London College Of BusinessSubject : Assignment : CM704 Business and Marketing Strategy Group Assignment Re Submission of individual part Subimtted by : College ID : Submitted to : Class : Group : Module : Session : Submission Date : Word Count : Muhammad Ahsan Riaz 130479MAR E. Wanki & Dr. Wang Hui MBA (Finance) A CM 704 April 2011-April 2012 08th Dec 2011 1217 it’s all depends on the organisation of the business entity. department.taking the advantage of the research already done in that particular field. the SBU’s are divided in to four categories. critically analyse its present position. For this purpose. The Stars. It could be a separate division. 2) Adopt new development strategies for adding new product lines. relevant market share and also take in to consideration the stage of the product life cycle our products are in. . can generate its own cash independent of other business units and an organization can make planning’s for this SBU independent of other business segments. The Cash Cows. having greater market share than their counterparts and there are greater opportunities in the market for growth. product line. There are several methods which could be used for portfolio planning but BCG Consulting Group or BCG matrix is the one which is being used most often. Stars These are the products or Businesses’ that are outperforming their rivals in the market. There are often smaller segments. an organization must take following in to account. According to BCG matrix. Our organization will lose market share and this product will become Cash Cow. 1) First of all.Normally. divesting any of the current ones on the basis of poor performance or loss of market share or if the product is on declining stage of product life cycle. For this purpose an organization first of all has to categorize its Strategic Business Units. products and business lines which combined together to form a larger business unit.these products needs lots of investment in research and development and innovation to stay at market leaders position but eventually other competitor’s will enter in to the market . the Dogs & finally The Dogs. The business portfolio will perform best if the organisation will stress on its strengths and avoid its weaknesses and exploit the striking opportunities that will bring maximum benefit for the organization both financially and in the form of increased market share. they should allocate resources among different small business units.Q 3) BCG Matrix Apple Inc Larger organizations often find it hard to decide in which proportion. separate Brand name or separate geographical location. An SBU in an organization can be defined as the smallest business unit that has a distinct operations and objectives. XServe RAID .Power Mac G4 Cube . So. iMac .iTunes Music Store.QuickTime .The Apple decal. its closest rival is Napster with . there are lower or no growth opportunities even if we decide to invest further. so organization is neither making any lose nor making profit. Apple is not the market leader but has 28% market share where manufacturer of Blackberry RIM has 41% market share.First-generation Power Macs . in which product they will invest and which ones they will divest. which are essential for the investment in Stars. Cash Cow I have placed Apples iTunes digital downloading software as a cash cow.iTunes . Organisations need Stars which will eventually later become Cash Cows and will be critical for future cash flow generations for the organization.Mac II . Question Marks Question Marks are the products in which our organization has relatively lower market share but there are lots of growth opportunities in the market. Both iPhone and iPods are very critical for Apples success in the long term.Apple enjoys 60% more market share in iPod than its closest rival Scandisk in the market.System 7.Fifth-generation iPod . Stars I have categorized iPhone and iPod in Star category which means they both need further investment in product development and there are greater opportunities available in the market for growth. Macintosh 128k. Dogs Dogs are the products in which the organization has lower market share than its competitors and the market in which it operates is not very attractive as well. AirPort .Hypercard . Apple is a challenger for RIM with significant proportion of relative market share.AppleScript .Mac mini . This is a very tricky decision to be made by the management at organization as due to scare resources and financial constraints they can’t invest in all positive NPV investments so they will have to make priorities.LaserWriter.Newton .Apple II .MacWrite and MacPaint. In iPhone’s. Titanium PowerBook G4. Apple clearly is a market leader in this market segment with 82% market share. it will not be a sensible decision to invest further in these products by business point of view.Power Mac G5. The list of top 30 successful Apple products is as under. Apple is a very successful company and renowned worldwide for its product innovation and heavy investment in its research and development department due to which apple is a pioneer and market leader in its field. This reveals that if we can invest further in research and development and product innovation we can capture further market share.PowerBook 100 series . So.20th Anniversary Mac. In our case the organisation we are working on is Apple Inc.Cash Cows These are the products in which our organization normally enjoys market leader’s position having maximum market share but there are lesser or no further opportunities for growth. Organizations need only to managed properly to generate continues stream of revenues.Mac OS X .iBook .iMac Core Duo . Final Cut Pro. These products have reached maturity stage of their product life cycle and we don’t need to invest further in to these products. iPod . So. Latest figures reveal that the growth rate for iPods is currently 28% and for those of iPhone’s its 48%. These products may generate sufficient cash to reach neither break-even point.It has a very strong portfolio of highly successful products and business lines which are at different stages of their respective product life cycle. So it will be quite hard to apply BCG matrix on apple due to such large number of successful products.iLife . The huge difference of 79% shows that Apple has outplayed all its counterparts in this market segment. so divesting from computers might affect adversely for its other products.only 3% relative market share. Apple enjoys 31. Dogs Apples Macs could be considered underdog category as Apple is not a market leader in this market segment and does not enjoys majority percentage of relevant market share and there are few chances of capturing further market share even further investment in product development is done. .09% relative market share while for Mac Software the growth rate is 32% and relative market share is 0. Question Mark I have placed Mac Os X’s and Mac Software in Question mark category. So any decision of such kind should be made after careful thinking and keeping these factors in to account. Growth rate for iTunes is 7. there is a possibility to capture further market share if provided with funds for product development and innovation.These lower percentages may suggest that Apple should pay attention on development of its other products and should divest from Computer market completely.Apple has a comparatively lower market share in both market segments and there are further opportunities available as the growth rate is quite high.01%. otherwise they will fall back in to Dog catogry. But market synergies exist between Apples computer business and its other product lines.7% market share for Mac Os X and 0. 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