Apple Case Study

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Attitudes to foreign trade and trading blocs.

Since iphone is very popular in the world, of course a large number of Chinese will buy it instead of ZTC, Mi and HuaWei. In this situation, the sales of local mobile phone brands must be affected, so Chinese government ordered the three state-owned wireless carriers to reduce expenses on subsidies and ads for devices such as the iPhone, this reduction in marketing and subsidies could benefit Lenovo, Coolpad and Huawei, which tend to produce cheaper, lower-margin devices to grab market share. (Bloomberg, 2014)

2. Legal

Copyright

Copyright is the legal right to reproduce or publish a product for a certain period of time. If an individual or a firm use a name or way of producing a product, it’s considered as illegal.

According to the official news agency XinHua (2012), apple fined $165,000 by China court for copyright violation, and it’s not the first time Apple has been fined by copyright violation in China. Apple paid $60 million to Chinese firm Pro-view for using the name “ipad” because Pro-view had the right first. (BBC,2012)

Apple forced a lot of copyright issues in the world. In October 2009, Nokia Operation sued Apple for Apple’s infringement of Nokia’s patent relating to wireless technology. And Apple has been a number of patent cases with players like HTC and Samsung.

Since iphone 6 and 6plus haven’t yet get released in China, many Chinese purchased the phones from foreign markets already. And the Chinese customs have seized over 1,000 pieces of iphone from the importers and re-sellers. (Kotaku, 2014)

Employment Law

It has reported that Apple’s Labor problem has become a major news for last three years. The problems are excessive overtime, law wages and dangerous conditions. And there was a BBC undercover reporter filmed Apple workers falling asleep on 12-hour shifts. And they shows that the working environment is smelly and it can’t meet the standard. The poor conditions in Chinese factories were highlighted in 2010 when 14 workers killed themselves at Apple's biggest supplier, Foxconn. ( Bilton, 2014)

Apple’s largest contract manufacturer, Foxconn has acknowledged hiring teenagers as young as 14 in a Chinese factory, in breach of national law. Labour rights activists in China have accused Foxconn and other big employers in China of using student interns as a cheap source of labour for production lines that are finding it more difficult to attract young adult workers to lower paid jobs. (Stan, 2015)

Tax

The tax law affects profit of Apple in China. There are three main taxes that Apple need pay while they are doing business in China. 17% of Value-added-tax, Consumption tax since Iphone is regarded as luxury product and customs duties. And China’s top individual income tax rate is 45%, even workers from Apple can get a nice salary but it still not that enough. (Zhang, 2013)

Consumer Protection

People always check the materials and shelf life of the product before buying food, but it’s very difficult for consumers to check the consists of a piece of iphone, and most of consumers only focus on it’s technical part, they don’t mind whether it’s safety or not. And there were few consumer get injured while using Iphone.

Most of products have a warranty to protect consumers’ right, but apple operating in China cheat or mistreat consumers. Apple gave a one-year warranty as after sale service to Chinese customers while the law is two years in China. （Barboza and Wingfiled, 2013)

3. Technological

Technology’s market becomes wider and Apple has more and more competitors. While technology changes and innovation development is much faster than other business, the competition also gets harder. In order to outdo their competitors, Apple always upgrade their product. Apple spend 1.9 billion on research and development in the first 6 months 2015. (Hughes,2015)

Technology always cost a lot of money during researching, but it will report back on what has been done to the company. For example, Apple installs it’s own brand operating system which increases it’s production costs and the price of their products also increased.

Apple has developed App store, Itunes, imovie and online Apple store for customers to buy Apps, musics, movies and different types of Apple products. Such as, Iphone, Ipad, Iwatch, and Mac-book. In this way, they can decrease costs on the distributions and get more bargaining power of supplier.

However, the technical do help human being to lead a better life and the products of Apple make our life much easier. Consumers can shopping, play games, watch movies and chat with friends by a piece of Iphone. Furthermore, a large number of consumers speculation on stocks instead of go to the offices.

4. Eco-environmental

Consumers can easily find out from Apple website that Apple agreed their products have a significant impact on the environment, but they are looking for better ways to use energy and materials more efficiently in their facilities. And 100% of their U.S operations and date centers run on renewable energy, 87% of their global operations run on renewable energy. (Apple, 2015)

It’s reported that Benzene and n-hexane are chemicals thought to cause cancer and nerve damage, and they both have been used in the final assembly of Apple's iPhones, iPads, iPods, and Mac computers -- until now. Chinese government payed high attention to it, and China Labor Watch petitioned Apple to stop using the two chemicals. Which warmed companies must think about the damages from their products to this world.(Kerr, 2014)

Even they are trying so hard to run their operations on renewable energy, Apple is still affecting our global environment. Chinese green groups have pointed out that Apple has pollution problem in it’s supply chain, and NRDC also mentioned that Apple has not respond directly and nor has it provided a proposal or timetables for solving the issues. (Xie，2015)

From reporting the entire carbon footprint to finding ways to reduce that footprint, Apple takes a comprehensive approach to environmental responsibility. Apple’s commitment to the environment includes properly disposing of electronic equipment at the end of its useful life. It responsibly recycle your computers and displays. On track towards achieving an ambitious goal:

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