Apple and Samsung Comparison

Literature Review

This assignment is about focusing on the product side of the industry as opposed to systems where a comparative study between Samsung and Apple has been undertaken. The first section of this assignment deals with literature review about the topic where the various innovative strategies that both the companies have undertaken have been discussed. Following the literature review, this assignment includes secondary data analysis. The data has been collected from different books, journals, and websites and so on in the literature review section. The last section is all about the discussion in the light of literature review and secondary data collection.

Recent market is extremely competitive where all the market players like Samsung has been striving to sustain in the market. In this situation, various innovative strategies such as launching new products to understanding demands of the customers and investing in research and development of products have been undertaken by organizations such as Apple and Samsung. This assignment is the comparative study on the ground of focusing on the product side of the industry as opposed to systems based on two different market players in the electronic segment and they are Samsung and Apple. Because of various innovative strategies undertaken by these two companies, they also have experiences challenges in sustaining and grow in the market (McPhail and McPhail, 1985). This will provide in depth knowledge about various strategies that have been taken by the companies’ sin order to sustain and grow in the market which will of great significance to other companies and students who are gaining knowledge on this specific area of study. Moreover the companies also will have good understanding about continuous growth and development strategies in order to survive in this competition market from this specific study.

In the previous two decades Samsung Electronics has emerged as a leader in the IT industry not only in terms of surging sales all across the globe but also because of their sustainability. The Sustainability Report of Samsung Electronics for 2013 is all about their efforts in social and environmental responsibility this how efficiently the organization has been striving to maintain their responsibility towards the society and environment as well. The business environment in year 2012 was relatively tough for the company (Dempsey, 2014).

In this particular year this company has been able to record its largest annual growth and profits from its operations. In this specific year, external recognition of Samsung Electronics also has witnessed continued growth and development. In addition to this particular telecom company has been able to obtain 20^th on the list of Fortune 500 companies. In the year 2013, Samsung Electronics has conducted enhancement in their structure to certain extent of the mobile communication business division. The digital ageing business division was restructured so as to improve the competitiveness of camera business. This move had the objective to provide differentiated products where manufacturing competitiveness and capabilities have been combined in the mobile communication business divided on which has proven to be successful and this has sided the organization to rank 1 globally in the Smartphone industry. This organization thus has reorganized the IM sector which before was segregated into four different divisions but has been reorganized into three sections and they are – the mobile communication business division, the network business division and the media solution centre (Dempsey, 2014).

Previously Samsung Electronics have gone through challenging business scenario because of the surging economic recession in entire Europe and all other markets that were emerging then along with other few reasons such as highly competitive pricing strategy that were being followed by majority of the market players and volatile exchange rates. To fight back this business circumstance and market place scenario, the surging growth and development of the mobile communication business and enhancement in the components business for instance memory semiconductor. This has assisted the organization to gain excellent revenues and operating profits which has seen to be increased from 13.7% to 27 when compared to the previous year that is in the year 2012 (Samsung.com, 2015).

Customer electronics segment of Samsung Electronics has been known through years because of its innovative technologies in order to satisfy its customer’s demands. In order understand the customer demand; the company has undertaken a number of strategies such as market research, research and development of the products along with the structuring of the pricing structure of their products available in the market. Upon understanding the demands of the customers, Samsung Electronics has launched an wide array of products such as LCD, PDP, LED and UHD TV. This company has been able to achieve the number 1 positing in all TV and LCD TV sales for eight consecutive years. In the year the company has introduced 3D TV Total Solution and has been able to dominate the total market of 3D television. Not only this, Samsung has initiated Samsung Apps which is the world’s first TV app store and also has launched Smart Hub with broad range of services. In this manner Samsung has been able to establish a brand image in the smart TV section (Samsung.com, 2015).

In the year 2013 major companies including Samsung Electronics have announced their entry models for smart phones and tablets in order to make the competition even the more intense. This electronics company has diversified its line of products which that range from extraordinary smart phone models that can be availed by the mass population and thus has launched new products such as LTE and Note. Excellent sales in the strategic models of the company such as the Galaxy Note Series and Galaxy S4 have assisted Samsung Electronics to have greater impact on the population all over the worldwide. Sales and profitability in the year 2013 has improved at a significant rate which was about 31.2 % more than the previous year and operating profit also improved of 28.5% when compared to the previous year. In the year 2014 this particular organization has planned to further improve its position in the market that is targeted to the premium customers (Dempsey, 2014). In order to do so, Samsung Electronics concentrated on tablets and smart phones which also included their innovation of new product category with flexible display in the products such as Samsung Gear and Samsung Fit (The Teardown: 4G Samsung Galaxy Attain, 2012). Apart from investing in the innovation of products, Samsung Electronics carried on investing in the growth and application of organizations research and development abilities which is one of the strongest part of company (Samsung.com, 2013).

