The industry life cycle

The industry life cycle

Introduction

The industry life cycle has affected the business strategy of apple in various ways.  Each stage in the product life cycle is a function of two things that is the time in the x-axis and sales on the y-axis. However, with the apple company, their products were kept high to maintain the exclusivity of ownership. The stages in any product’s life cycle vary; Apple is one company that has always generated a story. Still, a recent announcement from Apple suggests that the company is currently experiencing a problem. The reduced industry life cycle can affect the business strategy adversely for the firm over some time (Rothaermel et al., 2017).

Growth

By the time the product enters the growth stage, the consumers have already started building a good affinity towards the particular product. However, Apple did not seem to keep its product quality well maintained, not to let the consumers down. As far as growth is concerned, the company needed to spend more money on marketing now that its product had reached out to a broader audience. However, the failure of the apple to invest well in marketing compromised the growth of the company. The first of the two growth factors that apple did not seem to consider was the medium-term growth forecast and the forecast of the company earnings per share over what appeared to be the next two years divided by the current EPS (Rothaermel et al., 2017).

Shakeout.

Different companies will use different strategies; crucial marketing strategy are in the pricing across this stage. If this policy is not organized out well, then the company is likely to be shaken. Even though Apple still has a massive business service that always takes the 30%cut of the iPad and the iPhone. However, it has failed to deliver to its customers an innovative product that can draw back the consumers. During the shakeout, the sales are expected to drop sharply in the shakeout stage.

Maturity

During this phase, the rate of increase in terms of sales may decline. However, the overall sales are maintained at a certain level. During this time, Apple was expected to compete with many products that enter the market.  The apple company fails to deliver an innovative product that has left the company as a very profitable one, but maturing would be difficult because some companies produce excellent products that are just the replica of Apple products (Rothaermel et al., 2017).

Decline

At this stage, most consumers tend to move to better products, and they are no longer interested in the products. The most common product life cycle that apple could have implemented was to make the most out of their brands like lowering the prices, eliminating the after-sales support to reduce the market and personnel, or discontinuing its products.

The theory is that supposed the apple company could have innovated a great ground-breaking product, but it is not able to follow it up with another innovative product. Therefore the company is ready to slowly die as its product able to be overtaken by other companies that produce better outcomes.  The company is also going to be scared of abandoning the great products, and moving forward, it is likely to remain stuck in the past, and this could lead to a decline. For instance, the iPod brought a great product that led to the resurrection of the company, then followed the iPhone that entirely changed the way the smartphones work.  This brought a significant margin compared to what Apple has done so far.

References

Rothaermel, F. T. (2017). Strategic management: concepts. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.