Question

What are the concerns about sustaining competitive advantage with Apple and Google?

Answer 1

Solution -

Apple and Google are large technology giants that have a larger capital base and capture a large market space. The products of these two companies are supplied and used globally. Their brand value is so established in the market that every product or platform services launched by the company has many users and the expectations from the company in terms of quality and performance are always high.

The concerns that both these companies have about a sustainable competitive advantage are as follows -

• Both these companies are knowledge based companies and hence they have a major dependency on their human resources which they prefer to retain for a longer tenure.
• Both these companies deal in patent driven products and platforms. Intellectual property rights is always a concern for such companies.
• The agile start-up age has brought up a concern as small companies spring up to disrupt their market strategies
• Both these companies depend heavily on their comprehensive infrastructure and distribution channels. There are many logistic partnerships on which their competitive advantage is dependent upon. A slight deviation leads to heavy revenue erosion for both these companies.
• Economic and Political dynamics play a very important part for both these companies. Both these giants operate globally and hence have to abide by different political regulations and bear the dynamic economic conditions. The behavior of these companies in the open markets are minutely noticed and analysed and hence political and economic conditions are an uncontrollable concern for these companies.

The above concerns always prove a challenge for their current competitive advantage positions which they have to defend from time to time and in different market conditions.