Product Portfolio Analysis Of Apple Inc.

Importance of the process design on the product

Discuss about a Report for Product Portfolio Analysis of the Company for Apple?

This assignment is about the product portfolio analysis of the company Apple Inc. The company is one of the most popular brands in the area of the electronic goods and communication. It is an American multinational company. It supplies many hardware products and other services to their customers. iPhone is the most popular product of the company. The product is a smart phone with a lot of advance facilities. The Smartphone industry is changing and updating rapidly due the changes in the area of technology (Cheng 2013). The competition of this industry is also increased to a high level. Due to this factor, the improvisation of the existing products of the industry should be modified with new types of facilities for competition with the other competitors (Apple 2016). The new operations manager of the company wants to introduce a modified version of the specified product. In order to do that, analysis of the existing product portfolio will be done in this report.

Process design helps to understand the unique activities required for a product or service development. The concept also helps to divide the total task into unit modules and the step by step activities through the process design helps to conduct the overall activities easily. At the beginning level of the process design the aims and objectives of the design project should be declared which helps the designer or developer to set the primary goal to achieve the better outcomes (Kohlbacher and Reijers 2013). Often the decision makers of the business organization faced difficulties due to the complex product portfolio and unstructured process for product development. The process design helps to minimise these difficulties and helps to take decisions that are more rational in the design or development activities. This also helps in experimenting with the product lifecycle (Rosemann and vomBrocke 2015).

Using the process design concept allows to understand the important factors to be considered at the time of developing or modifying any product or services.

The company is supplying the iPhone in the form of very high quality devices. The prices of their products are also very high compared to the other competitor companies. The company is trying to develop advanced products to enhance their business and achieving the high level of success in the market completion. The objectives of the company for developing and modifying the iPhone are given in the section below:

Aim and objectives

The company has the objective of creating a footprint on the smart phone industry by developing the most advanced device. This will help the company to sustain in the tough market competition and huge revenue through the marketing of the modified products.

They also have the objective of developing some unique facilities in their products by which the customers can differentiate their products from their competitor company’s products.

The company has the aim of supplying the products in broader market. They want to open new stores with the improved products for expanding their market.

Apple was the company, which has introduced many new facilities in the area of the smart phone and tablets. They have the expectation of fastest growing by holding the leaning position in the market of the smart phone industry by introducing the innovative technologies for updating the quality of their products and services.

The product development strategy used by the company follows a step by step process. A well-organized research work is required regarding the market and suppliers for the product development. Different stages of process development for the development and modification of the Apple iPhone are discussed in the section below.

Figure 1: Process design stages

(Source: Created by author)

The company Apple is known as the leader of innovation (technword 2016). When customers think about products of Apple they always expect to have something new. The company always try to adopt new technologies and try to modify its products so that the expectation of customers can be met. Apple has done various modifications in iPhone. Product modification is a continuous part of Apple’s operation.   

For example, in the iPhone 5S, the company Apple has added new features like fingerprint sensor with touch ID, A7 chip and M7 coprocessor. In the year of 2015 the company has launched iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus. The company has upgraded both the products using the latest design named as System on a Chip (SoC) (Apple 2016).  The company has innovated live photo in iPhone 6S. It captures 3 seconds video before and after a picture is taken. In addition, the phone acts as an activity tracker with the help of modified M8 motion coprocessor. The product differentiation of the company Apple is more about the hardware rather than the size and design of the devices (Weske 2012). The major objective of the company is to fulfil the expectations and demands of its target customers. The company finds that customers have some issues related with the battery capacity. Hence, the company provides more space in iPhone 6 plus to provide a larger battery.

Stages of product improvement and marketing of the product (Process Design)

The company Apple uses astonishing raw materials for its new equipments. For example, the processor chips of iPhone 6S is made up with silicon. It also includes materials like boron, antimony, phosphorous that provides the chip enhanced electrical properties (Cheng 2013). For electrical connections, Apple uses different metals like silver, gold, copper. In order to improve the electricity flow, the company uses micro capacitors of tantalum. The screen used in iPhone uses aluminosilicate glass. The company on average uses 80 non-radioactive elements for its iPhone. The company has gathered information about the required raw materials. The company has found that 12 of these elements have no replacements (Shin et al. 2014). 

