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Apple Case Study Update

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Apple Case Update:
Apple Aphorisms

November 27, 2012

Executive Summary

Apple Computer, Inc. is ranked 17th on the Fortune 500 list, with Hewlett Packard, IBM and Dell, some of Apple’s closest competitors, ranking 10th, 19th and 44th respectively (www.cnn.com). With such fierce competition for market space, Apple has lived up to its name in becoming and maintaining the status of being the Apple of the consumer’s eye (pun intended). Apple maintains a competitive and first-mover advantage by handily balancing Porter’s Five Forces Model and executing a supreme customer relationship management (CRM) strategy, as chronicled in an example found in Baltzan’s Business Driven Information Systems (2012). This paper will apply Porter’s model against Apple’s information management practices, and will update case information with new product lines and lessons learned all under the guise of Apple adages.

The Big Apple (Taking a Bite out of the Market)

No research is required to determine that Apple has a competitive edge in its market space. Just take a peek into an Apple store or scan a street corner before an Apple product makes its debut and you’ll see a melting pot of consumers who faithfully honor Apple like a religion. Apple garnered this legion of followers by morphing from a PC provider to an iPod, iPhone and iPad provider, giving Apple a jump on the competition as the first-mover for these digital devices. Being first-to-market with entertainment and communication devices such as the iPhone, a cell phone with an operating system, gave Apple a competitive advantage because the new technology was synonymous with the name Apple. While a competitive advantage can be short-lived, Apple continued to leverage its first-mover advantage to maintain its competitive advantage, initially because of limited competition and strong brand recognition led by its

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