Part I: Thinking a technological innovation
Apple Inc, is incorporated in 3 January 1977 as a multinational corporation which serves as a manufacturer and designer in the consumer electronics sector. Their focus point is production, marketing and support service of personal computers, computer hardware and software portable mp3 players, portable video players and finally mobile phones with the multimedia function. The company is located in USA, California, Silicon Valley. Today the company has over 200 retail stores all around the world. Retail stores consist of products such as computers, software, iPod music players, iPhone cell phones, third-party accessories, and other consumer electronics such as the …show more content…
A standard digital format such can not be played on iPod. Users should use iTunes software to be able to download songs. So iTunes make encryption for audio files to make it compatible with iPod. Once you purchase an iPod you won’t be able to download illegal music and use it in iPod. This complementary system protects the music sector and illegal actions. In 2006 iTunes had 72% of online music business. iPod is recognized as one of the simplest most elegant music listening devices ever created. By player and proprietary download software system they create customer loyalty. Being the first mover to a market is very important. iPod used this opportunity and eliminate threats to rivalry entries to market. Because Apple started this business long time ago from it’s competitors. When then they entered to the market with complacency their competitors tried to replicability and imitability of their strategy. But as the number of iPod/iTune users continued to grow Apple’s dominance of the legal music industry become irrepressible. Music producers were willing to sign agreements with Apple to let them distribute their music through iTunes. Several firms are trying to catch iTunes. For instance Yahoo! Music and Napster do copy protect for their downloads. But they use a software provided by Microsoft that is incompatible with iPod. So these efforts become useless against iPod monopoly. One of the competitors of iPod is Zune player