Main Accounting Section XX
About the company: Apple Inc.
Widely appreciated for its innovative products, Apple Inc. is an American Multination company headquartered in California, US. The company designs and market the consumer electronics, software and other multimedia services. While the company operates in consumer electronic industry, some of the leading products of the company include:
- IPhone
- IPod
- IPad
- MacBook
It also offers paid multimedia services for online purchase of media files known as ITunes. The company is listed on NASDAQ and trades under the ticker sign of ‘AAPL’. With market capitalization of $672.29 Billion and employee head count of 92800, it is indeed one big market player.
Strengths
The company has always been in good news and under the preference of the consumers for its innovative products. After ruling the portable media device industry with the launch of IPod, the company changed the smartphone era with the launch of IPhone. The mobile device is still being innovated with addition of new features every year with latest being IPhone 6 and 6 Plus. In addition, the new product list also includes IWatch and IPad air. Hence, the company indeed has a strength in its innovative capabilities that truly justifies its position as the market leader.
Weakness
Over the years, the company has been accused of lagging behind its competitor, Samsung Inc. as the latter is releasing new phones for every segment of consumers with best features. Samsung has also been attracting Apple customers through its high end phones Galaxy and Note series.
Point of Interests and Challenges
Apple Inc. had not released any of their products since September 2013, while its competitor, Samsung was introducing a new mobile phone every month. In addition, Samsung Inc. had launched their smartphones with a bunch of features, thus raising challenges for Apple Inc. as what it has in its innovative pocket that can still keep its customers loyal with the Apple brand. Hence, it will be interesting to find as what is the present condition in the industry after the launch of much awaited IPhone 6 series.
Interesting Facts
As anxious as the loyal Apple customers, the market analysts were also very keen on evaluating the impact of launch of IPhone 6 series on Samsung’s profitability. Interestingly, the results are very much astonishing as while Apple Inc. seems to head high with record sales of its new product in the market, Samsung on the other hand, has reported a decline of 73.90% in their profitability for mobile division. The market pundits has even called this as a ‘’Thermonuclear Attack’’ by Apple Inc. on Samsung that has left the latter company barren.
The decline in the profitability of the company is sourced from Apple targeting both its revenue, in the form of reduced sales of its high end smartphones, Galaxy and Note Series and profits, as while Apple Inc. does still enjoys controlled cost of revenues through its contract manufacturing in China with Foxconn company, Samsung Inc. has confirmed that it is turning expensive for it to manufacture its phone because of its reduced economies of scale.
This means that Apple Inc. has yet again beat its competitor proving the strength of its brand value in the industry.
Works Cited
Diger, Daniel. How Apple, Inc. went thermonuclear on Samsung, erasing Android's primary profit center. 30 October 2014. 2 December 2014 <http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/10/30/how-apple-inc-went-thermonuclear-on-samsung-erasing-androids-primary-profit-center->.
Rehm, Lars. Apple lags behind in the smartphone business. 8 Febraury 2014. 2 December 2014 <http://connect.dpreview.com/post/0773327811/steve-wozniak-apple-is-behind-in-the-smartphone-business>.
