Choose a publicly traded company (US Market) and you’re their consultant

Apple Company Inc.
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Introduction
The company’s most prominent founders were Steve Jobs and Wozniak. They worked in collaboration with Ronald Wayne, who was convinced to take 10% of the business stock and become a judge in case Jobs and Wozniak disagree. In spite this, Wayne withdrew from the company after 12 days where he sold a holding at $500 and would today be worth $72bn.
Jobs and Wozniak had met at a computer club called Homebrew Computer Club. Wozniak was inspired by MITS build it yourself approach, and so he produced the first computer that had a typewriter and the ability to connect to a regular TV (Linzmayer 2004). Later came the Apple I which was the model of every modern computer but his aim was to show off with his great achievements from very few resources and not to change the world.
Jobs saw this machine, and when he spotted the brilliance in it, he sold his VW microbus to help fund its production while Wozniak sold his HP calculator leading to the foundation of Apple Computer Inc. This happened on 1 April 1976 alongside Ronald Wayne. This name was to cause following problems since it came close to that of Beatles’ publisher, Apple Corps though it got handled by an innocent genesis (Lüsted 2012).
Wozniak made the computers by hand and Apple I was priced at $666.66. They later made a deal with Byte Shop to supply it with 50 computers each at $500. A problem arose due to the Apple I, not being present in significant number and the Apple Computer Inc did not have the ability to fulfill the order.

Jobs was turned down for a loan by a bank and even if he got an offer of $5,000 from his father’s friend, it was still not enough which led to Byte Shop being the ones to seal the deal. They got the parts they needed on third-day credit by Paul Terrell, Cramer’s manager.
Jobs had the aim to produce enough working computers at the time to settle the bill by selling completed units to Byte Shop. Producing enough computers was a risk that Ronald Wayne saw was too great and he left. Family and friends helped to solder together the parts, and after they had got tested, Jobs took them to Byte Shop and when he unpacked them, Terrell was surprised. Jobs had ordered finished and what Jobs received from Jobs came as a surprise to him. Terrell though reluctant he accepted the order and paid up.
Then, the Apple II sprang out at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1977 the month of April and was in rivalry with others like Commodore PET. The machine was truly groundbreaking just like the preceding one. The Apple II was a real innovation that paid off well.
Dan Bricklin, a student at Harvard Business School, imagined a digital spreadsheet in the form of a virtual image unlike the worksheets on paper that existed at the time. Converting the spreadsheets to this form would not be a small leap but surprisingly Bricklin was calm. This hardware did not work as Bricklin had imagined because of the technological limitations.
At last, VisiCalc was released as the first app on an Apple computer, and it played a significant role in accelerating sales of the Apple II and anchoring Apple within the industry (O’Grady 2009). VisiCalc was a success, and some bought the Apple two just to run VisiCalc. VisiCalc led to many Apple sales as it sold a piece of hardware worth ten times as much as it.
In over 16 years, almost six million Series IIs were produced which gave Apple another big hit. Jobs used the functioning of the Xerox and said that every computer Apple would produce from then would use the same operation. Lisa was still in the creation process and was estimated to sell at around $10,000 which in today money would buy a mid-range family car. At the same time, Macintosh was also being created inside Apple.
Apple’s stock finished the year up 40% after facing a rough start in 2014, and this added almost $200 billion to the company’s worth. After introducing new categories like Apple Pay and Apple Watch, the company went on to launch the iPhone 6 and sold a record-breaking 10 million units in the first three days.
The company’s strengths are its fast growing phone and PC sales and the brand power it has. On the other hand, it has weaknesses like the slowing iPad sales since most of them are expensive to most people, and aged people can have challenges during operation. To add to the sky-high expectations of investors and consumers in the market structure contributes to the weakness.
They are also several opportunities the company can open doors one of them being investing in the cable industry that has a long-rumored streaming television services. However, the company has threats from Chinese phone manufacturers who are taking over the market by producing one of the best phones in the world. Also, another threat that the apple company may face is the Google’s Android operating system since the Google is rising very fast hence they can produce handsets.
The following are some examples of Apple Company’s products; Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, iOS, MacBook, iMac and many more. These are some of the products found in the market today.
Apple was able to make $13.6 million regarding profit within the first three months of the year that had risen from $10.2 billion made in the last year. The high demand for the iPhone 6 led to the big gain where Lunar New Year’s celebrations produced a 70% jump in iPhone sales. In this year, Apple was able to sell about 192,000 more iPhones every day from January through March compared to the previous year.
The high sales made that year led to the creation of $40.3 billion revenue. Apple posted the highest ever profit recorded by a public company that was $18 billion. In the next quarter, Apple generated $58 billion in the overall revenue.
