Academic, Personal & Portfolio Reflection on Apple Inc.
Academic, Personal & Portfolio Reflection on Apple Inc.
Introduction to Company
Apple Inc. is one of the renounced and best key player in the industry of Information Technology. It is mainly involved in designing, developing, and marketing of personal computers or PCs, compact digital devices and media players. It is also engaged in selling a vast range of technological software, services, tangential devices, schmoozing resolutions, and third-party cardinal content and functions. Its core office is located in California, USA. There are about 63,300 workers currently working with Apple Inc. (MarketLine, 2012, n.d.).
The company made sales of $108,249 million by the end of 2011, which exhibits an increase of 66% in a year. It earned an operating profit of $33,790 million in 2011, which exhibits an increase of 83.8% within a year time period. Further more, the net profit recorded to be $25,922 million i.e. 85% higher than the year 2010 (MarketLine, 2012, n.d.).
Major products produced by the company include PCs, Laptops, operating system, mobile phone, software, various applications, television, hardware and other digitized peripherals. The core brands that lie under Apple Inc. are ipad, iphone, mac, apple, ipod, imac and imini. Its key competitors are Dell, Acer, Fujitsu ltd, Google, Hewlett-Packard Company, Microsoft, LG, Nokia, Samsung and oracle.
Academic Reflection
In this section, I would review the changes incurred in the life of Apple Inc. inclusive of its positive effect on company's management and how change management concept was implemented and valued the company in leading its operations as proposed and explained by (John Kotler (Ehap H. Sabri, Arun P. et al., 2006, p. 176). John Kotter identified eight key steps to achieve successful implementation of change effectively after years of observation and analysis regarding how companies and their leaders lead change with varying success. These steps are described below with respect to Apple Inc.
Urgency
To ensure adequate mobilization, it is essential that everyone feel that the status quo is unacceptable. Otherwise, when the first obstacles arise, many quickly find good reasons not to put any effort. It is therefore necessary to create a sense of urgency. For example, creating a crisis by setting impossible goals to achieve with traditional methods, or encouraging employees to meet clients, suppliers or dissatisfied shareholders. The founder of Apple Inc. Steve Job had always believed in creating urgency in order to motivate employees. As per Steve job's statement Since you're so passionate about it, I'll give you six days to prove me wrong. This secret weapon of Apple has always helped out Apple in achieving positive Ventures (Calvin, C., 2012, n.d.).
Coalition
No employee is brilliant enough to alone bring the necessary resources in order to carry out the change. It is therefore necessary to form a coalition with others, which brings together all the required talents inclusive of authority, expertise, leadership, and credibility. Apple has firmly believed in this tactics and I is witnessed in the past that Apple formed a collaborative collation with RIM in order to take most of ...