Apple taking over the world

2012-02-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

I'vebeen an Apple lover since I bought my first iPod in 2005 off a mate for $60,my obsession with Apple then took off in 2009 when I got my Macbookand first iPhone (currently onto my 2^nd). After doing some recentstudies on this innovative company I have developed a whole new respect andadmiration for Steve Jobs and Apple Inc.

Thething I find most incredible about Apple is its ability to develop technologiesand products that we, as the consumer, don’t even know we want yet. Every itemin the past decade that Apple has produced nobody really saw coming, and ifthey did, it wasn’t to the extent to that which was actually produced. Applehas been successful in every product over this time; I put this down to theirheavy focus on research and development. In 2011 Apple spent $575 million inR&D, in the past 3 months alone they have spent a staggering $758 million –to me, this suggests some amazing products and developments are to come – getexcited!

Accordingto Wikipedia, the first successful personal computer to feature a mouse andgraphical user interface (GUI) was in fact the Apple Macintosh in 1984, a yearlater Microsoft introduced Microsoft Windows. However the Macintosh was notthat successful and Windows took over the market and dominated for many years,still today, despite Apple growing at an astonishing rate, their operatingsystem only accounts for just under 15% of the market. The reason for this?Simply that Microsoft designed an operating system compatible with varioushardware, i.e. other computers, created by Dell, IBM, HP, Sony etc. This beingsaid, part of the reason Apple OS are becoming more popular is that they aredesigned to fit perfectly in their own hardware – thus being able to tweakthings perfectly and really hit at being easy to use for the consumer. I myselfhave found that using a Mac is so much more of a pleasure than Windows, thereare functions I use on my Mac on a regular basis that I never would have eventhought about when I used a Windows operating system – I’ll say it again, Appleknows what it’s users want before we do!!

Applebought Pixar animations in 1986, a move from Steve Jobs that would prove to beextremely beneficial in the years to come. However it wasn’t until about 2001when Apple released its first iPod that the company began to take off in a bigway, since then it has produced an array of products including different iPodvariations, MacBooks, iPads and iPhones.

Ithink that part of the reason Apple has been so successful is due to theirheavy focus on customer satisfaction and fulfilment – everything they havedesigned has been based around the simplicity for a user and they continue tofocus on this (as mentioned with their R&D expenditure). Along with thishas been a heavy increase in advertising, between 2010-2011 ad spending increased35% from $691M to $933M. This has clearly been beneficial as can be seenthrough their increased revenue but also the fact that you could ask just aboutanybody to describe an Apple ad and they could, wether it be about the iPod anda black silhouette dancing with a white iPod and ear phones on a very brightbackground, or the two guys talking named Mac and PC talking about why one isbetter than the other.

Basically,Apple is taking over the world – at this stage it doesn’t seem to be a badthing, but only time shall tell. Fingers crossed it all stays good.

Inmy next blog I will focus more heavily on Apples customer relationship, as wellas their advertising and R&D efforts. Stay tuned!

Post One!

2012-01-18T13:39:00.000-08:00

Testing my first post!

Ben Nagel

Apple taking over the world

Post One!