The iPhone 5 got introduced to the market in 2012 September 21st where on the first day of preordering, Apple was Apple to get over 2 million purchase that was 1.4 million more than the first preordering of iPhone 4. Apple received downgrading from analysts for having the shortage of iPhone supply.
From the graph, we see that the quantity for iPhone 5 demanded is more than that supplied thus leading to a lack of supply. If today Apple produces the expected 10 million units of iPhone 5, it could maximize its profit at the equilibrium point where there is neither, overproduction nor underproduction achieving efficiency.
Apple is using differentiation to try and increase the demand for its products. Differentiation focuses on making its company’s products unique and attractive to consumers (Lashinsky 2012). Apple has succeeded in creating high demand for its products despite the competition from its peers. Very much demand has given the company power of prices through product differentiation, advanced advertising, brand loyalty and excellent at launching new products.
Apple can maintain the high prices it offers on its goods by only offering retailers a small discount. Due to this, customers end ups buying products at prices suggested by the manufacturer. Although retailers could give up some profit and offer the products at a discount to attract more customers, Apple prevents this by providing monetary incentives to retailers to sell goods at their suggested prices.
The price strategy has proven useful since it prevents competition of retailers with Apple stores. It also gives the assurance that every reseller is equal, and none has an advantage over another.
Apple sets the price of the products based on the popularity of their products and the willingness of customers to pay all costs for the products. With this, it can set very high prices for its products and is still able to get very great numbers of sales. It maintains a good market and minimum competition with retailers by maintaining prices of retailers and his at per.
Price elasticity of demand acts as an important factor affecting the pricing of products where the greater it is, the more likely demand will not fall even if the prices increased. PED is mostly used to predict the behavior of buyers for products that get regarded as addictive as cigarettes and alcohol.
If the Apple Company made a price cut of $100, it would have the ability to reach almost the same gross margins it attained in fiscal 2013. Reducing would increase sales to levels that would, in turn, increase the amounts of profits achieved by the products (Segall (2013). Though the reduced numbers of products in the market creates a very stable market for the products lowering the cost would do the same to the demand for the products.
Looking at the production costs for Apple products an example being the iPhone 6, the larger screen it possesses is an additional $9.50 increasing the cost to $51 while the large battery it has been an additional $2.50 increasing the cost to $6.
Apple in a way dominates the market as it produces all types of electronics. If a company wishes to rival with Apple, it must first take over Apple’s customer loyalty that is not an easy goal for a company to achieve. Apple proves to have a huge customer base, and most people are the owners of one of Apple’s products and thus convincing such people to buy a new product that has not acquired a background yet would be hard.
Another barrier would be how expensive it is for an individual to change all the Apple products they own so that they can switch to a new brand. Also, Apple Company gives much incentive for one to buy their products because of how they link all their products together through applications like iTunes and iCloud. The connection between Apple products increases the chances of one preferring its brand other than other competitive brands.
The last barrier is the ability of Apple to use predatory pricing since it has billions of dollars to spend. This is very effective in ensuring that their competitors do not thrive in the marketplace. If it chose to, Apple could drop prices for their products running any other company out of business.
Apple Inc. can be said to be standing in the following markets; oligopoly. Oligopoly is a market scenario where the number of competitors is small. This comes to an advantage because rivals will find it very expensive and difficult to enter the market thus acting as a barrier. This could be in a way be brought to be monopolistic competition because no potential rival can even stand to compete with this company.
Conclusion
According to me this company I can define as leading in the electronics market especially in the computer market. It has given a huge gap between it and its rivals that leave opponents at no position of offering any competition. The company due to this has accumulated very much wealth that supports its continued growth. The company going through its evolution was fascinating as it shaped the now very much idolized company.
Recommendation
The Apple Inc. may have very much wealth, but the room is still there for it to increase its revenue earned by increasing the sales it makes. I had discussed before how lowering prices by only $100 would raise the demand for products. Increased demand combined with the production of lower units according to the demand will increase sales driving them through the roof. The lowering of the prices would mean losses in short-term but in the long run, would prove very beneficial.
Another strategy would be to push competitors from the market to create a kind of a monopoly even if not for a long time. The approach would mean incurring losses after reducing prices to levels that no other company can compete against. After achieving its goal of being the only company in the market, the prices are to be again replaced to their original to reinstate the company once again.Bibliography
Linzmayer, O. W. (2004). Apple Confidential 2.0: The definitive history of the world’s most colorful company. San Francisco, Calif: No Starch Press.
Lüsted, M. A. (2012). Apple: The Company and its visionary founder, Steve Jobs. Minneapolis, MN: ABDO Pub.
O’Grady, J. D. (2009). Apple Inc. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.
Lashinsky, A. (2012). Inside Apple: How America’s most admired and secretive-company really works. New York: Business Plus.
Segall, K. (2013). Insanely simple: The obsession that drives Apple’s success.