APPLE INC.



Apple Inc.

Apple Inc.

Today, Apple is a highly successful company with a large market share, giving tough competition to the rival Microsoft. The company dominates the market for both MP3 players with its iPod and music downloads with its iTunes service, along with holding substantial market shares in computers. The success of Apple is attributable to its spirit of innovation and design leadership, which has resulted in some unique products on the market.

Innovation and Design Leadership of Apple

Apple Inc. has been able to uphold its leadership in these markets because of its sustainable competitive advantage of unique and innovative designing. The design leadership and innovation-orientation of the company are on the most part due to its founder, Steve Jobs. The company maintains a much sought after position in the market because of critical dependence on its ability to offset competitive threats by existing and new rivals (Grant, 2007).

Steve Jobs embarked upon one of the most successful business ventures ever that is Apple Inc, which beat the all powerful Microsoft. His leadership ability is unequivocal. He took a simple idea and turned it into one of the most sought after line of products. Jobs had a remarkable penchant for corporate development and innovation, which led to Apple's design leadership. He was a role model for his employees because of his passion for learning and development and relentless innovation. He developed a company where innovation and R&D is highly encouraged, which became the success factor for Apple (Erve, 2004).

Apple's Competitive Advantages

According to Grant (2007), Apple has been able to sustain its design leadership and innovative outlook because of the following factors, which helps it counter competition easily:

Pre-emption - This is perhaps the biggest competitive advantage of Apple. The fact that Apple limits the market opportunities available to its rivals is the driving force behinds its success. This is evident in the marketing strategies Apple adopts. Apple appeals to as many market segments and customers as possible through offering a wide range of products for diverse customer preferences. Apple has made this possible through for instance, giving its customers access to a whole slew of music genres, artists, and individual recording artists as possible at the iTunes music store. The pre-emptive strategy applied calls for identification of new technologies and up-and-coming customer preferences rapidly so as to beat the competition attempting to contend on grounds of innovation. (Holder & McKinney, 1995).

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