After analysis of the suppliers’ information in the previous stage, the selection of the supplier will be done in this stage by selecting the most superior firms as the supplier of the company. The transpiration facilities, quality of the products, cost effectiveness of the suppliers and the customer services provided by the suppliers will be considered at the time of the selection of the suppliers for the new modification project for the iPhone (van 2013).

In order to use the new technical equipment, the company needs to modify their internal infrastructure in the production houses. This task has to be done after gathering all the relevant requirements by following the steps as described in the previous stages of the process design. This refers to the setting of the new equipment, staff training for operating the new materials etc. (Stark 2015).

This is the stage where the actual modification of the product will be done but the production unit of the Company. The output of the research work done by the employees of the R&D department of the company will use for the production of the modified product. The production team will be instructed by the people of the R&D department at the initial level of the production (Weske 2012). The IT professionals will do the improvement of the software of the iPhone. High level of innovative thinking and research is required for this purpose.

After the development of new improved product the company for understanding the efficiency level of the new improvised product should test the product. The practical implementation and testing of the improved iPhone will be done in this stage for understanding the actual efficiency level of the new product and comparing the efficiency level with the previous version of the product (Ouattara et al. 2012).

Understand the requirements for modifying the product for fulfilling the objectives

After successfully developing the product, Apple launches it in the global market. The company first launched iPhone in the year of 2007 (Apple 2016). Since then, customers use to have high expectation form iPhone. Its innovative features and faster processing speed makes it popular among high-end customers. Before launching any new version of iPhone, Apple makes a huge promotion. For example, during the year of 2015, huge global expectation has grown related with the iPhone 6S.  The company promotes about the innovative features of the products on social media. It helps to create expectations among customers. Almost 48% of the customers book IPhone 6S in advance and wait more than 6 months to get the product (Davies-Husband et al. 2013). There are only 6% of the customers, who break their contract with Apple. 

The COO of the company Tim Cook always tries to bring something new in their products (Apple 2016). As all the customers of Apple want to have innovative design and features, the performance objective of Apple is to develop an upgrade product or modify their existing products. Improvisation of their existing product helps the company to become the leader of IT market (technword 2016). For, example the Apple has modified the M7 coprocessor of iPhone 5S and developed M8 coprocessor, which is used in iPhone 6S. At first, the company has developed its predefined objectives. The company is more focused on hardware upgradation rather than size or design of the product.  Hence, the company develops an effective action plan for each stage of the process design. In the first stage, the company makes market research.  As Estrada et al. (2012) stated that, market research is a very important part of Apple’s process design strategy. It helps the company to understand the requirements and expectations of customers from their products. Depending on that, performance objectives of the company is developed. The company has understood that, in order to mitigate expectation of their target customers, innovative ideas are required to be implemented in product design.

Presently the company Apple is more focused on product enhancement strategy. Presently the company is enhancing the hardware components of iPhone 5S to use them in the new product of iPhone 6S. There are more than 80 raw elements required to develop the hardware of Apple iPhone 6S (technword 2016). In the next stage, the company has to gather all the required raw materials from various suppliers all around the world. At the next stage prototype of the product is developed. After that, experts examine the product several times so that the product can meet all the expectation. At the next stage, final products are developed and launched in the market. The company Apple conducts survey to examine the level of satisfaction of their customers. Depending on the survey analysis, the company develops its future strategy. For example, survey analysis done on the customer satisfaction level of iPhone 6S helps the company to develop performance objective for iPhone 7S. Appropriate performance objective helps Apple to develop appropriate product design for iPhone products.

Gathering information about the supply of the required raw materials or new equipment

Conclusion:

Apple is one of the best smart phone provider companies. The business of the company is running very good with the help of their innovative and hi tech products. The report has been completed by considering the product Apple iPhone. The product is a very good smart phone. The company has launched many versions of the product in the market. They are trying to improve the product by updating the technical and interfacing features of the product. In this regard the previous product portfolio has been analyzed in this report. They have some well defined aim and objectives for the development and improvement of the products. The process design strategy of the product development has been analyzed and it has been found that the company is following a well-structured way for the innovation of the existing products. The aim and objectives of the company have been developed by focusing in the area of the higher business growth. The strategy is very helpful for the company to improve the iPhone in a better format in the near future. The important activities of the process design strategy is associated with the efficient management if the logistic operations and marinating the balance of the cost and benefit of the company.

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