Apple: Success and Failure Factors

Apple: Success and Failure Factors

The Apple Computer Inc. organization is a reputable leader in the IT industry and its success has been due to a multitude of features. Yet, despite these triumphs, the organization has also suffered some losses. In the following lines, the paper will strive to identify the factors which led to successes, but also those which caused losses.

Key Success Factors

Throughout the past recent years, Apple Computer Inc. has significantly increased its profitability levels and has managed to impose itself as a notable presence within the IT industry. A noteworthy element in this success has been that of assessing the market and identifying and integrating customer demands. The Apple products have undergone numerous processes of development in order to comply with the emergent requirements. The ability then to satisfy these new demands sits at the basis of corporate success. The examples in support of this finding are numerous, with a highly notable one being the introduction of more efficient software and hardware which led to increased video, graphics and text capabilities for the Apple products (T.H.E. Journal, 1989).

Another feature guaranteeing success has been the incorporation of hardware components which improve the quality of the final product and as such significantly increase customer satisfaction and sustained purchases. The switch to Intel microprocessors constitutes a highly relevant example in this sense as the Mac owners are now able to run more programs. The new and improved versions of the Apple computers have significantly increased corporate popularity, generating an increasing presence of Mac computers not only in the individual homes, but also in business offices (Jackson, 2009).

Other sources of successful outcomes are constituted by the company's financial management policies which allowed it to diversify its sources of income as well as capital, server switches to more efficient solutions, releases of new and anticipated products and services or expansion through the building of new facilities, employment of more individuals or expansion of data center capabilities (Reuters, 2009).

Failure Factors

Despite the diversification of its product and service offering, a source of failure has been constituted by the limited applicability of the Apple applications. In this order of ideas, the Apple software is only applicable on the Apple hardware, meaning as such that the freedom of the buyers is restricted. Another source of failure has been constituted by the low amounts of financial resources employed in marketing efforts. While number one competitor and industry leader Microsoft has placed promoted the organizational products and services on multiple media channels, Apple's approach has been limited. These disappointments are often attributed to the volatile and extremely challenging environment in which Apple operates, but its competitors also operate in this background, and their failures have been less obvious.

An important source of failure has been the departure of co-founder Steve Jobs for a ten-year period, during which the managerial style revealed numerous reductions in efficiencies, all to culminate with the necessity for Job's return. Another reason is constituted by the innovative stand taken by the company in introducing products for which the customer is not prepared. The most relevant example in this sense is the Newton, a handheld computer released too soon. Some years later, the success was entirely attributed to Palm as the most efficient producer of PDAs (Rosmarin, 2006).