Study On Business Model Of Apple Based On Value Network

Apple’s success has attracted wide attention. As a leader in consumer electronic products, Apple’s competitive advantage is not only reflected in the entrepreneurship of Steve Jobs, industry integration, product innovation and so on, the more important is its unique business model.As the structure of stakeholder transaction, the value creation of business model not only depends on the enterprise itself, but also associates with all relevant stakeholders. Apple’s business model has broken the traditional value chain, and its business model is based on value network. The existing research literature on Apple’s competitive advantage based on the resource ability theory and industry structure theory cannot fully reveal the source of Apple’s competitive advantage. Business model based on value network can combine enterprise internal resources and external environment, which creates Apple’s unique competitiveness. This paper puts forward Apple’s business model structure based on value network, studies the composition of Apple’s external value network and internal value network, analyzes Apple’s external value network structure and its characteristics, discusses Apple’s internal value network from value proposition, value support, value realization and value retention, summarizes the significance and implications of Apple’s business model innovation based on value network.This paper’s research suggests that Apple’s product-centric business model based on value network is the source of Apple’s competitive advantage. Apple firstly builds a competitive internal value network, on this basis, it puts perfect products as the core, attracts a large number of partners to actively participate in the building of Apple’s external value network, integrates partners who have complementary resources and capabilities together to create value together, and provide customers with experiential consumer platform that contains perfects products and rich content services, and thus creates a new business model. Its product first-mover advantage has established a closed ecosystem, and the high degree of integration and customization of Apple’s products forms adhesion of the product platform. The closed ecosystem and the adhesion of product platform make Apple form the effective profit protection mechanism, which forms the basis of Apple’s sustainable competitive advantage.The main innovation of this paper lies in studying Apple’s business model from a new perspective of value network, reveals Apple’s value network from the external and internal, summarizes Apple’s business model innovation and the implications of Apple’s business model innovation for Chinese enterprises, which provides valuable reference for Chinese enterprises to conduct business model innovation practices.