Apple has her headquarters in Cupertino, California. Throughout its business history, it has faced quite a number of challenges. In 1997, its share price was $3.30 while it skyrocketed to $339.87 in 2011. In the past four years, Apple has always earned the first position among Fortune magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies. Being the most valued brand worldwide, the value of the apple brand is $153.
Despite the fact that Apple has repeatedly won the first position in the World's Most Admired Company, it is painfully true that it has been experiencing a number of ethical issues within the years in the recent past. These effects have the potential of impacting greatly on the future of this company. It’s possible that the sterling reputation that Apple holds may easily get tinted by failure nor misconduct if the risks are assigned inadequate address.
The first issue concerns the product quality. This issue has always been receiving consistent oversight. Apple's brand has always been hinging upon product quality and this mistake can impact greatly on the company hence lead to abject ethical dilemmas. From the past, it has been noted that it is almost impossible to detect flaws in fast-paced electronics industry especially in a situation where several products are introduced yearly.
After the introduction of iPhone 4, there was a consumer complaint about the reception problems. This was attributed to antennae interference that arose from holding the phone in a certain way. Public relations have pointed fingers at Apple for minimizing the problem instead of eliminating it completely.
The moment after Consumer Reports were unable to endorse the product, Apple went out of its way and provided priceless cases and bumpers for an appreciable amount of time that actually were able to resolve the problems the reception problems. this product issue seldom deterred millions of buyers from purchasing the iPhone 4 but it reveals the great care that Apple should take in regard to its product quality. Consumers always perceive the product quality to be inseparable from Apple. Truly, a mishap in this area could actually weaken the brand's strength.
Another issue is intellectual property. Intellectual property theft is Apple’s key concern, an issue that the company has pursued aggressively. Apple is always concerned with keeping its proprietary information secret so as to prevent other companies from getting access to its ideas. This has seen the company many lawsuits with various technology companies. In 1982, the company filed a case against Franklin Computer Corporation that gave a very big impact on the intellectual property laws. It was alleged that Franklin was unlawfully formatting copies of Apple II's operating system an ROM in order to run them on Franklin Computers. Franklin' lawyers were arguing that the computer program portions were not subject to copyright law.
Initially, the courts favored Franklin only the verdict to be overturned later. The courts were later able to determine that the programs and the codes are protected under the copyright law-a very crucial law that has provided technology companies with more well pronounced and expanse property protections that are intellectual.
There was another notable Apple lawsuit case against Microsoft moments after apple had licensed technology to Microsoft. After the release of windows 2.0, Apple claimed that the licensing agreement was only meant for windows 1.0. This is due to the fact that the emergent windows had the 'look and the feel' of Apple's Macintosh GUI. Although there were notable similarities between the two, the courts gave a ruling that windows seldom violated the licensing agreement or the copyright law typically by copying Macintosh systems.
There were two other lawsuits that involved ethical parts on Apple's part that were more serious. One of them was the use of the domain name iTunes.co.uk. The same domain had already been registered by Ben Cohen in 2000. Ben Cohen had used the name in re-directing users to other sites. Eventually, he used the domain name in redirecting other users to Napster site which was Apple's immediate competitor. Attempts by Apple to purchase the domain were futile. When endeavors proved futile, the company made an appeal to UK registry Nominee. Normally, whoever emerges first in registering the gets the rights to that name? However, the case mediator argued that Cohen had took unfair advantage over apple hence abusing his registration rights. Eventually, apple won the domain name usage rights- an issue that led to complaints in the big (Apple) company being favored over small companies.
References
Apple Inc.'s Ethical Success and Challenges. Retrived on 30th April from
