Checklist for Strategic Planning for Apple Computer
This paper continues to discuss a strategic plan for Apple Computer, Inc. It covers the grand strategies, long term objectives, interviews, SWOT analysis and Porter's Five Forces analysis.
Grand Strategies
Apple Computer serves a niche market for education, consumer, and professional markets. Low-cost leadership, according to former CEO, John Scully, was lost to Apple in the 1980s when he made the decision not to switch to the Intel microprocessor (Lettice, 2003, par. 1). Since that time, Apple and IBM jointly developed the Motorola PowerPC microprocessor, which has technical differences from the Intel processor that some claim to be advantages, at a higher cost. The result of this is Apple now has a choice of grand strategies: differentiation or focus.
Apple chose differentiation as their generic strategy. As highlighted in other sections of this paper, Apple products have a distinctive appearance and emphasize ease of use.
Apple I at the Smithsonian Museum
The Macintosh Portable was Apple's first "portable...
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the fifth D: All Thin...Because of this simplicity of use, Apple products sell at a premium. Apple has a strong background in four of the seven skills, the resources required for effective differentiation, and may have a good background in two others (Pearce & Robinson, 2002). This choice means that Apple might benefit from the following grand strategies.
Concentrated Growth
Apple's differentiation makes concentrated growth for its distinctive products a natural strategy. Apple customers expect it to continue enhancing product performance in terms of plug and play operation. Growth on these terms would be within Apple's core competency and enhance potential market gains in business markets.
Market Development
Apple has an ongoing marketing effort to convince consumers to switch from other computers to the Macintosh lines. This market development strategy should continue the attack on the run-of-the-mill Wintel competitors. Apple suffers from consumer perception that it will be hard to find hardware...