MGMT670 Strategic Management : Quality Online Services

TheCEO of the company is Tim Cook and according to him, the vision statement of the company is constantly focusing on innovations and are the face of great products on the earth. The company wanted to participate in markets where it can make any difference. The company’s vision is to settle not less than excellence and for that, they are focusing on making their own primary technologies, without being dependent on others. With some principles such as honesty, handwork and excellence, the company is setting goals for ultimate success and it will do extremely well in future. Objective and strategies of the Apple Company is to acquire the market, with excellence and value added services (Rumelt 2012).

2. Mission and vision statement (developed):

In UAE, Apple is one of the most used mobile phones and people over here likes the innovative technologies and operating system. However, several other electronics companies are giving the position of Apple a tough fight in the market share and position. Therefore, the vision and missions statement of the company should be regarding the UAE market and the community of this country. The mission of Apple in UAE should be including the people of UAE in the production, so that communication becomes easy. Further, the organization should be broad enough to include a diverse variety of local perspective (Grant 2016).

The vision of the company in UAE should be reaching appoint in the market, from where no company can take over them. The company should also take part in national interests as this will lead them to directly access the innermost population and they will be able to assess their needs. Further, the vision should be involving innovation in the future products and using those innovations in the marketing strategy. These steps will help to enhance the organization’s image as being competent and professional thus reassuring funding sources that the investment was a smart choice (Kirkpatrick 2016).

3. A. External opportunities and threats: 

The external opportunities include:

• The customers of apple products are very loyal. Every apple products are successful and iPhone and iPads are two of these famous apple launches.
• The organization has a reputed status worldwide and this is because of the high quality apple products that work smoothly.
• The new apple TV has increased its reach to another level and it is the most advanced Television because of its highly developed web.

The Threats are:

• The threats are some of the leading electronics company that operate in the UAE, such as Nokia, Google, Microsoft and so on.
• These companies copied the ideas of Apple product such as the graphical user interface, touchscreen interface, has been added in other smart phones
• Google has announced that it is going to give away software to enter the market of apple, and if such happens, the ugly and ling fight between these two companies can be seen in near future (Khan, Alam and Alam, 2015).

3. B. PESTEL: 

PESTEL stands for political factors, economical factors, social factors, and technological factors, environmental and legal factors affecting the business of apple in UAE (Castro 2016).

• The Political factoraffecting the business of apple in UAE are stable politics, and free trade policies. The Government of UAE is stable and is taking necessary steps to improve the economic and infrastructural development.
• The Economical factorare depending on the need of the population and rapid growth of the GDP of the country. The government is also taking necessary steps to improve the economic condition of the country. The high growth of the UAE economy is the target of several other leading companies as well, hence apple has competitionin this area.
• Social aspectof the apples business is the high craze of social media and high raise in the access of mobile. With increasing popularity, the company is exploiting the opportunity by launching devices such as apple watch, iPhones and iPads.
• Technological factorincludes cloud computing trend, technological integration and growth of app market. Cloud computer has become very popular among individuals and organizations and this is why Apple is exploiting this opportunity by offering cloud friendly devices such as iPhone iPad tab (Srdjevic, Bajcetic and Srdjevic 2012).
• Ecological factorsthere are different ecological and environmental factors that help Apple to grow their markets in UAE. These environmental factors provide them opportunities such as Business Sustainability Trend, Product Energy Efficiency Trend, and Labor Right Trend and so on
• Legal factorsare the most important factor that affects and the business of Apple in UAE. Increasing privacy regulations and increasing telecommunications regulations threatens the business of Apple in this area. The Government of UAE is realizing the privacy issues connected to digital technology used and thereby they are imposing several regulations on the business of Apple (Hasan 2012).

4. Competitive profile matrix of apple in UAE: 

(HANNOUSH 2017)

5. External factor evaluation matrix: 

6. Internal strength and weaknesses 

Strength:

• Organizational structure, and employee satisfaction is the biggest strength of Apple UAE.
• The production of leading apple products such as iPhone, iPad Mac book is being produced in UAE. This is a major strength as the company can utilize the market completely.
• Demand in market is strength for Apple UAE. Maximum products are pre-booked by the users and hence, the company produces a huge amount of apple products in UAE.

Weaknesses:

• The UAE market is famous for the selling of Mac book and iPhone, where as other products such as could software, Television are not in demand. Therefore, having 7 to 8 products in the kitty is one of the leading weaknesses of apple in UAE.
• Incompatibility to third party software is the weakness as it affects the consumer negatively (Montgomerie and Roscoe 2013).

7. Internal factor evaluation 

8. Long-term objectives and strategies to achieve them: 

• The first objective of the company should be reaching the market share, from which no company can push them behind. For this, the company should focus on innovation, as many users are not finding the Innovation of apple products up to the mark.
• The apple is all about brand and technology; however, the users are unable to share data with other operating systems. Hence, the company should focus on this aspect. For this, apple should team up with another company, to start sharing data.
• As UAE is an Islamic nation, the company should involve sayings of Quran in its production. As the Quran says that honest and blessed sells are profitable, hence the organization should involve in charitable work for the deprived in the nation so that people can empathize with the organization and can donate to those charity by buying their products.

