CURRENT MARKET CONDITIONS COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS PAPER - ALREADY GRADED A+

Current Market Conditions Competitive Analysis Understanding current market conditions and the competition in the industry is very important when planning to present a new product or service. The market and competition should dictate how you approach your plan moving forward. Competition is basically a rivalry between two firms within the economy; one firm is trying to take away market share from another (Colander, 2013). As the strategic planning group of Apple Inc. for the new iPhone; we will do a competitive market analysis to determine the potential success of the new iPhone. This analysis will focus on one of the primary competitors, Google, and the Android phones. Apple and Google are the leading firms in the smartphone industry, and they accounted for 96.3% of smartphones shipped in 2014 (Spence, 2015). History of Apple and the iPhone Apple Inc. is a hardware and software company best known for their iMac computers and mobile devices. The first iPhone was presented in 2007. The late Steve Jobs gave a keynote presentation on January 9, 2007 where he said he was introducing a wide-screen mobile device with touch controls, a mobile phone, and capabilities as an internet device (Ritchie, 2014). This was groundbreaking for the smartphone industry and what it was today. Apple had already transformed the personal computer industry with the iMac computers and the music industry with the iPods. The introduction of the iPhone was the start of a revolution for smartphones. The initial iPhone had great success but still had some flaws. Ryan Block, former Editorin-Chief of Engadget said, “Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer” (Ritchie, 2014). After the initial market introduction, th