Threats to Apple's Future

Apple A.L.E. Matrix The author of this report has been asked to construct a brief report with some associated analysis about threats that exist to a real-life Fortune 100 company. The company chosen for this case is Apple Corporation. During their business cycle and daily business grind, they face a variety of threats and potential issues. However, before getting into all of that, there will be a brief review of Apple's history, their revenues, their safety and risk issues and so forth.

While Apple is flush with cash and they have their hands in several major technology sectors, those sectors are cutthroat and fraught with peril. When it comes to tech companies, Apple has actually been around for quite a long time. Founded in 1977, the company has been working in the technical sector for an amount of time that is unmatched by anyone except for companies like Microsoft, IBM and so forth.

Based out of their corporate headquarters in Cupertino, California, Apple has eclipsed the 90,000 mark when it comes to overall employee headcount. They completely obliterate their sales figures from year to year on an annual basis. Indeed, they made $156 billion in 2012, $170 billion in 2013 and then $182 billion in 2014 (Yahoo Finance, 2015). However, even with all of that success, there are problems and risks. Indeed, Apple has its own proprietary line of phones that run its Apple iOS software.

This is something that the open-source maker of Android phones might froth for but they cannot have as there are many players in the Android market including Samsung, Asus and so forth. Even Microsoft is on the edge of the field as they have their own line of phone that more directly integrate with Microsoft Windows, by far the most dominant computer operating system in the world, at least when speaking of desktop and laptop computers.

Tablets and smartphones represent a new front on the war between the companies, technologies and other operating systems involved (Yahoo Finance, 2015). Apple faces two big risks when it comes to its products. There are certainly others that can and are faced by the company, but this report will focus on two. First of all, smartphones are exceedingly complex little devices and supporting these devices with users can be cumbersome, time-consuming and so forth.

These issues and the frequency with which they happen can be exacerbated by technological glitches, breakage, defective phones, faulty design (perceived or actual) and so forth. Indeed, it costs money to support the phones and the people that use them. Another major threat are the patent conflagrations that are undertaken between Apple and other companies every day. Many of these spats seem to be with Samsung. Often times, the winner of the spat seems to be Apple.

Even so, there are always appeals, always risks and all legal battles cost time and money. Both of these events will be measured in terms of hours, days, years and overall number of events spent, either in terms of per overall event or per phone, as they happen (Yahoo Finance, 2015). Conclusion The diagrams that follows in the last two pages of this report are what are known as ALE matrices.

They represent a confluence of events that have (or might, or will) happen and the frequency with which they can or will happen. Measuring this is important because this will dictate how much money will have to be spent on the events if/when they happen, based on how many times they happen. ALE Matrix The above is what is known as an ALE matrix.

ALE stands for Annual Loss Expectancy The cost, or impact, of the event is represented by the value "i" (the far left column) The frequency of the event if represented by "f'….or the second row down in the matrix above. Each F. value needs to be a different event frequency (once a day, once a week, etc.) The number of times something happens (the f value) times the amount of.