Operational and Competitive Position of Apple Inc - Term Paper Example

Apple has gained relatively a successful track when it revolutionized its business perception to provide an operating system aligned with graphical user interface even when it has been facing the challenges of fierce competition in both hardware and software markets. When Apple experienced a significant loss of around 45 million dollars during 2002, it helped Apple to think of its major challenges and to find most effective competitive strategies that can help it stay stronger in the market. Though it hardly ever designs and manufactures new products in the market, it has always been a second mover as it finds better market opportunities for the existing products with further refining, alteration and adding innovative values.

As competition created challenges in its marketing ways, it needed to apply strategic ways in order to compete with its counterparts like Dell Inc, Hewlett Packard, Acer etc and to maintain a constant market share. A number of competitive strategies including brand loyalty, complete solutions, education sales, and innovative hardware design have been found to be essentially useful for the company. This research paper focuses on these major competitive strategies of Apple that helped it become a niche player in the computer industry.

In today’s competitive market landscape, Apple’s hot selling iPod digital players, iPhone and 3G iPhone promise to revolutionize the market opportunities of digital entertainment as well as to gain competitive advantages with its strong strategies of innovation, brand loyalty, and unique hardware design.An effective competitive strategy takes offensive or defensive action in order to create a defendable position against the major competitive forces. Apple’s strategies were more or less capable of creating a strong defense against the major competitive forces in its market.