9. SWOT and BCG matric: 

It is a framework, which was developed by the Boston Consulting Group to evaluate the strategic position of the business brand portfolio. This matrix helps to decide the potential of the brand, by classifying the brand into four categories, star, cash cows, dogs and question mark. For the BCG matrix, four apple products has been chosen, iPhone, mac book, iPod and the Apple TV. According to the UAE market, it was observed that the BCG matrix of these products are:

From the above table, it can be identified that iPhone is the start of all apple products, apple TV is the question mark, MacBook is the cash-cow and finally iPod is the dog (Palia, Ryck and Mak 2014).

10. Recommended procedures for strategy review and evaluation:

For this purpose, the organization should utilize the Rummelt’s four criteria. According to these criteria, there are four aspects for the evaluation and strategic review can be proposed. Consistency, consonance, feasibility and advantage. The first aspect describes the strategy as consistent and presents goals and policies. According to the second aspect, the strategies should examine the sets of trends.  The products should be feasible so that the local community of UAE can buy them. The organization, further should take advantage of the brand name to promote the other products so that the market share can be captured. It has to be understood that the consumer market and its demands are ever-changing, and in order to retain and expand the consumer base there is need for emphasis and improvement in consistency, consonance, feasibility, and advantage.

11. Recommendations 

Apple high end in terms of cost and technology is accessible to only a specific segment of the target population. Therefore, in order to increase the market share of the company there is a need to launch cost –effective products along with product diversification. In my opinion, there are a number of practical restrictions of the Apple products. The macbooks’ user interface is not compatible with a huge number of systems and software. Therefore, a modification in the technological interface with a more user friendly design will provide the apple precuts with a competitive advantage. The UAE is an economically sound country and had a huge amount of foreign direct investments (FDIS) which complements the high disposable income of the people. Therefore, Apple has preferable market conditions over there. However, the emergence of other similar market players can affect the market ratios of the brand. Therefore, I think conducting of occasional market analysis with the help of ansofff’s matrix would help in designing and development of effective strategies.

Conclusion:

Apple is one of the leading brands for electronic in the world. Nowadays, it is not very difficult for any company to capture the global market through the brand name and product specification. Apple is also expanding their market in UAE, as the nation has emerged as the economic power in recent times. The recommendation proposed in the assignment may affect the marketing, financial and CIS related problems, which is going to be covered by the organization within few years. The recommendations are been made in the marketing and employment related sections and hence, this will affect the production of Apple products in UAE. In This Assignment presented the mission, vision statement of apple in UAE, and further, presented different matrix such as PESTEL, SWOT (both internal and external), CPM, IFE and EFE matrix. Further BCG matrix was developed and then recommendations to implement changes and evaluation has been presented.

References

Apple.com (2017). Apple (United Arab Emirates) - Marketing & Communications. [online] Apple.com. Available at: https://www.apple.com/ae/marcom/

Castro, R.B., 2016. Apple Inc.–A Marketing Success Story. https://www.raulbartolome.com/wp-content/uploads/rbc/mba/Marketing_web.pdf

Forbes.com (2017). Forbes Welcome. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/02/28/apple-remains-worlds-most-admired-followed-by-google-and-amazon/&refURL=https://www.google.co.in/&referrer=https://www.google.co.in/

Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary Strategy Analysis Text Only. John Wiley & Sons. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6C_vCQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP15&dq=mission+and+vision+statement+of+apple+&ots=2FqmqJ2NN3&sig=NlDbxNAnBDr2db3y2IN-Ymz8Ldw#v=onepage&q=mission%20and%20vision%20statement%20of%20apple&f=false

Guasti, M.T., Papagno, C., Vernice, M., Cecchetto, C., Giuliani, A. and Burdo, S., 2014. The effect of language structure on linguistic strengths and weaknesses in children with cochlear implants: Evidence from Italian. Applied Psycholinguistics, 35(4), pp.739-764.

GulfNews (2017). Apple’s iPhone 6 is most commonly used smartphone in UAE. [online] GulfNews. Available at: https://gulfnews.com/business/sectors/technology/apple-s-iphone-6-is-most-commonly-used-smartphone-in-uae-1.2085800

HANNOUSH, K., 2017. The Role of Project Portfolio Management in Fostering Innovation Within the Context of UAE’s Organizations (Doctoral dissertation, The British University in Dubai (BUiD)).

Hasan, M.R., 2012. Apple Inc.-An Analysis. https://www.grin.com/en/e-book/206976/apple-inc-an-analysis

Khan, U.A., Alam, M.N. and Alam, S., 2015. A Critical Analysis of Internal and External Environment of Apple Inc. International Journal of Economics, Commerce and Management, 3(6), pp.955-961.

Kirkpatrick, S.A., 2016. Build a better vision statement: Extending research with practical advice. Rowman & Littlefield. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=EKuZDAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=mission+and+vision+statement+of+apple+&ots=pJXqCuAsPm&sig=3oF_CZQaksd90GxFRs0r3Wbqr_k

Montgomerie, J. and Roscoe, S., 2013, December. Owning the consumer—Getting to the core of the Apple business model. In Accounting Forum (Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 290-299). Elsevier.

Palia, A.P., De Ryck, J. and Mak, W.K., 2014. Interactive Online Strategic Market Planning With the Web-based Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Matrix Graphics Package. Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, 29.

Rumelt, R.P., 2012. Good strategy/bad strategy: The difference and why it matters. Strategic Direction, 28(8).

Srdjevic, Z., Bajcetic, R. and Srdjevic, B., 2012. Identifying the criteria set for multicriteria decision making based on SWOT/PESTLE analysis: a case study of reconstructing a water intake structure. Water resources management, 26(12), pp.3379-3393.