Apple Inc

Apple Inc

Introduction

Established in 1977 and formerly known as Apple Computer, Inc, Apple is an American Multinational Corporation formed by the entrepreneurial genius Steve Jobs. It is a company that designs consumer electronics and computer hardware/software. They are one of the leading companies of the USA and the globe. They are famous for their music devices, laptops and their flagship cellular device, the iPhone. Some of the most famous devices from Apple include the Macintosh computer line, the iPod Music player line, the iTunes computer music manager and the iPhone series. Their internet browser, Safari is not as accepted as the competitors but it still has a large share of the market. Apple's Mac Operating System is famous worldwide as being the best operating system for managing heavy processes, graphical and multimedia related tasks. Unlike Microsoft's Windows Operating Systems, it is not vulnerable to viruses and bug attacks. Besides the mentioned products, Apple has a line of other products that are considered as unique and highly productive by users all over the world (Linzmayer, 1999).

Organizational structure

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).

In general, the organizational structure of Apple is vertical with their main head office located only in California. Although they have operations globally, all major decision and initiatives are taken in California. Their R&D department is also located in California and that is where all the genius happens (Price, 2001).

Their organizational structure can be best described in the following three adjectives:

Global

Centralized

Diversified

Comparison to competitors

If we compare Apple to its competitors, we can focus on companies from two markets. One is the cellular market/mobile computing and the other is the personal computers and laptops. With the creation of the iPhone, Apple has changed the world of mobile computing forever. It brought the 'touchscreen' revolution and introduced new levels of mobile computing and cellular technology. With their Mac Operating System and their Macbook laptop series, they changed the face of laptops and personal computers.

Samsung

In cellular technology, Apple faces heavy competition from the technological giant Samsung. Previously it was Blackberry and HTC that were giving tough competition to the company but with the creation of the Android Operating System by Google and its adoption by Samsung into their new line of cellular phones, Apple has lost a large share of their market. With the release of the Samsung S3 on 29th May, 2012, Samsung has replaced Apple as the company with ...