APPLE

Apple: Assessment as a global organization

Apple: Assessment as a global organization

Introduction

This paper focuses on one the most successful companies that the world has seen recently. Established in the year 1977 by the technological genius Steve Jobs, Apple Company (formerly known as Apple Computers) is the world's leading consumer electronics company. They are the world's leading IT Company that focuses on: personal computing and laptops as well as mobile computing and cellular technology. Their Macintosh Operating Systems and their Macbook Laptops/Computers are one of the best computing devices available in the world and their cellular phone, the 'iPhone' is the market leader of mobile computing (Young & Simon, pp. 23-25). This article discusses globalization from the viewpoint of Apple Company and how the company has managed to grab so much of the market share since its advent and how it has become the most liked company in the USA. The shares of Apple in the market are currently trading at around 2.75 dollars per share, making it one of the most desired companies in the stock market. Their organizational structure can be best described in the following three adjectives: Global, Centralized and Diversified. In terms of logistics, Apple has to consider certain factors and there are certain risks and difficulties that the company has to face. These are discussed below, following a resource allocation picture by Apple.

Globalization

Globalization can be traced back to time as ancient as 5000 BCE, if we take a historically deep perspective and treat it as a much wider and deeper process of human rendezvous: activities in the realms of cross-cultural trade, travel, and world religions.

Apple has around 350 retails stores in more than thirteen countries globally. Additionally, its music manager iTunes also serves as an online store through which users can easily purchases music and applications for their computers, iPods and iPhones. Apple is the largest technological company in the world by revenue and profit. It makes more money than Google and Microsoft combined. As recorded in the year 2011, the company had 60,400 full-time permanent employees and 3000 contractual employees working worldwide. Its annual revenue of 2011 grossed to approximately 108 billion US dollars. In 2008, Fortune Magazine named Apple as the most admired company in the United States of America (Fortune Magazine, 2008).

There is a lack of consensus on one definition that can depict all the complexity and multiplicity of globalization satisfactorily since scholars have been studying globalization out of multiple disciplines. For economists, with their focus on trade, finance and investment, globalization is an expansion of economic trade markets and capitalism in the world. For political scientists, globalization refers to multilateral cooperation and non-state actors in international politics. Cultural and media globalization are the top concerns of sociologists, and scholars of communication and cultural studies. Economists and businessmen have stated that: “globalization is diverse in itself and there are wide discrepancies in the basic understandings of globalization”. Thus it appears daunting, or even virtually impossible, to find one definition for a concept that spans ...