Apple (SM1)

When Steve jobs and Stephen Wozniak started Apple, they were very clear about its potential and
future markets with estimated sales of $500 million in the first 10 years. Steve jobs was always
with the belief that quality and creative design would make Apple more successful than other
competitors in the market. Apples first competition to this school of thought happened when IBM
introduced the first PC at fairly low price with compromised features which still dwarfed Apples
share. Prior to this incident Apple had already filed a suit against Microsoft in 1988, of which
majority of the claims were rejected. With pressure from IBM and the Microsoft distractions,
apple had to go low cost. Also having lost out on the application industry market to Microsoft, in
1990 the first low cost Mac debuted. This low cost approach was in complete contradiction to
what Apple had always believed and emphasized on. Slowly but steadily Apply has reverted back
to its unique selling point of quality and design over low cost and portfolio features model. The
reinstatement of Steve Jobs in 1997 fuelled the direction of the company increasingly towards
product quality, product design, innovation and virtual commodity and intellectual properties like
iTunes and applications. Since the low cost computing was already infiltrated by Microsoft, the
decision of targeting quality and to target the financially higher section of the consumer base.
Owing to globalization and increased development of economies of developing countries, the
consumer base of the rich and the psychological need to be differentiated as rich was a natural
market whose growth was inherent. Apple has been taking the company towards tapping this big
market. I personally believe that the company strategies post the reinstatement of Steve jobs has
been apt. During the time period from 1980 2004, Apple has come up with many innovative
designs to tap the market of which some have been revolutionary while the others have been
passing phase failures. Example: The cube PC designs that Apple advocated during 2001 and the
new design compartments for G4 during 2000 was not big successes.
Right from the time of early Macs user-friendly interface, with features as trash-can, windows
and plug-in-and-play compatibility to todays Mac-G4 with its velocity engine and 128-bit-wide
architecture, Apple epitomizes quality and productivity. Their current model of high pricing and
elite league creating model is a success in my opinion.
Listed below are some important Apple events

1983 Lisa (First personal computer to use Graphic User Interface)

1984 Macintosh (the first widely produced computer with a mouse and a GUI)
1989 Portable (Apples first attempt at a comparatively portable Macintosh)
1998 iMac (Powerbook, with pioneering features similar to present day laptops)
2000 G4 (Apples emphasis towards newer designs for pc compartments)
2003-2004 (5th generation PC machines, first 64-bit consumer level desktop computer)
2002-2007 (Increased concentration on iTunes and iPod along with the Intel transitions)
2010 (First generation iPad introduced)