Apple Swot

Strengths

1. Apple's current success is due to many reasons. Firstly, it is a well-established brand ("Apple Computer: "Logo"", 2005, para. 1) and has a committed, loyal and fanatical base of customers due to its commitment to satisfy its loyal customers by coming up with new products. Some of these customers even queue up in bad weather to purchase a new product on the day of its release.

2. Secondly, Apple has not only been able to attract new customers but retains them with stylish designs and state of the art products like the iPod. Through its strong heritage of design excellence coupled with beautiful packaging and backed by brilliant product promotions and marketing, Apple has built very good and easy-to-use user interfaces, as well as well designed "cool" products to own, resulting in the Apple brand being imprinted in people's minds as one of the most established and healthy IT brands worldwide.

3. Thirdly, as the Apple brand is well established and wildly popular, sales of its products (in particular the iPod) have been massive. The iPod is considered one of the best lifestyle products. The favourable brand perception has also increased the sales of Macintosh computers, already powered by one of the best operating systems in the market. Sales of notebooks products are also very strong (Morgenstern, 2005), and are a huge contribution of income for Apple. The massive profits made could then be pumped into developing news products (the recently launched iPod Nano and the iPod Video) or better marketing schemes for existing products.

4. Fourthly, Apple is dedicated to improve its products by investing in research and development. Research and development has allowed Apple to penetrate the local market by coming up with new and innovative products that cater to the demand of the locals. The ability to create new, must-have products and the innate grasp of the importance of well-funded, good-quality marketing means Apple manages to maintain and even improve its sales figures year after year.

5. Apple has a very good internal environment. The fact that no complains about Apple has been made openly by its employees shows that Apple takes care of its employees' welfare ("The Benefits Of Working At Apple", 2005). This increases productivity as employees are happy and they will want to maintain the level of satisfaction that the company provides them with.

6. Control over the product. Apple is unusual in the computer market today in that it is a manufacturer both of the computers themselves and also the operating systems which they run. This enables Apple to deliver a tightly coupled, integrated product.

7. With the new iPod Touch and iPhone Apple has increased its market share in the MP3 market and has introduced itself in the handphone market, therefore gaining