamwork training. Team work training is the training of the companyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s staff in the efficiency of the products generated. Through this, team working is not enhanced as the involvement of the concurrent engineering processes has all available methods set in place for the process to be undertaken. The process of the staff recruitment, the process is much demanding based on the qualifications expected to be pot rayed in the services delivery (StjepandicÃÆ'Å’, 2013).The experts expected are to be of high skills profile which should of the in line with the undertaking. Each of the contributing groups comes up with its experts thus having a pool of experts. Once there are more experts, choosing of the most equipped experts to run the undertaking is always much difficult as each group aims at proving to be the team with the most equipped experts.Unrealistic schedulesWith the practice e of the concurrent engineering, the schedules that are usually set are for the undertaking thus being favorable for the project alone (Ghodous, Kuntz Loureiro, 2006). On the project completion, the schedules are usually broken due to lack of a common goal among the involved personnel in the undertaking. The continuation of the group togetherness is usually terminated on the completion of the project being undertaken. It is, as a res ult, of the achievement of standard set goals that make the termination be reached. Not unless there is another project to be undertaken under a common goal, the merging usually comes to an end.A focus on computerization rather than process improvementHaving a common goal in the services as well as on the product design makes it more computers oriented aspect rather than a process improvement technique. The different teams involve are more into the technology in a move to prove their advancements in the technological era thus being more concentrated into the computerization rather than on the process improvement. They are usually oriented on the quality products without the considerations on the processes to be undertaken. Rather than coming up with a common strategy, the divisibility of labor is what they enhance thus coming up with quality processes but without comprehensive improvements on the processes involved.Management demandThe management is the main contributor to the succe ss of the undertakings in an engineering involving the concurrent techniques. This is because the management is a responsible team on the enhancement of the processes; therefore, if the management does not the whole concept in a more comprehensive way, they are expected does not occur. The EDM/PDM depends on the functionality of the control in the enhancement of the materiality in the scope of the dutie...