Research Paper on:
Apple Case Study

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Strategy 24 5.2 Business Level Strategy 28 5.2.1 Production and Purchasing Strategies 28 6. Marketing 32 7. Financial Performance of Apple 34 8. SWOT Analysts 37 8.1 Strengths 37 8.2 Weaknesses 38 8.3 Opportunities 39 8.4 Threats 41 9. Potential Strategies 42 10. Recommendations 44 11. Potential Crises 45 References 48  1. Introduction Apple Inc. is a company with a mixed history; the firm once successful failed to compete well with Microsoft and lost market share, but has been  revived by the development of the iPod and the ability of Apple to adapt and become a lifestyle product which has been enhanced with products such as the iPhone. In  order to consider the firm and the environment in which they operate the firm itself needs to be considered, as well as looking at how the competition and the general  environment. 2. Background Apple was started in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as an entrepreneurial business started with an underlying with a vision. The vision was  simple and idealistic and it may be argued the vision was copied later by Bill Gates and Microsoft. The vision was to bring easy to use computers to everyone. 1976  was a time before the dominance of Microsoft and the Windows operating system had been established. Apple gained the first mover advantage with they launched in 1978; the Apple II  was one that had worked towards this vision; it was a computer that could be used straight out of the box. This launch was successful and Apple started  to grow, with Apple becoming the market leader and by the end of 1980 more than 100,000 Apple IIs were sold. It was on the back of this success that  Apple undertook an IPO1. The future may have looked bright, but Apple had not foreseen the way that the environment would change as when IBM entered the market Apple were