Topical case study report Who will stop Apple's dominance of the music Essay

Topical case study report Who will stop Apple's dominance of the music delivery business - Essay Example There are some elements of surprise with each of the Apple product. This element of surprise has been the primary strategy for Apple. Whenever Apple launches a new product, million dollars are generated in free internet publicity. This has been an important part of Apple’s carefully designed strategy in order to gain customer attention (OGrady, 2008). Today some of the major products of Apple include Macintosh computer, Apple TV, iPod, iPhone, iTunes etc. In April, 2003 Apple first launched its online music store, iTunes. The music store was launched with 200,000 tracks. There are exclusive tracks 20 special artists which include U2 and Bob Dylan (Borland, J. April 28, 2003). Apple, with the launching of this new online music store, has made its position stronger than it was ever before in the digital music world. Now, the question is that could this dominance of Apple be stopped. This paper includes an in depth strategic analysis of Apple as well as of iTunes. Strategic tools that are used are Porter’s five forces model, PESTLE analysis, and Porter’s generic model. The paper also includes a critical analysis of Apple’s competitor analysis, its current market share and position. Finally the paper ends with conclusion and some specific recommendation. iTunes Music Store was launched in United kingdom in mid of 2004. Almost 800,000 songs were sold in the first week only. With this huge figure Apple surpassed OD2 which is the main competitor of the company in the first few days. As far as features were concerned UK stores were almost identical to the stores in US. Competitiveness of online music stores market could be better analyzed with the help of Porter’s Five Forces model. Any industry’s structure could be analyzed by analyzing its competitive forces. According to Michael Porter there are five competitive forces that play an important role in shaping the structure of any