Strategic Report for Apple Computer, Research Paper Example

The Apple brand has, within the United States, become synonymous with mobile computing.  Both the I-phone and the I-pad have evolved to be a large part of how the country communicates and accesses information.  As the company has grown, it has begun to reach outside the normal bounds of retail marketing in order to achieve a higher market share.  This is how e-commerce is applied within this organization.

Apple was an innovator in the e-commerce sector.  The foresite to see how online trends were shifting in the direction of digital content allowed them to obtain a lead on the market.  The I-tunes store, an online music store that launched in 2003, quickly grew to become the largest source of digital music in the United States. “In addition to the profitability of the retail stores, the decision to shift some of the company’s focus from personal computers to digital music has resulted in large revenue increases.”(Mrak-Blumberg, 2006)This is how e-commerce provides a competitive advantage for the organization.

I can relate what I have learned in the module to the function of e-commerce.  After about a year, Apple realized that they could easily apply this model to foreign markets, and began by offering the service to European markets. By the next year, they successfully launched their service for Canada, and rose to become the largest supplier of digital content to the entire world.  By reaching across borders to obtain new customers, they were able to fast track their program throughout the global markets.  Their ability to quickly dominate this market by both enhancing the ability for users to obtain music for a low cost and supplying the equipment for them to do it with allowed them to gain a dominant competitive advantage in the global market. “It has been a hugely successful company…due in large part to the risks it has taken I developing a new product and marketing it successfully.” (Mrak-Blumberg, 2006)

References

Mrak-Blumberg, Renery& Bundgaard (2006). Strategic Report for Apple Computer, Inc. Pandora Group: Out of the Box Consulting.