Case Questions: How Apple’s Corporate Strategy Drives High Growth
Norman Smith III, MGT 5509
1a.
They were focused on the ‘existing’ market of sophisticated and creatively-inclined users to sell fancy and elegant computers with a high profit margin per device, while Windows was expanding their market share to appeal to the ‘every man’ computer user using the slogan “Windows Everywhere”. In other words, Apple was fighting for an existing share of the pie (red ocean strategy), while Windows was looking to expand the pie and bring in new users to the PC market, which is ironic, considering that when Apple first started out, their goal was to bring in new users to their customer base by simplifying computer into an “every person’s …show more content…

2.
a. IPod/iTunes software – Blue Ocean in portable digital music/mp3 software industry. MP3’s and MP3 players were around a year or two before the iPod was introduced, but they encouraged people to download songs illegally. ITunes not only improved the sound quality of mp3’s by creating an m4a file, but it also allowed iPod users to download legally purchased songs directly to their players. This was a new industry, which was relatively attractive at the time, given the infancy of the field and the small number of competitors in the digital player industry at the time, in addition to the fact that the software used to download files to players was illegal to use. You needed a computer to get iTunes, so it likely would have also boosted sales of Apple’s computers at the same time, in addition to sales of its iPods. iPhone – Blue Ocean in the consumer electronics/cell phone industry. Industry was not attractive at the time, given the number of other competitors making cell phones at the time. iPad – Blue Ocean in the computer industry. Computer industry was not attractive at the time, given the number of competitors. However, the iPad was a different type of computer, which could be marketed to a different type of user, one who is more concerned with using a computer for