MSL711 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

GROUP 8
NIVEDITA MALIK 2016SMN6636
KULDEEP SINGH 2016SMN6643
GAURAV KUMAR 2018SMN6528
DEEPAK KR. SINGH 2018SMN6529

1. What were Apple's competitive advantages?

Answer: - The competitive advantages of Apple are

 Differentiation and innovation which includes the features that is very

exclusive & only found in Apple products. Proprietary designs that only
Apple could produce.
 High quality & premium look.
 High pricing model which is targeting the premium class of the market.
2. Analyze the dynamics of the PC industry. Are these dynamics favorable or problematic for Apple?

Answer: - According to our study these dynamics are problematic for apple. It can be analyzed in below
points

 Till year 2000 the annual growth in PC market was 15 % which is reduced to 3%.It shows it is
changing very rapidly.
 Home buyers constitutes 42% of PCs market.
 Small/medium business constitutes 32% of PCs market & rest are smaller buyers include large
corporations, education, and government.
 Mostly the customers are price conscious & also wants the PC’s whose software are compatible
with the OS.

3. Has Steve Jobs finally solved Apple's long-standing problems with respect to the Macintosh business?

Answer: - Apple’s OS was not compatible with most of the available software which was designed for
Wintel machines. A significant example of this was that the Mac was not compatible with Microsoft
Office which was used by the vast majority of the business world. Macs were also having hardware
incompatibilities due to the adoption of proprietary standards and formats. Macs were incompatible
with a wide variety of peripherals such as scanners, cameras, printers, etc.

Under Steve jobs tenure the strategy is made to change Mac OS to the Intel architecture and switch to
Intel processors from IBM PowerPC. Now the compatibility issue of OS has been removed & to work on
Intel architecture means mac could run Windows & its related programs. They increased investment in in
house development of software. Steve also done a deal with Microsoft to develop a Mac version of the
popular Microsoft Office software.
These changes done by Jobs have made the Macintosh line competitive again in the PC market and fixed
most of the long-standing problems with the Macintosh brand.

4. The iPod-iTunes business has been a spectacular success. Has Jobs found a new formula to create a
sustainable competitive advantage for Apple?

Answer: - Yes, because iPod is having the biggest market share in portable music players & also it has a
unique design with better functionality than his competitors in the market. Microsoft's Zune was
comparable with iPod in terms of hardware, but it did not have a good music store to compete with iPod.
ITunes is the common software that is required for music & videos for Apple's products, as it is the only
official software that can sync with the iPod. ITunes also works on both Mac and PC, and it gives PC
owners the opportunity to use iPods and to buy music or applications from Apple.

5. How would you assess Apple's initial strategy for the iPhone? Why did Apple change so quickly to a
different strategy?

Answer: - According to us the Initial strategy of Apple was not successful as it was expected. Below are
some points which are flaws in their initial strategy.

 IPhone is made on slow network i.e. Edge network rather 3G.

 Pricing is very high because they didn’t make AT&T to subsidize iPhone.
 Not expand market in foreign countries due to which iPhone start selling in “gray Market
“resulting loss in revenue.

Since the sales figure of iPhone is very less they have to change themselves otherwise it will be a great
loss to them. Now they have launched the new iPhone with 3G capabilities with good battery life & also
they lowered their price by subsidizing through AT&T. To increase sales they tied up with BestBuy &
Walmart retails sales stores chain.