Apple Online Store Strategy

GROUP B _Choose three essence competencies of orchard apple tree Inc. How did these competencies yield orchard apple tree to make sense out of the recorded medicinal drug assiduity in the early 200s? How did they set the company up for robust first user reward? How stable do those advantage seem now? (See Jay Barneys Looking Inside for Competitive improvement Zooks Finding Your Next Core Business). As the Internet found recorded music segment continues to evolve into other(a) devices, will apples competencies continue to generate advantage versus suc competitors as look for in Motion and Dell Inc.? apple today is the leading player in the kale music industry with over 6 billion songs downloaded since the propel of its iTunes online music insert, which today contains more than 10 million songs. Apple introduced iTunes and its online music store in 2001 when there were several major players, much(prenominal) as Amazon and Napster, competing for the market. However, Apple was able to outperform these competitors with its three main core competencies, software, retailing and branding.In 2003, Apple introduced the iTunes online music store that throw overboarded guests to purchase and download songs promptly from the store to their computer through iTunes, and then transfer them directly to their iPods. By that time, most of Apples competitors abideed their customers songs through subscriptions, however they did not provide customers full control of the songs they purchased, i. e. , songs purchased would be lost once customer no longer subscribed. Apple was able to allow customer a whole new way of selling songs to customers.They allowed customers to buy songs like CDs, cassettes in store and never had their songs lost since there were no subscriptions required. In addition, Apple in any case allowed the customer to preview the songs they intended to purchase in beau monde to avoid downloading the wrong songs. In order to be able to allow custo mers to purchase songs for a low cost, Apple managed to negotiate a term deal with biggest five music companies in the world, Warner, Universal, BMG, Sony and EMI.Songs offered by Apple were development DRM (Digital Right Management) applied science to prevent the songs to be unlimited shared. However, the songs could be use to burn unlimited CDS and transferred to unlimited iPod. Since 2001, Apple had gained tremendous branding write up for its iPod MP3 players. Since then, it has become the most popular MP3 player in the world. When iTunes online music store was introduced in 2003, Apple had provided an extremely convenient way for legally purchase songs and transferring them directly to customers iPods.Therefore, Apples iTunes online music store was widely welcomed and received by a large number of customers. Apple was a lead up in combining online music store and music management in one software that allow customers to conveniently purchase and manage their music. Since i Tunes was introduced along with the first iPods, it has been well known for simplicity and user-friendly interface. Therefore, iTunes had largely contributed to the succeeder of Apples online music store and the elimination of its competitors.As the internet based recorded music segment continues to evolve into other devices, Apple has taken another new strategies in selling music to customers. In June 2009, Apple has more than 10 million songs in its online music store, and since 2006, Apple started to take DRM off their songs and offer customers DRM-free songs. Eight million songs was DRM-free since June 2009 and Apple has been qualification effort to offer all of their songs free of DRM.Today, Apple does not lay down only iPod as their MP3 players, but they also have other devices such as iPhone, iPad and iPod billet, that can all utilize the iTunes online music store. The introduction of iPhone and iPod Touch has provided Apple an opportunity to expand its iTunes store beyon d a wide-eyed online music store to become an online entertainment store, which offers numerous varieties of movies, music, TV episodes, games, applications and books. This has do Apple become the leading brand in innovative technology and its brand ranking has been going up in recent years.ITunes itself also has gone through remarkably improvement in order to offer customers a simpler, more interesting and interactive way of browsing the online store. In general, despite intense competitions from other player such as Research in Motion and Dell Inc. , Apple has been able to outperform them and offer customers the most unique and efficient way of purchasing music and other online entertainment contents. This has been proved by growing stock prices, and increasing profit figures since Apple iTunes online music store was introduced in 2003.