Introduction
This essay explores Apple’s business-level and corporate-level strategies as a dominant player in telecommunications. The paper recognizes the company’s creative potential as its most critical business strategy while having stores in every country as its most effective corporate strategy. More importantly, Apple’s competitive climate is also analyzed against Samsung, which is the company’s primary rival. Finally, the paper compares the tactics mentioned above and the fast and slow cycle economies.
Business-Level Strategies
Business-level strategies are the techniques organizations use to bridge the gap between them and their competitors. Uniqueness as a business strategy is essential for any organization’s success (Michael, 2020). The product’s distinctive appearance will determine the success of that particular item in the market. For instance, in mobile devices, some people look at appealing features to determine whether they will get that specific product. Therefore uniqueness is a long-term fundamental business-level strategy.
Due to the inherent uniqueness of each organization’s strategic approaches, businesses frequently take personalized actions that are tailored to their manufacturing environment. For example, Apple’s business model is based on manufacturing only the highest-quality commodities (Michael, 2020). It has placed a high premium on product innovation while enhancing old products. It employs a unique technique that contributes to its distinctiveness, which justifies its premium pricing. This means that not everyone can afford Apple items, and a few who can afford them do not use other products except Apple’s.
Additionally, the business-level strategy is aligned with the company’s innovative culture, which provides an advantage over competitors. An organization’s ability to maintain customer loyalty for a lengthy period of time depends on the modernization of products that it manufactures have over the years. Apple has portrayed the ability to explore new ideas and techniques in modifying its devices. For instance, ever since Apple produced their first iPhone, they have continued to make huge profits thanks to their loyal customer base.
The devices are modified in a specific way that satisfies consumers, and their mobile devices have unique features that other competitors do not possess. Therefore, innovation is one of the critical competencies of any organization. Innovation ensures stability in the market since an innovative team ensures that products are crafted with advanced ideas than the competitors. This is why Apple has seen tremendous success over any other telecommunication industry. As stated by Dudovskiy in 2019, multinational organizations, especially telecommunication firms, pursue product and services differentiation by adopting attractive design and advanced functionality.
Corporate-Level Strategies
At its founding, Apple had between 75 and 95 percent of its income coming from computers, software, and chips sales. Ultimately, the company sought diversification and established a breakthrough by producing the first computer, the Macintosh. Apple’s first computer sold $100 million in annual sales (Scull & Hsu, 2019). Despite such great results, the corporation faced a significant challenge from market competitors such as Microsoft, which supplied almost similar products at less cost.
Henceforth, Apple’s corporate approach has resulted in intense competitiveness between the company and other industry players. A primary approach is to use the same design techniques in various items without changing their aesthetic appeal (Michael, 2020). Apple’s products, including the iPhone, iPad, and other software products, all feature identical designs, making them easily distinguishable among other similar items on the market. The Apple devices have helped the company to achieve enormous success milestones. Apple’s precision in manufacturing its products and its simple yet effective designs has promoted its image and reputation in the industry.
Another key corporate tactic is that it is one of the few computer firms with international store outlets. That is a significant benefit, particularly given their online and offline presence. Thus, the business is able to provide after-sales service to their customers. In addition, the technique has been successful in making clients feel at ease while buying products because they can do so from places of their convenience. This strategy also facilitates the interconnection of corporate operations whereby the company’s staff are able to exchange ideas. As a result, management can keep a close eye on sales and the circulation of items into and out of these retail establishments.
Corporate strategy is also essential in forming mergers with other companies. The formation of alliances with other companies enables an idea to transfer from one organization to another. In addition, this corporate-level strategy provides the advantages of economies of scale. That is, knowledge gained from the other business can be used to modify devices and share risk and expense among the organizations that collaborate. For example, in 2006, Apple formed a cooperative merger with Intel to use Intel chips on Apple computers to rival DELL and HP companies. Such mergers have been crucial to Apple, particularly enabling the firm to increase its market share and dominance in the industry.
Competitive Environment
Apple’s corporate approach has resulted in enormous competitiveness between the company and other industry players. A prominent approach for the product is that it uses the same design techniques in various other items without changing their key distinctive features such as software design and experience. This is particularly true when looking at Apple’s products like the iPhone and the iPad, based on its popular software, IOS. As a result, these devices are easily distinguishable compared to similar market products. This distinctiveness has helped Apple to leap ahead of its rivals in the industry. For example, it is not uncommon to hear tech lovers praising Apple’s IOS software for its fluidity and interactive user interface.
