Apple Inc. Management and Product Development Timeline - Research Paper Example

? Apple Inc. Management and Product Development Timeline due: This paper explores the growth path of Apple Inc., the formation, management and operational organization. It further looks at the developments in computer technology and the more recently developed products from their initial stages to their current features. The paper further investigates the compliance to various regulations governing the computer industry, project management within the enterprise, the productivity of the company and its market position and share in the computer technology market in a time line of a series of events. Apple Inc. Management and Product Development Timeline Apple Inc. formerly known as Apple Computers Inc is a public traded company in the industry of computer software and appliances. Formed in 1976 and incorporated in 1977, the company that was founded by the trio of Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne and has its headquarters in California, U.S.A. It stands out as the company that managed to grow from strength to strength amid all the challenges in the computer technology market. Presently a multinational company with market and operational presence in various countries of the world, Apple is in fact the market leader in the provision of computers and related accessories as well as computer software (Grady, 2009). Currently, Apple has an employee base of 60,400 and 357 retail stores all over world. This has provided them with a market influence greater than its competitors like The Microsoft Company which it has since surpassed despite having been in the market way before Apple. As a result, Apple has a large equity base of $76.615 billion with a turnover of $108.249 billion as reported in 2011. The result has been that the company is highly profitable with the profits standing at US$ 25.922 billion as at 2011. The legal environment in which Apple operates is dominated by requirements to protect the environment, labour laws as well as state requirements such as tax compliances, employee working conditions and benefits. Apple Inc. has been on the fore front in complying with such legal requirements. It has undertaken social responsibility to protect its employees and the society at large from the dangerous emissions that result from its operations. Although Apple emits green house gases and therefore a contributor to environmental degradation, it has taken measures to recycle its products so as to relieve the environment of such heavy carbon burden. More recycling centers have been set up in most countries of operation, approximately 95% of all those countries in places of high computer usage. The company achieved and surpassed the target of recycling 50% of their total hardware input by 1997. Economically, Apple has successfully waded off competition as it captures a wider market proportion. Competition has majorly been witnessed from other computer appliances and software design firms like MYSQL, Microsoft and Oracle. The company has continued to design more efficient software and improved on its hardware over the years even though this has at times made their products fairly expensive due to high costs of production, research and development which have in some circumstances delinked them from consumers. The most important aspect however, is that they have learnt from previous experiences and are presently at an equilibrium in production costs and consumer attitudes in the design and marketing of their products. With the growing world population and an influx of computer users, the economic future of Apple is without doubt very bright. Over the years, the management and top decision making of Apple Inc. had always been on the CEO who was either one of the founders until Wayne sold off his shares. Steve Jobs as a result became the company’s longest serving CEO before his death in October 2011. The top management has in the past been responsible for the products in the market, research and sales which have together given the company its current market status of large capital and asset bases as well as the huge profits. With the passing of Jobs, apple is presently faced with the challenge of mentorship that had been the role of the late CEO. This will without doubt necessitate a change in management style where the brand was synonymous with one individual to the institutionalization of the Apple brand. The successful launches of new products by Apple in the recent years are a clear show of effective project management systems within the organization. The company has cultivated the culture of perfection in its staff to the level that new projects do not have to undergo external team selection because the existing workforce are way too competent and prepared for challenges presented by new products. This, coupled with strict project timelines and adequate tools that include top notch computing skills has seen Apple successfully complete several new products among them the iPad both within the set time frame and budget (Linzmayer,1999).. Initially, under the management of Jobs with Wozniak and Wayne as partners, Apple marketed parts in a toolkit of motherboard, CPU and RAM although at a very expensive price. Apple II and III were both launched by 1980 and although Apple III was the product intended to compete IBM and Microsoft in the computer market, its initially high launch price made it unpopular. It is during this period that the company was working on the GUI interface which Steve Jobs considered as the future of modern computers. The period between 1980 and 1984 was characterized with power struggles between Jobs and the then CEO Sculley and effectively leading to Job resigning to form NeXT Inc. although more competitive products like Lisa and Macintosh were launched during this period. Other notable products during this period included the LaserWriter printer, PageMaker-publishing software, PowerBooks, Macintosh LC and Centris (Haigh & Radford, 1984). Having designed and developed advanced platforms for the OS, apple embarked on profitability which implied manufacturing the Macintosh 128K: the iMac which realized very high sales of 800,000 units in five months. The period between 1994 and 1997 was characterized by acquisition of various companies and many mergers to further and improve both products and market presence. Other products during this period were the Final Cut pro, iMovie, Emagic, iPhoto, Mac OS X and Mac 9 which was developed based on OPEN STEP from NeXT. From 2005-2007 there was a transition to Intel where as opposed to previous software, the company started developing and using the Intel core duo and Book Camp by 2006. The latest development led to the technological advancement of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad which have greatly enhanced and underlined the superiority of Apple. Throughout its operation, Apple has developed contingency plans to deal with competition and such include innovation, mergers and acquisition where necessary. With the number of staff and the working policy structured at invention, Apple has developed more software and improved computer applications through hardware and miniaturization better than its competitors and is today a market leader. References Grady, J. D. (2009). Apple Inc.. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Haigh, R. W., & Radford, L. E. (1984). Logo for Apple computers. New York: Wiley. Linzmayer, O. W. (1999). Apple confidential: the real story of Apple Computer, Inc.. San Francisco, Calif. No Starch Press. Read More