Although Samsung Electronics has been one of the worlds’ largest electronics companies but this company has experiences various challenges in the year 2014. This company has been perceived to be most rapidly growing company in the electronics industry; their smart phone division has been under pressure in 2014 because of lack of excellent sales of Galaxy S5 handset, the initiation of giant screen iPhones from Apple and tough competitive price from the Chinese companies. Apart from this one of the major challenges that the company face is their increasing manufacturing cost as they mainly depend on the Japanese companies for their high end camera phones. In the year 2014, the market of Samsung smart phones has declined by around 18.5% however the company has invested enormously in the marketing and promotional strategies implementation and additionally the average prices of selling has been lowered. Owing to this particular division, overall performance of Samsung has been deteriorated which has been recorded to be 30% decline in the operating profits. The company has been facing challenges because of their inadequate product differentiation in the smart phone market that is struggling with extreme competition in the market place and gradually slowing growth and development. Samsung moreover has copied marketing strategy Apple in its brand new Galaxy S6 Edge through their new advertisement.

Apple designs, manufactures and markets mobile communication and media devices, portable digital music players, personal computers and also sells a broad range of software, services, networking solutions, peripherals and third party applications and applications. The products that this company manufactures and sells are iPhone, iPad, ac, ipod, Apple TV, professional software application iOS and OSX operating systems, iCloud and a wide number of accessory, support and service offerings (Budnikas, 2006). The company is committed to provide best user experience to its customers through its innovative software, hardware, computer peripherals and services. The company has developed its own operating system. They also have been continuously investing on the research and development and innovative product strategies (Apple Computer Inc., 1993).

Apple has designed iOS platform where security is the major attribute. With the growing number of security hazards, this company has established a new approach to security in the design of iOS. Thus iOS is the major characteristic that has been implemented in the mobile devices. iOS devices are featured with maximum security and a transparent experience of the users. iOS not only protects its products and its data but also the entire ecosystem (Dormehl, 2012).

In the year 2001, Apple remained major producer and seller of personal computer and one third of the market share of Dell computers which was at that time the major player of the computer market. This company has witnessed excellent enhancement in the sale since the year 2001 which has become possible owing to its introduction of the wide array of products which ranges from iPod to iPhone and iPad. According to researchers, Apple has only one product that is computer which it has launched in three different sizes – mini, medium and large. Apple has been able to bring the power and capability of computer into digital devices that population are able to use in their daily lives (Apple, 2015).

The first success Apple has achieved by the new computer which is known as iMac which is inclusive of CPU and monitor. In order attract more customers the company has launched the product in different colours and there are no strings attached which made the product set apart from others. Various other products ranges such as iBook and MacG4 also followed the similar way in making the wireless devices for internet connection. The most popular product of Apple was iPod which offers songs at pocket friendly prices so that the music lovers can download and integrate in the iPod. Apart from this Apple has been investing huge amount in its research and development of their existing products and has been able to launch MacBook Air which is an ultra slim laptop. Apple also has entered in other sectors such as iPhone which has been able to attract customers owing to aesthetic product design and simplicity of product use (Heracleous, 2013).

Previous that is before the year 2001, Apple only use dot concentrate on computer, hardware, software products, support and services. With this strategy this company has been able to broaden its customers over the years and included song lover population within their target group. Not only this strategy has been able to bring revenue to the company but also has grabbed the attention of population who were never customers of Apple. This product has been able to draw the attention of customers from all age groups (HTC EUROPE CO. LTD v APPLE INC and APPLE INC v HTC CORPORATION, 2013).

One of the major drawbacks because of which this company has experienced decline in its growth and issue in relation to its sustainability is his high end products. All the products that have been introduced by Apple are being targeted to the high class people and because of their high product costs, middle class population would not be able to use them (Latif et al., 2014).