ANSWER THESE -

• Customer Value Proposition, market positioning, and pricing practices.
• Sources of competitive advantages if any.
• Distinctive value chain, ecosystem, and profit pool choices.
• Revenue drivers, gross margin, and financial footprint.
• Opportunities, threats, and future performance prospects.
• Concepts of Value Innovation such as Value Curve as they apply to Apple's innovations. iPad Assess Apples competitive position in tablets. What has changed in the tablet business? Is Apples position sustainable? What actions do you recommend for Apple in tablets?

MORE EMPHASIS ON CVP AND SWOT ANALYSIS FOR IPAD

APPLE -

After almost a decade as CEO, Tim Cook could look back at his record at Apple with enormous pride. During his tenure, Apple became the worlds first trillion dollar market cap company. The firms iconic iPhone has grown almost 5X under Cook, while Apple introduced new hardware products, such as the Apple Watch and AirPods (see Exhibits 1a, 1b, 1c and 2 for Apple financials and stock price). Yet 2020 could be a defining year for Apple and Cook. Apples core hardware businesses had slowed dramatically or declined in the last several years. iPhones, iPads and Macs had become mature products, with sales largely driven by user upgrades. A new generation of phones, using 5G technologies, might stimulate iPhone replacement demand, but the rollout was expected to be slow. Emerging markets also offered some hope for growth, but most Apple products were perceived as too expensive for many lower income countries. Finally, China had been one of the bright spots for Apple in the prior five years, but it, too, showed signs of strain. The combination of a Trump-led trade war and the coronavirus pandemic put a serious damper on Apples prospects in China. Seeing the writing on the wall, Cook prepared Apple for one of its largest strategic shifts in more than a decade. While hardware sales would still be critical, Cook was betting that Apple could become a major force in technology-related services. Apples installed base of iPhone users exceeded one billion people in early 2020. 1 This gave Apple a unique opportunity to cross-sell services to existing, loyal customers. Ranging from insurance (Apple Care) and music (Apple Music) to payments (Apple Pay), video content (Apple TV+), gaming (Apple Arcade) and news subscriptions (Apple News+), Cook was hoping to catapult the company into its next phase of growth. Indeed, Apple reported a $50 billion runrate for services in Q4, 2019 almost 20% of gross revenue. Services were a big opportunity for Apple, but so were Cooks challenges. First, the companys profits and valuation heavily depended on the iPhone and other hardware. The COVID-19 pandemic would severely dampen demand in the short run. And in the longer run, Cook pondered whether growing sales of Apple Watch and AirPods could compensate for stagnating sales in other categories. What actions were open to Cook to improve hardware volumes and margins? Second, it might seem obvious that Apple had a built-in customer base for services, but pushing hardware vs. pushing services involved trade-offs. Should Apple be a hardware-first company or a service-first company? Should it enable Apple services on everyones hardware (for example, like Netflix), or tie services to