Apple's business strategy

Business strategy refers to the sum total of a company's strategies to guide how to compete in its own industry, including a series of financial policies, organizational structure and other activities. Making an appropriate business strategy is the best way for a company to gain a sustainable competitive advantage in its own industry. What I brought here is Apple's business strategy.

After the financial turmoil in 2009, Apple's business strategy was bleak in the industry, and Apple was firmly ranked first in Forbes' list of global high performers. Looking back at the first 10 year of this century, after President Jobs returned to the company, Apple finally walked out of the trough experienced in the 1990s by taking advantage of the rapid growth in sales of several star products. The company's profit margin continues to be at a high level in the industry.

Apple's glory began with the iPod player launched on 200 1. IPod looks smooth and concise, becoming a symbol of fashion. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone. Since then, the original pattern of the smartphone market has completely collapsed.

In the first 10 year of 2 1 century, the sales of these star products of Apple increased rapidly, and the company's profit rate remained at a high level in the industry. Since 2004, Apple has maintained a double-digit growth rate with an average profit margin close to 32%. In the same period, the highest growth rate of Sony was 13%, and the lowest was negative growth, with an average profit margin close to 23%.

Apple's business strategy: Jobs strives to create a user experience.

In the era when personal computers were just born, Apple was once brilliant and had unlimited scenery. However, since the prosperity of Wintel Alliance in 1990s, Apple has gradually become a niche brand with professional needs in graphics and design. In the mid-1980s, due to business problems, serious company losses and internal management differences, Jobs left Apple and founded software companies NeXT and Pixar Animation Studio. After Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the late 1990s, he made great efforts to adjust product development and marketing strategies and re-established an Apple-style innovation culture, which was regarded as the basic point of successful marketing.

1996, Jobs returned to Apple. 1997 became interim CEO, and he took over and reorganized Apple, reducing the number of products being developed by the company from 40 to 4. 1998, the iMac with fruit-colored water-drop plastic shell came out, and Apple's hardware business revived. In June 5438 +2000 10, Jobs released the operating system Mac OS X at the MacWorld conference, and since then, all major products of Apple have been completely innovated. At the same time, Jobs announced that he would become a permanent CEO. With the introduction of iPod/iTunes and iPhone, Jobs successfully created the brand image of Apple culture: design, technology, creativity and high-end fashion culture, which became the focus of global industry and consumers.

Apple has accumulated many years in the niche field of whole machine technology and is committed to building its own core resources with the best talents, which makes Apple far surpass its competitors in technology and products. Innovative industrial design, intuitive and easy-to-use UI, embedded network and graphic multimedia capabilities all come from the meticulous creation of the best talents. Since the success of the second generation of Apple, Jobs began to pay serious attention to the industrial design of products, and it is precisely because of this concern that Jonathan Iver won the honor in the field of industrial design. Rezlaf designed the precise appearance of Mac OS.

Simplification is the most important step in Apple's design. Wasko's interfaces designed for QuickTime and iPod are all loyal to the interface principle of "simple and easy to use". Jobs' leadership has been widely concerned and evaluated by the media, but basically the industry agrees that he is the soul and core asset of Apple.

Steve Jobs is one of the two founders of Apple, and Apple was deeply engraved with the mark of Steve Jobs at the beginning of its birth. If Steve Jobs, who founded Apple in his twenties, is inevitably green in leadership, then his return after leaving Apple and his experience as president of NeXT and Pixar have made him mature in leadership. "Steve Jobs' ability to focus on a few important things, find people who can make good user interfaces and put products on the market under the label of' revolutionary' is extraordinary." At the same time, Jobs's success is inseparable from his ability to attract outstanding talents to work for him, establish cooperative relations with the most creative people in his field, and stimulate their potential.

Jobs advocated the establishment of a small "A-level working group", that is, an "A-level group" composed of selected designers, programmers and managers, trying to organize people to establish a consensus with only "A-level" participants' goals. President Jobs pursued simplicity and directness of organization under his leadership. Unlike most companies, which hire more and more engineers and designers with the expansion of scale and become more and more complex bureaucracy, the core part of Apple has always maintained a small scale composed of the best members. Talents who come to Apple are given effective incentives and creative space, and Jobs will play the role of group commander to guide cooperation in the process of hard work and finding solutions. When the best people come to Apple, they will have a lot of stock options, and at the same time they will be fully given the freedom to exert their creativity without being hindered by the bureaucratic atmosphere. Although Jobs personally participated in all Apple businesses, he liked to use arguments and debates to develop creative thinking in a team work environment.

