Business project - Apple



Business project -Apple

Company Overview

Apple Inc is an American multi-national company which has its headquarters in Cupertino, California (Waymarking.com, 2013). Apple Inc was formerly known as Apple Computer Inc. Apple is known as one of the world's leading consumer electronics manufacturer. It develops blueprints and sells its quality consumer products. The primary products of Apple Inc are, Mac laptops, iPod (which a music player), Iphone (which is a Smartphone) and Ipad (which is a tablet). Apple has its own state of art consumer software which includes the lights of, OS X and iOS operating systems, iTunes (which is a media library), Safari (which is a web browser), iLife and iWork (which are productivity and creativity suites).

The organization was established on 1st April, 1976. The name “Apple Computer Inc” was given to the company on 3rd January, 1977. On 9th January, 2007, the new name, Apple Inc was given to the company (Thomas, 2007). On the same day, Iphone was introduced by Steve jobs (Former CEO of Apple). This reflected the change of the business towards consumer electronics (Mark off, 2007). In 1970's Apple thrashed the computer business by bringing about a revolution with Apple II. In 1980's, Apple is known to reinvent personal computers by introducing Macintosh. Over the years, Apple has shown great commitment and determination for providing state of the art computing experience for students, teachers, trainers, professionals and other consumers. Apple offers innovative and one of kind hardware, software and internet offerings.

In the current market, Apple is considered to be the second largest information technology company, trailing behind Samsung. In the mobile market, Apple is third, behind the likes of Samsung and Nokia (Gartner.com, 2012). According to the reports as of may 2013, Apple is operating in 14 countries with 408 retail stores (Apple.com, 2013). Online stores include Apple Store and iTunes store (Apple.com, 2013). ITunes store is the world's largest music retailer. According to market capitalization, Apple is the largest publicly traded company. In the fiscal year of 2012, Apple had revenue which totaled to US$ 156 billion. As of March, 2013, Apple had an estimated market capitalization of US$415 billion. According to the reports, until 29th September 2012, Apple had 72,800 permanent (fulltime) employees and 3300 temporary (full time) employees all around the world (Sec.gov, 2012). Currently Apple is ranked as the fourth best company according to Fortune 500 (CNNMoney, 2013).

Mission statement

It was known that Apple's mission statement was a Steve job quote. The quote was "Man is the creator of change in this world. As such, he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them" (Far fan, 2013).

The official mission statement on the official Apple website is merely a list of products and past awards. Apple's mission statement states that Apple is known to be the world's greatest producer of personal computers. MAC, which uses the platforms of OS X, iLife, IWork and other professional software is a complete personal computer in the ...