Apple's Swot

Strengths:
• Apple is more valued than $500 billion on the market, and they didn’t get to where they are by snoozing, they got their by being an industry trailblazer and consistently innovating.
• The company possesses one of most globally recognized brands, right up there with Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.
• Brand loyalty is incredible, people will line up in the freezing cold overnight just to be one of the first to get their hands on the new iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
Weaknesses:
• Some analysts say that without legendary founder Steve Jobs at the helm innovation may slow, as Tim Cook is a good CEO but just not the same.
• Apple operates and sells items in one of the most competitive sectors in the world, and will always have competition that will offer something very similar for a
• bit less.
• Competition from deep-wallet companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon may sometimes lead to the compression of margins, as in the past quarter gross margins came in at 40.0%, below the consensus of 40.8%.
• Recent problems from their main supplier and producer, Foxconn, has caused investors to get weak in the knees as shipment dates have been pushed back and customers who pre-ordered devices have been faced with several week waiting periods.
• While this can be used as an advantage if an investor is smart, the recent price movement in the stock has been volatile, rising $100 and then falling $100 in less than 3 months.
Opportunities:
• While the past two quarters have not been the best for the company on a financial note, the first quarter of 2013 should be incredible, as the company should benefit immensely from the holiday season.
• Over the past weeks the company has unveiled a flurry of new items, including the all-important iPhone 5, the iPad mini, a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, a new Mac, and a new iPod Touch, proving that the company is still innovating for the future.
• The iPad mini puts Apple’s foot in the small tablet market, a space that for a time was eating the iPad’s lunch.
• Early in 2013 Apple is expected to unveil the Apple version of the television, possibly the iTV, which should nearly complete the Apple ecosystem as in one common platform customers can have a phone, computer, laptop, tablet, and television.
• In nearly all respects, Apple is relatively unsaturated in the markets it operates in, 17% in the smartphone market, 5.2% of the worldwide computer market, and the one exception, 85.7% of the tablet market, meaning the company still has significant room left to run.
Threats:
• When you are one top, everyone wants to knock you off of your pedestal, and this is true for Apple.
• Recently some analysts and tech junkies have claimed that Apple is behind the curve as they copy the larger screen size of some of the Android smartphones or shrink the screen size of their tablet.
• You would think they can only slightly tweak the iPhone or Mac so many times before it simply becomes unreasonable to purchase the expensive devices every couple of years, but obviously this has not proven to be a problem yet.
• The biggest threat to Apple’s success would have to be the stiff competition it faces, Android, Microsoft, Research in Motion, Nokia, Amazon; the list is endless.

Competitors : from we know, Apple’s biggest competitors always be those powerful PC company like Microsoft or Dell. But in the information generation, company like Google or Facebook can be very competitive.