Company Overview and Financial History of Apple Inc.

Company Overview and Financial History for Apple, Inc.
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course
Instructor
Date
Company Overview and Financial History for Apple, Inc.
INTRODUCTION
Apple, Inc. is a US-based multinational firm, carrying out manufacture and sale of products and offering services related to the digital communication segment. In our overview of this company, we shall have a look at its background in terms of the market, customer base, key inputs, and their sources, market trends, and analyze its financial history.
1(A). MARKET
The company belongs to the information technology industry, dealing in the manufacture and sale of tablets, personal computers, wearables and accessories, smartphones, etc. It also provides services that include; AppleCare, payment services, cloud services, digital content, and advertising. It has a market share of around 55%.
1(B). CUSTOMER BASE AND TOP COMPETITORS
Its customer base is drawn mainly from small and mid-sized businesses, consumer, government, enterprise, and education markets. The main competitors include; Lenovo Group, Sony Corp., Dell Technologies, HP Inc., and ASUSTek Computer Inc. The company keeps its customer base motivated by continuously and promptly introducing new services, technologies, and products. From as early as 1985, Apple was an innovation specialist, undertaking newer technological designs on its products and service to suit its customer base (O’Grady, 2009). This was done in addition to the adaptation of the existing products and services to the market.
The business is faced with the challenges of keeping these customers amid price wars that lower its margins, price-sensitive customers, swift adoption of advancements in technology by the competition, shortened life spans for its products, new products and services being introduced frequently, rapidly changing standards in the industry, and sustained product price and characteristics’ improvement.
1(C) KEY INPUTS AND RESOURCES
The company uses customized components only supplied from a single source, alongside those supplied from multiple sources. A substantial portion of its hardware components is outsourced. It boasts of a workforce of around 154,000 employees. The company faces market competition for the components, leading to shortages and fluctuations in prices. In addition, the supply of the custom components faces challenges on the part of unreliable suppliers. On the part of the human resource, the key inputs include employees, researchers, and developers. The company has to ensure workplace practices and policies, adequate staff compensations, benefit, inclusion, diversity, growth, development, engagement, staff safety, and health.
Other key inputs are production facilities, the supply chain, Apple stores, Apple streaming services, raw materials used in the production of products, product designs, innovation, proprietary Apple technology, intellectual property like Apple Siri, Apple app store, customers, investors, and competitors of apple will demand new innovations which in turn will drive demand for new products, services, the technology of Apple, Samsung and others. Management must be aware of the challenges that Apple might have in o...