Apple has effectively mobilized the target customer base through clever marketing methods and compact supply chain, and by creating user experience. Word-of-mouth marketing makes Apple's mysterious products infinitely tempting and attracts consumers to take the lead. Apple can only develop 1 and 2 products every year, but almost every product strives to bring every technology to the extreme, which can not only give people surprises and excitement, but also know how to use it, making it the most solid cornerstone for the success of word-of-mouth marketing. Apple's _ _ is doing well, but Steve Jobs, the president, is also very good at using the annual conference of Mac-world to create conversation materials for the media and consumers, and to arouse a strong discussion about Apple before each new product is released.

Apple has successfully achieved a virtuous circle among culture, products, brands and word of mouth. In order to be as close as possible to more consumers and expand consumers' awareness of Apple products, Apple Store has carefully designed a user experience field that presents a "digital life hub". In order to further expand the sales coverage, in 200 1 year, Steve launched the plan to build an Apple Store. Today, there are 285 Apple stores around the world. Apple Store creates a comprehensive experience space for digital life, and the area in the store is designed around the "solution area" to facilitate customers to create "overall solutions" that can solve problems. In order to realize the combination of products and customers' life experience, there are no dazzling lights, noisy music or salespeople selling products in the store, and customers can play with various machines. There are one-to-one retail store members in the store, who train the basic knowledge of Mac use, the conversion of old computers to Apple computers, or other high-level projects through face-to-face individuals.

Genius Bar is another innovation of Apple Store, which allows customers to troubleshoot face-to-face with maintenance personnel. In addition, consumers can also attend lectures held by Apple Store retail stores, from introduction to Mac to digital photography, music and film production; Summer camp is held for children every summer. With the simplification of the company's spare parts supply channels and digital supply chain management, Apple's operation is becoming more and more compact. As early as 1997, Apple began to operate online stores to facilitate consumers to order products directly online. In 2008, Apple was rated as the first global supply chain management and performance company by AMR research, an authoritative market forecasting research institution in the United States, surpassing Nokia. In 2009, Apple ranked first again.

Apple's Business Strategy: "Digital Life"

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, found that the battlefields that IT companies should focus on now are the right brain and left atrium of consumers: technology products should participate in consumers' lives and be excited, fantasized and created with them; Sony, also known for its innovation in its early years, is too obsessed with its "killer instinct" for product innovation, complacent about its brand strength, excellent technology and operational efficiency, and ignores how to really impress consumers in the competition in the era of small profits. 200 1 When the iPod was released, Apple opened an iPod Lounge website, where iPod users can create their own user information, make their own iPod accessories, and put forward suggestions and ideas for improving the iPod. This forum is maintained by Apple employees, sorting out suggestions and recommending the best ideas to Apple.

2/kloc-0 At the beginning of the 20th century, Apple established a user-centered "hub" strategy. Since 200 1, Apple has stated its "digital hub" business strategy in its annual report. 200 1 Based on the prediction that the development of personal digital devices will usher in a new era, Apple will naturally lock in personal computers and become a digital hub device. Personal computers meet the characteristics of digital hub devices: running complex programs, high-quality user interface, economical storage capacity, easy connection with external devices and the Internet, and providing valuable applications for connected devices.

As the only company that designs and manufactures personal computers, Apple's innovative industrial design, intuitive use, embedded network and graphic multimedia capabilities all ensure its unique position in the industry. Apple's unique resources and capabilities complement its positioning as a digital center. Compared with the demand of digital hub, Apple divides its target audience into four categories: students, educators, creative workers, enterprises and individual consumers.

June 5438+October 2007 10, Apple Computer Company changed its name to Apple Company, and the integration of consumer electronic products became the focus of Apple's new strategy, expanding the positioning of "digital hub" to "digital life". In July, 2004, the sales volume of music single in iTune Music Store exceeded 1 100 million. In August of the same year, Apple announced that the iPod had occupied 58% of the American digital music player market.

In 2007, Apple entered the mobile phone market and once again achieved a star-rated portable digital product: iPhone. Apple is no longer limited to a computer company. Apple has successful network and channel platform technologies and services, as well as consumer electronic digital products such as iPod, iPhone and AppleTV. After several software and hardware upgrades in two years, today's iPhone 3GS has been comparable to the basic computing functions of personal computers, and has rich entertainment functions and portability, becoming the core product of digital life.

