The Vertical integration strategy is one of the major considerations that company has to take when developing corporate level strategy. The company has to take the decision …show more content…
It controls all the links in the supply/distribution chain. The hardware & software is Apple’s core competencies. It develops Apps like (Itunes/ICloud) which it sells only through its own retail stores. Apple is a hardware company, a software company, a services company, and a retail company. Most technology companies in the world are vertically integrated in one or two links in the supply/distribution chain, but only Apple has all four entities working in harmony. This makes the competition with Apple very hard. This is one of the reason that Apple products do not get infected with viruses, which has crippled the software industry. In contrast, most other PC, smartphone and tablet vendors make the hardware (Dell, Toshiba, Motorola, Samsung, etc), put someone else’s software on it (Windows and Android), add third party services (Google, carrier services, etc.) and then sell it through someone else’s store.