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e the best part of the company. (Christine Thompson)

We know that many of Apple's customers sleep or wait outside the Apple stores just to be the first to buy the new products. This indicates that Apple enjoys its brand loyalty. This success is from great effort to deliver the best products. To achieve this Apple employs a few strategies such as; exclusive Apple stores with well-trained and well-informed employees who have good knowledge of their products and services. These give the customers an opportunity to explore the technology. One of the other strategies is the complete control over the hardware and software which enables them to deliver complete products. They also have a range of products from music players to computers which allows them to capture the new market and establish their presence. Another strategy used by Apple is to develop its presence in the schools and universities which let young people to use Apple products, once the kids get acquainted to these products they would want Apple products even at home. One of the important strategies that Apple employs is a result of enthusiastic research, its design of easy to use products which are simple and durable. These great products basically have the same fundamental architecture that encourages the existing customers to buy more Apple products in their future. With their constant innovation Apple brings out new products that let its customers to stay loyal to the brand.(Insider CRM editors)

产业分析-Analysis of the Industry

The PC industry

Apple started off as 'Apple Computer' in 1976. Thus the first major industry Apple was and still is operating in is the Personal Computer (PC) industry. Since the company started providing the first Macintosh PC's, the industry has been developing rapidly. In 1978 Apple Computer released their first home computer and quickly became the market leader in the PC industry (Yoffie & Kim, 2010, p. 2). However, over the next 18 years, Apple lost its position as a market leader. Other vendors such as IBM and Compaq gained market share with better and cheaper products. A survey conducted by Dataquest and International Data Corporation (IDC) in 1996 revealed that the two vendors, IBM and Compaq, had a share of the market of 8.9% and 10% respectively (Heichler, 1997, para. 3). In comparison, Apple's PC market share was only about 4% that year (Yoffie & Kim, 2010, exhibit 3). Just 10 years later in 2006 a survey conducted by Gartner Dataquest revealed that Hewlett-Packard (HP), that merged with Compaq in 2002, and Dell Inc. were the new market leaders in the PC industry with a market share of 17.4% and 13.9% respectively.(REFERENCE)

Today, in the 3rd quarter of 2010, the PC industry could be characterised as an oligopoly or a differentiated oligopoly, where the four big companies have a market share of 53.2% with HP as the clear market leader with a 17.5% share of the market, according to Gartner Dataquest (appendix table 2). Apple is still not in top 5 according to this survey. However, Apple has now for the first time since early 1990's gained a market share in the U.S. above 10%, which makes it the 4th biggest PC vendor in the U.S. (Gartner, 2010, para. 8).

The history of the PC industry reveals some major changes in the structure. Acquisitions of companies have led to changes in the top five PC vendors, which indicate that constant innovati