Apple's specific patent is 1, glass staircase, patent number: D478,999S. Patent date: August 26th, 2003.

2. iPad stand in Apple Store, patent number: D662,939S, patent date: 2065438+July 3, 2002.

3.iPhone packaging, patent number: D596,485S, patent date: July 2, 20091day.

4. Graphical user interface, patent number: D604,305S, patent date: 2009165438+1October 65438+July.

5.iPhone body design, patent number: D593,087s, patent date: May 26th, 2009.

6. Rubber sleeve at the end of Apple earphone, patent number: 8280093, patent number: 20 12 10.02.

7. Music icon, patent number: D668,263S, patent number: 20 12 10.02.

8. Apple earphone buckle, patent number: D577,990S, patent date: 65438+200810.7.

9. High-touch gloves, patent number: 787402 1, patent date: 20 1 1 year 65438+1October 25th.

10, flexible electronics equipment, patent number: 8929085, patent number: 20 1 1 year 1.06.

On June 1 1, 201565438+1October 2 1, the US Patent and Trademark Office announced a new patent obtained by Apple today, which is about an eye tracking technology that can be applied to future Macs, iPhone, iPad and even AppleTV. Apple named this technology "a system and solution to offset the perceptual loss of moving pointers."

On March 20 15, the U.S. patent and trademark office published an apple patent to add waterproof function to the internal components of "computing equipment".

2065438+June 2007, Apple may be studying a new sleep tracking system to help improve users' sleep patterns. Apple's patent application documents show that Apple has adopted a new method to automatically control alarm and notification information to manage users' sleeping time at night and getting up in the morning. Apple usually encourages users to put down their mobile phones and go to bed early, but this new system may make users even more inseparable from their mobile phones.

2065438+In July 2007, Apple applied for a patent for speaker equalizer, which mentioned a method to balance and optimize the speaker output audio by using microphone, digital signal processor and advanced calculation algorithm.

Apple's trademark originated from 1976. The first logo of Apple was drawn by Ron Wayne with pen and ink. The design inspiration comes from Newton's thinking under the apple tree and his discovery of the law of gravity. Apple also wants to follow Newton's example and devote itself to technological innovation. But this logo is complicated and difficult to remember. It was only used in the production of Apple I, so it was quickly abandoned by Apple.

From 65438 to 0976, Jobs decided to re-appoint Rob Janov, the artistic director of Regis McKenna's public relations company, and redesign a better trademark to match the release of Apple II. So Janov began to make a black and white silhouette of an apple, but he always felt that something was missing. "I wanted to simplify the shape of the apple, and I took a bite on one side-one byte, yes, in case the apple looked like a tomato," Janov explained. Then, Javov added six colorful stripes, thus completing the colorful Apple logo that we are familiar with today.

1998 applied a brand-new translucent plastic logo on the new iMac and G4 Cube, making the logo more stereoscopic and fashionable. The reason for changing the logo this time is that all the new products are made of transparent shells, in order to match the texture of the new products. Black signs also appear almost at the same time, mostly on packaging, goods or contrasting colors that need to be highlighted to match the promotion of products. Apple's monochrome logo has been used to this day, and it is also the symbol that best reflects Jobs' positioning of the Apple brand.

200 1 Apple logo becomes transparent, mainly to cooperate with the Mac OS X system that was first introduced to the market. This time, the core value of Apple brand changed from computer to computer system, and Apple logo also changed with the interface style of the system, adopting transparent texture.

In 2007, it was changed to metallic silver gray with shadows. When Apple launched the iPhone, it officially changed its company name from Apple Computer Company to Apple Company. Apple logo adopts glass texture, and innovatively introduces multi-touch touch screen technology to cooperate with iPhone, aiming at bringing a brand-new user experience.

In 20 13, it was changed to a flat pure black Logo without concave and convex feeling, which has been used ever since.

There is a saying that the Apple logo is widely circulated: Apple Computer Company uses the bitten apple as its trademark pattern to commemorate alan turing, a great pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, which is actually a misinformation. Originated from the British film Enigma (20065438+0), which fabricated the above-mentioned plot about the relationship between Turing's suicide and Apple Logo, which was misinformed by some public and media.

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