Apple Company Case Study Essay

1. Apple Inc. has been named the number one “world’s most admired company” by Fortune each year since 2008. And Steve Jobs, ex-CEO of Apple, who passed away tragically in 2011, is widely regarded as a legend. With regard to Tim Cook, who replaced Steve Jobs as Apple’s CEO, indicate whether you think he has been a successful or an unsuccessful strategic leader so far – provide a justification for your answer. [Your team’s answer to the question can earn a maximum of 2 points]

Around 2013, Apple’s shares fell from $101 to $55, which Tim Cook was blamed for. However, he was better known for operational performance, leading Apple to large profit margins from the 300 million devices sold in fiscal 2015. During this year, Apple earned a net income of over $53 billion, which is an increase of 106% from the previous year. Simultaneously, Apple increase R&D spending by 232% (Jones, 2015).

It is clear that Apple became much more successful in financial terms. Since Cook took over the company, iPhone sales more than doubled, the number of staff members rose to 110,000 from 60,000, and share price more than doubled over the past few years. Moreover, the company opened a great number of shops, for example in

Especially in light of recent events and criticisms surrounding the iPhone’s hardware and general innovativeness. The data support this, in 2015, 70% more app downloads were reported in Google’s store. While Apple’s app revenue may have been higher by 70%, the reason is not so much related to the stores themselves but to the fact that Apple customers are more willing to pay for apps (Sims, 2015). Not only the numbers, the mere fact that innovation or quality of the stores are similar, shows that Apple’s app store is not a strategic advantage anymore and hence cannot be considered a sustainable resource acting as a high revenue boost like in first couple of years after