Question

Apple, Inc. ranks within the Fortune 50 companies. Can you write a paragraph on why they are such a successful company?

Answer 1

Apple Inc is a supplier of electronic products, such as smartphones, tablets, PC, mini PC, music players, earphones, laptops, TV appliances, etc. Apple started its business in the field of personal computing, and gained remarkable success especially in market of smartphones, known as iPhones. Apple's success can be contributed basically to two factors - monopolist approach and innovation along with its marketing. Starting in market for PCs, apple made computers that are easy to use, as it would run their Mac OS. There are only three known mainstream OS, which are Windows, Mac OS and Linux distros. Only linux distros are open source, while other were closed source. Despite Microsoft's Windows huge success, Apple's OS and PCs had dedicated user base, which allowed Apple to monopolize their product, along with the factor that made their product desirable by the users - innovation. Their innovation was based on ease of using PCs and closed source software development. This close source development led to creation of a relatively small ecosystem in those days. In the age of laptops, apple launched MacBook brand, and they were able to make profit due to the same factors - monopoly in terms of segregated market of the user base and innovation in that field in terms of hardware and software development. Then in the age of smartphones (which is arguably attributed to Apple), apple launched iPhones, which were a smartphone product. This led to a huge success for Apple, as their innovation was paying them a monopoly product. The monopoly was because the hardware and software development, as good as it could be, along with their other products as laptops, etc, created an ecosystem in which a user using their product would continue to use their later versions too, as shifting to other alternatives like android/linux and windows phones, laptops and PCs, which had different usage and compatibility issues, was quite tedious. Apple exploited their command over this ecosystem with innovations and that led to attain their monopoly over their product. This is to be noted that Apple wasn't the only innovator, but was indeed the only innovator who also marketed their product as a desirable household items, in terms of ease of using and hardware and software development. In a nutshell, Apple's innovation and marketing created as well as increased their user base, while their hardware and software development of devices led to create an ecosystem of their products due to which their user base was contained over time, and all this led to segregate their market as a monopoly, which increased their profits over time.

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Note : One may add that their rivalry with Microsoft, which was also had a monopoly helped contained their user base as a loyal one, which was fueled by their innovation and marketing. Also, Android's success over apple in terms of market share was due to the open source factor, and help from Google. But this only benefitted Google, not Android due to its property of being open source, but that is a different story.