Memorandum
To: Dr. Bruce Bellner
From: Joel Meyer, Daniel Orlando, Raymond Osterhage
Date: February 5th, 2015
Re: Apple Case Analysis
How attractive is the PC industry? Conduct an industry analysis on the PC industry (A) in its early stages, and (B) in its later stages. Comment on how the industry has evolved.
The PC industry has been declining over the years. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was the only option for people who wanted a computing device. As Apple moved into the market and started designing new devices, along with innovation from other companies, the PC industry has shrunk. Early on, the PC industry could be viewed pretty heavily as an oligopoly. There were several main companies that dominated the market, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft. Not much has changed over the years in the industry, though. While there are new companies in the market, it is still very heavily dominated by several big companies. The case even mentions that Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, and Acer accounted for over 50% of worldwide PC shipments in 2011. In order to conduct an industry analysis on the PC industry both at the beginning, and in the later stages, Porter’s Five Forces and the PESTEL framework can be used.

Porter’s Five Forces that can be used to analyze the industry are barriers to entry, supplier power, customer power, threat of substitutes, and rivalry. For the early years of the PC industry, the barriers were relatively high. There were only a few brands that had a lot of brand name power and market share. Creating new technology and building computers would generally require quite a bit of money to do. In Apple’s Case though, the expertise was there, so it required some, but not as much capital as other companies for Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to create their first circuit board, and subsequently, their first computer. The supplier power was