Apple is the worlds largest publicly traded company as of December 31st 2012, creating computer software, computer hardware mobile technology. It was created in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne to sell the Apple 1 PC kit.
In the following years the business continues to grow with Mac portable released in1989 and the Powerbook in 1991 which in a sense revolutionized and set the foundation for how ergonomic laptops are to this day. During this time apple was struggling to sell to consumers due to the loss of Steve jobs who made apples marketing so successful, in order to get his expertise back apple buy Next, a software company owned by Steve jobs, in 1997 and from this point on apple start to become an increasingly bigger and globally known company as they're now known.
Why would anybody choose to buy from apple?
Apples main reason to success is their marketing strategy as explained in the following clip:
As Sinek explained, the success of apple maybe not due to the innovation of it's product or its standard of quality as if you compare them to today's leading smartphones they're not very different from each-other and apple has been known for a long time that they tend to take old technologies, adapt them to Apple products and call them their own. This tells us that in fact, marketing is most effective when focusing on why they sell instead of what they sell as it leads to the consumer being far more interested due to having a connection with the company, this in turn leads to loyal customers. Apple is a perfect example of loyalty as any product release leads to queues of people camping outside stores keeping their current apple products close and when the store finally opens, staff line up and cheer in their customers in an overly excited atmosphere. 
It could be argued that apple has revolutionized the way we see our gadgets. This started in '98 with the release of the iMac G3 which added some style to the plain beige that the public had seen for years previous with Microsoft PC's. The G3 came in a range of colour allowing people to choose their favorite colour or simply match their room, which in turn made the product have a personal element. The iPod classic was then released in 2001 which instead of focusing on colour and customization, focused on it's interface and ease of use to sell the product with it's scroll wheel and large memory it perfect for people with large amounts of songs that didn't have to be selected by manually skipping through each one unlike many of the lesser selling mp3's at that time. As years passed by many other models of the iPod released with the 2nd Gen.nano keeping the classics intuitive design while adding a personalization element similar to the iMac where users could choose from 6 colours, to the iPod Touch which gave apple an edge in the music player market due to it's touch screen capabilities and app store for gaming, education, utilities to name a few.
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| Smartphone market is an oligopy between Apple & Samsung |
Finally the iPhone's which have continually dominated since 2010 with sales of over 73million since 2008 and in 2012 owning 99% of the industry alongside Samsung while take 73% of all money earned by phone makers due it's mix of the same capabilities as the iPod Touch with a phone and 3G/mobile internet as well. These products built apples reputation up to what we see today and by mixing it's simple, easy to use style and interface and marketing. However with it's huge popularity comes a large number of people that criticize apple for list of reasons from them being overpriced and paying for a label essentially to their innovation isn't what we think but instead just mashing older technologies together and calling it their own. The video below emphasizes on this point: Ethical Consumerism An ethical consumer can be described as someone who buys products that offer as little environmental and social damage as possible through their production process while avoiding businesses with a bad reputation. Ethical products include organic and fair trade foods, energy efficient electrics, recycled goods and renewable energies.
Consumers are becoming more and more ethical over recent years due to more information being released by whistle-blowers which reveals how badly some companies are treating its employees, its suppliers or the environment. Customers therefore move to other brands as they do not wish to fund businesses related to these actions.  |
| neutral colour & simple design portray business image |
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| foxconn is the major producer for Apple products |
In Apples case there have been many past criticisms such as the labour of their supplier, foxconn, who have had 22 employee suicides and laborers having to change task every 7 seconds on average as well as recently 74 underage children found working in its supplier’s factories which could be argued as being due to the high supply and demand of popular products. Another unethical aspect is their damage to the environment, for example in 2007 the board of directors recommended shareholders to vote against stronger environmental policies within the company meaning they wanted the rejection of recycling and didn’t want to eliminate harmful chemicals. In 2011 a Beijing environmental group also criticized Apple over its suppliers dumping pollutants and toxic metals in communities that therefore harms public health. The environmental damages of Apple seem to show they have an ethnocentric attitude that is the belief that their own race is superior to any others as the damage only affects local areas and communities.
However although I researched this information from multiple sources, the information may not be completely accurate as the media have always tended to sensationalize stories on larger businesses so i think these stories need to be taking 'with a pinch of salt'.
Apple are also trying to prove they are returning to the clean and ethical company they once were before the surge in popularity as seen here, showing that in years to come we might not hear of any suicides, child labour or environmental problems appearing out of the business although this would probably mean an even larger increase in prices, but no matter their actions, apple will always have a loyal fan base.