Apple operates in a very dynamic and competitive environment as a technology company. Such competition is due to the fact that new businesses are constantly entering the market while old businesses are launching increasingly inventive items. The latter is thought to be the core challenge to the organization. Moreover, technological advances have made the competition more difficult because of these new enterprises’ innovative capabilities. As a result, Apple’s primary opponents keep growing, with new entrants emerging virtually every year. For example, in the mobile phone business, they include Samsung, Oneplus, Xiaomi, and Dell and HP computers in the software industry (Björkdahl, 2020). Nevertheless, because it controls a significant share of the market and offers similar products, Samsung will be treated as Apple’s primary opponent in this debate.
When comparing the two, Apple and Samsung have undergone an international business rivalry for an extended period since they are the largest smartphone manufacturers. Their marketing approach is to produce products comparable to those made by other organizations but superior, better, and more economical. At the same time, its corporate approach requires doing a large-scale market study and putting it into action. A study of the tactics of both companies reveals that Samsung may be able to outperform Apple in the future. Nonetheless, both companies have put in place safeguards to ensure that neither of them steals the other’s idea to achieve the highest competitive advantage.
Despite the fierce competition between the two companies, a few similarities can be noted in their business-level and cooperate-level strategies. Like any other business, Apple and Samsung have been locked in a multinational business struggle for a long time now, owing to their status as the world’s largest smartphone producers. Samsung’s marketing approach is to create items similar to those produced by other organizations but is also better, faster, and more inexpensive (Haizar et al., 2020). At the same time, their corporate strategy entails conducting extensive market research concurrently with implementation.
A comparison of the two companies’ methods demonstrates that Samsung may eventually outperform Apple due to the dependability and pricing of Samsung devices. Additionally, the corporation has a history of pivoting and producing rapidly alternative devices. Samsung predicts what the market requires and responds by expanding on its achievements while eliminating its shortcomings. These factors put Samsung in a stronger position to surpass Apple in their markets.
Market Cycles
While slow-cycle markets are those in which competitive benefits cannot be replicated as prescribed by law, fast-cycle markets are those in which competitive benefits can be reproduced while also occurring more quickly and affordably. The duplicate is likewise expensive, and companies acquiring them must have legal documentation. The disparity will be most noticeable in the low cycle market due to the limitation placed on the level of imitation on both organizations. Because of replication of this, Samsung experienced a tremendous blow when Apple won a lawsuit against it for mimicking the looks of its devices. The competition between these enterprises is also a source of differentiation in this industry. They have put protocols to protect their strategies so that neither steals the other’s idea.
Conclusion
Business strategy has been demonstrated in this essay to emphasize the industry potential that a firm intends to pursue, the processes necessary to do this, and the assets needed to fulfill this goal. In Apple’s case, it can be argued that business-level strategies are developed by the middle-level administration, which prioritizes what is necessary for the organization to succeed. On the other hand, corporate strategy is examined as the pillar of an organization’s strategic management approach. It establishes the firm’s development strategy, including the path, timeframe, scope, and momentum to accelerate it. Apple’s case demonstrates the trend of organizational activities and objectives related to strategic focus across various corporate divisions, service offerings, and client segments. More crucially, it establishes the firm’s long-term viability.
To this end, Apple has adopted robust and consistent business-level and corporate-level strategies that have secured its position at the top of the tech industry. Although it faces intense pressure from formidable players such as Samsung and Microsoft, it has created unique products that make it hard for customers to consider matching alternatives. This distinctiveness is often attributed to its ecosystem, which encompasses a wide range of products such as the iPhone, the IPad, the Mac, and the iPod. These unique products make it nearly impossible to compete with Apple from a business-level and corporate level.
Sources
Björkdahl, J. (2020). Strategies for Digitalization in Manufacturing Firms. California Management Review, 62(4), 17–36. Web.
Michael A. Hitt. 2020. Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases: Competitiveness and Globalization 13th ed. Cengage Learning.
Haizar, N. F. B. M., Kee, D. M. H., Chong, L. M., & Chong, J. H. (2020). The impact of innovation strategy on organizational success: A study of Samsung. Asia Pacific Journal of Management and Education (APJME), 3(2), 93-104.
Scull, J., & Hsu, H. (2019). The Killer App That saved the Macintosh. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 41(3), 42-52. Web.
Dudovskiy, J. (2019). Apple Business Strategy: a brief overview. Web.