Organization (Apple) Apple Inc. (Apple) Was Built Essay

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Organization (Apple)

Apple Inc. (Apple) was built on January 3, 1977. It is presently engaged in manufacturing, designing and marketing mobile communication and media devices, personal computers, and portable digital devices. It also sells a number of related software, peripherals, services, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications. The Company's products and services comprises iPad, iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, iPod a portfolio of consumer and professional software applications, the Mac OS X and ios operating systems, iCloud, and a number of accessory, service and support offerings. It also sells and provides digital content and applications through the iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore, and Mac App Store. By the end of year 2011, the Company, as part of a consortium, obtained Nortel Networks Corporation's patent portfolio. In February 2012, the Company obtained app-search engine Chomp.

Apple sells its products worldwide through its online stores, retail stores and direct sales force, as well as through third-party cellular network carriers, resellers, wholesalers and retailers. In addition, the Company sells a range of third-party iPhone, iPad, Mac and iPod compatible products, including application storage devices, printers, software, speakers, headphones, and various other accessories and peripherals, through its retail stores and online. The Company sells to consumers, small and mid-sized businesses (SMB), and enterprise, education and government customers. The Company has designed a number of products, programs and services to address the needs of education customers. It also supports mobile learning and real-time distribution and accessibility of education related materials through iTunes U, a platform that allows students and teachers to share and distribute educational media online. It sells its products to the education market through its direct sales force, select third-party resellers and its online and retail stores. It also sells its hardware and software products to enterprise and government customers.

Mission statement of Apple

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OSX, iLife, Iwork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPadwhich is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices." (Michelle Bielak, 2010)

However, Apple mission statement is not properly designed and it looks like that it is list of products. Originally Apple more depends on its global mission and its values.

Goals of Apple

1-Increase in Revenue

2-Increase in number of employees

3-The main concern of Apple is to be environmentally being safe.

Vision statement of Apple

"Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and internet offerings."

Stakeholders of Apple

Stakeholders for Apple Inc. include, but are not limited to:

Shareholders: preferred and common

Apple employees

Manufacturers and their employees

Suppliers

Music industry

Software developers

Lenders

Customers

Ethical Challenges for the Apple's leadership

Apple CEO Tim Cook visited China to meet with vice Premier Li Keqiang and also visited its supplier factories in the country. His visit came just before the release of a report from the Fair Labor Association, a monitor group that monitor working standards at Foxconn, one of Apple's major suppliers. The study report at least 50 issues which were against the organization's code of conduct and Chinese labor law, some of them include the number of hours worked per week by Foxconn workers. The average time worked at each of the three factories was more than 60 hours per week during high demand production periods.

The report raised number of questions about the relationship Apple has with its supplier. Even a New York Times story raised questions about Foxconn's working conditions.

Both Apple and Foxconn agreed with the report's findings and said they would work to implement the Fair Labor Association's recommendations. For Foxconn, it will require hiring thousands of new employees, and significantly raising wages while maintaining working hours within agreeable norms. Such moves could upset consumer electronics industry.

And for Apple's Tim Cook, implementing the changes will bring a lot of new challenges, too. If Foxconn implement report's recommendations, then definitely equipment cost would go up -- and potentially trickle down to consumers. If it happens, Cook could face the wrath of shareholders who will forget all the good things he has done in the past with Apple, and would not want to see prices on the company's products increase. Meanwhile, now that the company has said it would implement the report's recommendations, all eyes will be on how well it follows through.

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But the biggest challenge for Cook will be navigating the fine line between how not to start pointing fingers at competitors (Foxconn reportedly makes more than 40% of the world's electronics products, including those for brands like Amazon, Dell and Hewlett-Packard) without getting his company the ill fame for unwelcome labor practices in China. After all, the head of the FLA, Auret van Heerden, told The Wall Street Journal that the conditions it observed at the Foxconn factories that make Apple products were "no worse than any other factory in China."

Recommended strategies

Apple is the company that has had one-man that controls its business practices and is quickly becoming most associated with the issue. That is the price, one has to consider, of the company's complete success, and its undisputed position of power in the consumer electronics industry. As a result, my opinion is that it will take more than just following through on the FLA's report to make this matter calm down for Apple. Because Cook's company leads the industry in brand image and breakthrough products, he will need to direct the industry on this issue as well, urging competitors to follow suit and ascertain best practices with suppliers for others to follow.

Other challenges for the Apple and its counter strategies

Apple took a decision to buy back Apple stock and pay shareholders a dividend. The company declared that it would initiate a $2.65-per-share dividend and start buying back $10 billion in company stock. The move represents a significant shift for a company that has long avoided both options -- either because it reportedly needed all that cash to buy component supplies or because it was not the viewpoint of the company's iconic founder, Steve Jobs.

To me, that is one of the most amazing parts of Apple's decision to offer the dividend and do the buyback. Cook's decision to give investors what they wanted -- one analyst wrote that the company's cash had reached lowest levels and was panicking investors to the point where it was "now bordering on exasperation" -- reveals a departure in the company's leadership.

Steve Jobs was apparently long against doing either. The company last gave a dividend in 1995, the year before Apple had a net loss of $816 million, which was soon followed by Jobs' return to the company. And despite counsel from none other than Warren Buffett, Jobs ignored the cash levels. He seemed to like the security of having a big cash horde and, as an innovator, probably wanted to secure him against future failures. It probably didn't help that some people see dividends as a mark of failure in growth, innovative companies should be putting their cash to work funding bold new products or buying hot startups or rivals.

Sure, a lot has changed recently for Apple besides the company's CEO. For one, the company's cash pile has grown significantly, reaching $97.6 billion at the end of December from $59.7 billion the year before. That is more than the market capitalizations of all but 52 of the publicly traded companies at that time, as reported by the Wall Street Journal -- meaning that, conceivably, Apple could have purchased anything from Hewlett Packard to Goldman Sachs. Much of that cash is increasingly coming from offshore, and as Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said many times, the company does not want to pay the tax cost to repatriate the cash. Some of the people are of the view that Apple's share price run-up had in effect "exhausted" its fan base among growth-oriented investors, and needed to offer the dividend to broaden its shareholder base.

Perhaps with all those factors in place, Jobs too would have chosen to do the same. We'll never know. But perhaps it also took new leadership to make the decisions. Whether its fresh eyes, less intake from history or more willingness to risk what's been built, new leaders can make bold decisions that others in the past, particularly founders, are often less willing or able to make.

(McGregor, NATIONAL, 2012)

Suggested solutions

In my point-of-view Apple should concentrate on investing in new products rather than pooling its cash resources in giving dividend as the company's prime goals tells that company would more rely on the expansion of its business. Companies policies are more relying on the existence rather than taking risks. So, it should take risk and should expand the base of its product….....

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