Apple
Essays

This paper has two parts. The first part concerns the capital asset pricing model(CAPM). It contains some basic CAPM calculations using algebra. The second part of the paper is the American Superconductor question. This reflects a decision to use either debt or equity financing. The advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed.

Business and ethics don't mingle and according to popular belief they are two opposing forces. The goal of business is profit maximization and ethics are a body of rules that should guide any and all actions.

Apple Inc. is one of the well-known and recognized enterprises by not only the business community but populace from all over the world are cognizant about this corporation. It started off its business from the decade of 1970 that has been involved in the designing, manufacturing and offering its consumers with a wide range of innovative and technologically refined products like computers, software, music players and its related accessories, peripherals, and networking solutions.

Apple Company Introduction This paper delves into the Apple Company and how it recruits talent, how it selects and trains talent, and why it has become the most successful and most visible technology company in the world. Description of Apple The Apple Company (Apple Inc.) was first incorporated on the 3rd of January 1977. Apple is known for its excellence in "…designing, manufacturing and marketing mobile communication and media devices," according to the Apple profile written by Reuters. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked together to invent the Apple computers (Apple I and Apple II), and Apple II was the first successful computer designed for home computing using a mouse-driven graphical device. Meanwhile, today, the devices that Apple designs and manufacturers include personal computers, portable digital music players, iPhones, iPads, Macintosh products, apple TV among other electronic devices. In addition to these products, Apple sells many peripherals, a variety of software programs, networking solutions and "…third-party digital content and applications," Reuters explains. One of Apple's most popular portals is iTunes, and it also offers the "App store, iBookstore and Mac App Store" (Reuters). Apple is all over the world, manufacturing and marketing its products in Japan, Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific (including Australia and other Asian countries except Japan), and it provides mobile learning products and products for educational settings.

Globalization initiatives have contributed to the need for many companies across the globe to expand their businesses beyond the local or domestic markets. The focus of this article is to analyze Apple, Inc., an American multinational that operates in several countries in the world. It begins with an analysis of the strategies for competing in international markets and how the firm is organized to gain regional or global advantage while remaining responsive to local conditions. This is followed by a summary of how the firm is organized internationally, its structure, and modus operandi, and whether it has resources to compete globally. The final part of the paper provides specific recommendations for Apple Inc to become a market leader in the next five years throughout its operations.

Apple Inc. (Apple) was built on January 3, 1977. It is presently engaged in manufacturing, designing and marketing mobile communication and media devices, personal computers, and portable digital devices. It also sells a number of related software, peripherals, services, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications. The Company's products and services comprises iPad, iphone, Mac, Apple TV, ipod a portfolio of consumer and professional software applications, the Mac OS X and ios operating systems, iCloud, and a number of accessory, service and support offerings. It also sells and provides digital content and applications through the iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore, and Mac App Store. By the end of year 2011, the Company, as part of a consortium, obtained Nortel Networks Corporation's patent portfolio. In February 2012, the Company obtained app-search engine Chomp.

