Business Research Problem - Essay Example

Apple was founded in 1977 by Steve Jobs along with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. However, over the years, a few bad decisions not only hurt the company, but eventually led to the ouster of Jobs in a boardroom coup. After finding itself incapable to wriggle out of trouble and faced with the threat of extinction due to cutthroat competition from companies such as Microsoft and Dell, Apple finally succeeded in bringing back Steve Jobs to the helm of affairs. Since then, Mr. Jobs has ensured that his company not just managed to stay afloat, but went on to offer some of the most revolutionizing products, thus making it a major player not just in the software world, but also in the much coveted space of consumer electronics, leaving everyone else to catch up (Gary Smith, 2004).

The current paper is thus focused on introducing one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of computing and electronics, that was engineered through the vision and strategy of a single person – Steve Jobs. Given the impressive performance of Apple Inc., even in the midst of the current financial crisis, it is interesting to analyze the manner in which Apple has risen to become one of the dominant forces in the technology industry. Apple started out in an era when software companies were beginning to emerge everywhere around the United States.

These companies began by assembling electronic circuits to make computers and also wrote the software that would run on these machines. Some of the biggest names that we hear today in the computing world such as Microsoft, SAP and Oracle began during this period as small start-ups. During the late 80s and early 90s, apple began to invest heavily in a large number of products such as cameras, players and consoles. However, all such investments were based on inefficient strategies and deficient market forecasts.

Moreover, Apple was struggling to maintain control over its manufacturing costs for the popular Macintosh lines