SWOT Analysis Threats to Apple Inc

SWOT Analysis: Threats to Apple Inc. There are various threats Apple company faces. One threat is coming from competitors as there is an intense competition prevailing in the world market. The company competes against companies such as Huawei and Samsung as these companies are also recognized to use rapid creativity in their products. iOS platform used by Apple Company faces a strong competition from Android platform as the finding suggests that Android has a market share percentage of 47.45 whereas Apple iOS platform has only 42.59 percent of market share (Bhasin, 2019). The android platform is used by strong competitors such as Lenovo, Samsung, and HTC. The next threat to the company is imitation of products as the designs of the Apple product are imitated by the competitors due to weak regulatory system in some countries and expertise of competitors to copy the features. The customers bargaining power has been improved as Apple loses its unique competitive position in the world market due to copying by competitors. Customers switching cost is also reduced considerably as they believe in other companies’ products. The third threat to the Apple Company is lawsuits as the company faces various lawsuits from companies. One example of a lawsuit between Samsung and Apple reveals that the problem of lawsuits hampers the brand image of the company and thus is found a major threat to the company. The biggest lawsuits, Apple company has faced are an accusation on Apple company to deliberately slow down the phones, lawsuits from Nokia company that Apple settled by paying Nokia certain licensing fee, sue by Chinese companies, and FBI asking company to write a new software to prevent terror attacks (Berman, 2018). These lawsuits against the company reduced its brand image value and hampered long term benefits. Apple Company has come over from these issues but still these lawsuits suggest that Apple Company needs to consider effective strategies to address lawsuits problems. Stringent laws requirements from different countries make the company work more challenging. A threat from president Trump to shift the manufacturing units from other countries to USA causes apple more problems (Graham, 2019). This causes Apple to suffer from reduced margins over its products. The fourth threat to the company is changing economic and demographic conditions. Economic condition of USA and other countries where the company operates are having an issue of poor economic growth and therefore, the company may lose future revenues. Another impact of changing economic and demographic conditions is switching of customers from one product to another product as they do not remain hard loyal to the Apple company products and they may seek a cheaper product with same features. Loss of premium brand is clearly evident by reduction of Apple brand equity. These threats are found in the business of Apple Company. To ward off these threats, it is necessary that Apple Company should continue to invest in research and development activities to introduce new and innovative products and solutions to the customers. This is the greatest way to increase acceptance of its products and services. Another strategy to be used by company to address economic slowdown and changing customers perception is introducing more pocket friendly products and reducing margins over per unit of product. This can ensure that during the lean time, Apple Company provides a good opportunity to the customers to purchase it products. The third strategy to employ is working in partnership with local government to avoid the imitation factor issue as the government may create strong policies to prevent imitation. The fourth strategy recommend to Apple Inc. is enforcing a proper ethical code of conduct for its employees and making policies to comply with the rule and regulations of the local government. These strategies can assist the Apple Inc. to reduce these threats.