Apple

Apple owes its great success in the last couple years to the iPhone, and to the iPod and iTunes product combination. The combination of great hardware pieces with up to date style, great working software, great performance, and user friendly interface that almost anyone can understand. In the last 5 years the Apple share value increased 25 times, from $7.5 to $180 per share. At July 2008 prices, before the United States took a drop economically, Apple stock market was at $160 billion. Few people know that for the first 3 years the iPod was not the most popular music player. It was the fist of its kind and people weren’t really sure of this idea yet. The iPod was launched in October of 2001, between 2001 and 2003 iPod sales were between 150-200 thousand ipods sold every quarter. That’s very far from today's 10-20 million ipods sold per quarter. This all had to do with marketing. In 2004 Apple came out with a different kind of marketing strategy. They wanted to create a company that could use all of their products together. They wanted a central hub for each product. They could advertise these products with the other products that they would work with. They learned that Americans like there electronics to be simple and easy to use. They created a system were all of there products could work together. This product was call Mobile Me. Mobile me let you sync all of your apple products together to make them work for each other. For example you can sync your contacts on your computer with your iPod or another apple computer on the same home network. I think this was a big move on apples part. Why would you buy a product if it wasn’t going to work with your other products that you have spent a lot of money on' I don’t know if you noticed but Apple has a new product or a new version or a product about every 6 to 8 months. Some people say that this is frustrating because then only have the newest apple product for a little bit of time. I think that it is a great idea. It keeps the company fresh. They come up bigger and better ideas for the electronics market. They do it much more than Microsoft. Microsoft changes there products not nearly as often as Apple. Who is Apples target market' Right off the bat you think that it is younger people like around ages 14 to 25. Yes that is somewhat correct. But there is more. Apple appeals to nearly every age group. The younger kids