Apple Inc. External Environment

The general environment is a component of business external environments; the general environment represents the forces that exist outside of the company that have the potential to indirectly affect it in some way. Although a business cannot control what takes place in the general environment, evaluating the general environment can allow businesses the opportunity to predict changes and identify future opportunities. Or to simple put it is the factors and conditions (such as economic, legal, political, and social circumstances) that generally affect everyone in an industry or market in more or less similar manner.

My company of focus for this semester is Apple Inc. Apple started in the 1970’s by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The company

One of the exceptionality of the organization is its late leader Steve Jobs because of him the company achieved an unbelievable business performance. Apple products such as IPod, IPhone, IPad and Mac are very well-liked products in the market because of its own software, design, brand image and functions. Besides, Apple has a good business and marketing strategies. For example, all product line of Apple and marketing materials are different and you will not find the same things among competitors including its design, advertisement strategy, brand name, product packaging as the company spends a quite a big amount to beat its competitors and look better than them. Another strategy of Apple Inc is to make presentation about its new product before its release and also tell more in details about it and give a clear presentation to people, mass media, and reporters by impressing them with a new launched product (Small Fuels Marketing Inc, 2007). Distribution, product diversification, brand image makes the company very

For example, IPhone that focuses on mobile selling it was the fastest growing segment among Smartphone’s in 2006. Generally we can say that every product of Apple has its own market segment as you see IPhone is among Smartphone’s market, another example Apple Mac computers orientated to professional users and also students and IPods' devices for entertainment and music market.

The Industry Environment

Porter defined the nature of competition in a specific industry that is determined by five forces: bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, rivalry among competitors in the industry, threats of substitutes and barriers to entry. The main aim of Porter's Five Forces Model is to gain better appreciative of a specific industry by analyzing the external environment. This Five Forces Model proved its effectiveness of analyzing the market and the forces that affect on the industry and the influence of existing competition on it.

Using this model i will talk about the competitive position of Apple by analyzing its external environment base on the industry environment.

Existing of rivalry: Medium: as Apple also produces software it has its main competitor Microsoft that produces Windows operative system and media for playing music and video. In hardware area of computers it has competitors like Dell, HP, Lenovo companies. In MP3 industry Samsung