Amazon's remarkable ascent as one of the top online global retailers can be attributed to the foresight they had in creating a comprehensive distributed order management, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and e-commerce series of systems. The many other e-commerce sites that rose quickly with massive infusions of venture capital just as quick exited the market, flaming out due to a lack of system and process scalability, lack of understanding of customer dynamics, and a complete loss of focus on scalable business models. All of these factors are what caused competitors to Amazon to exit the e-commerce market either through acquisition, merger or complete exist from the market. When starting Amazon, Jeff Bezos invested heavily in the distributed order management, ERP, SCM and e-commerce integration points to book distributors initially, and then expanded into a broader product mix. This allowed the enterprise to quickly scale as volumes increased during the first five years of the company's existence. Having creating this reliable, scalable and secure platform, Mr. Bezos and the Amazon founders concentrated on creating an analytics layer throughout their architecture that could quantify customer, distributor, dealer and even competitor activity on the site (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). This reliance on analytics also gave Amazon executives and technical staff the insight they needed to launch quickly into entirely new product categories, get the complex and often confusing task of localization right, and also create a highly popular and profitable Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform and hosting platform for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications (Mitchell, 2012). From a technology standpoint the performance of Amazon today can be directly attributed to the insightful decisions made in 1994 and 1995 when the company founders prioritized the development of enterprise-wide platforms and a strong focus on analytics over spending all their time on the front-end website and its façade (Lindic, Bavdaz, Kovacic, 2012). As Jeff Bezos would later remark in interviews, by investing to create a truly world-class enterprise back-end system first, his company was freed up to fast track the actual user interface of the e-commerce sites globally at a pace that left comp[editors far behind in terms of functionality and product breadth (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). Mr. Bezos chose in 2007 to also institute a culture of metrics that also capitalized on the nearly two decades of investment in their infrastructure (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). Combining the global e-commerce, enterprise-tested infrastructure and the most robust set of analytics that any e-commerce provider had, Amazon was ready to begin expanding their product strategies, start offering greater options in their Amazon Web Services initiative which today is expected to be a $1B by 2015, even by conservative forecasts (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012) and also invest heavily in their state-of-the-art recommendation engine technology that seeks out products and services customers may be interested in and present them during shop[ping sessions in real-time (Sun, 2012). It's important to appreciate just how vast of an e-commerce infrastructure Amazon has in completing this analysis of their e-strategy. They have greater agility, flexibility and capability to execute than any other online retailer globally today. How they choose to use these technologies to attract new customers and keep existing ones loyal, a point the case study makes in greater detail, is predicated on the ability to get the most value from this infrastructure while still staying focused on delivering a world-class customer experience in each transaction. Based on the analysis undertaken for this case analysis, it is abundantly clear that Jeff Bezos and the executive management team are passionate about keeping the company as customer-focused as possible, including the continual selective use of technology to accentuate and strengthen the user experience online and off (Murphy, Narkiewicz, 2010). With these foundational aspects of Amazon defined, the seven areas of focus in this analysis are next presented. The overarching objective of this analysis is to understand the value of e-strategies in organizations, with Amazon being the organization of interest in the analysis. Specifically concentrating on the benefits of having an e-strategy at Amazon, defining how e-strategies contribute to Amazon's broader accomplishments, and an analysis of how Amazon aligns their e-strategy to the overarching organizational strategy as well., The analysis continues with an analysis of the key business factors that are the catalysts of the e-strategy at Amazon, followed by a suggested strategic plan for ensuring e-strategy initiatives at the company continue to lead to profitable growth. The final section of this analysis provides an assessment of the technical infrastructure needed to accomplish the proposed strategic plan. As Amazon has continually evolved its position as a global force in online retailing, its command of supply chains globally has also evolved very quickly. In the latest rankings of the highest-performing supply chains completed by Gartner, a leading research consultancy, Amazon has ranking within the top twenty five for five years running (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). What this signals is that Amazon has progressed from relying on enterprise-wide infrastructure to compete and is now on the growth trajectory of making supply chain processes their competitive advantage.

This is the first in a series of papers about Microsoft's purchase of Skype. This begins with the mission, vision and values of Skype. There is then an examination of the internal and external environment of Skype, which includes a SWOT and a PEST analysis. Some recommendations are given based on this analysis.

In this paper, we are going to be studying the impact of competitive compensation programs on firms. This will be accomplished by focusing on: how this can improve benefit plans, the way they are tied to specific jobs, the effectiveness of an equity based rewards system, the key factors for integrating this model with traditional rewards programs and providing recommendations that will streamline these initiatives. Once this takes place, is when we will show how this will have an impact on the way the most successful corporations are addressing the needs of employees.

As case studies have shown, authentic leadership is predicated on the ability to create, sustain and strengthen trust and commitment to shared objectives over time. The essential attributes and characteristics of effective authentic leaders can be found in their ability to lead, not necessarily just manage or direct activities. A truly authentic leader will have the ability to bridge cultural, psychological and physical distances (in the case of virtual teams) while still keeping his team entirely engaged and committed (Purvanova, Bono, 343). A transformational leader paradoxically can emerge out of the most challenging, difficult times a business faces, including the loss of a major leader. This is why Tim Cook is one of the most authentic, transformational leaders operating a business today. As CEO of Apple, he has had to quickly keep the company focused on its vision, while its architect of visions, passed on. While arguably there is momentum in the business and its highly successful business model, transformational leadership is essential for keeping Apple focused on its most pressing opportunities while reducing its many potential risks. All of this is extremely difficult for any leader to do even if they are initially promoted into a position, yet to take the helm from a visionary, as Tim Cook has from Steve Jobs, the inevitable comparisons and pressure are exceptionally strong. This is another factor in choosing Tim Cook and Apple has having the greatest level of authentic leadership. The intent of this analysis is to evaluate how Apple has been able to continually gain market share and profits under Tim Cook.