4.1 Apple Inc.

- Brief History and Corporate Image

Apple Inc., formerly known as Apple Computer, Inc. is a multinational tech giant and is at the
moment one of the biggest corporations in the world. The company produces electronics, personal
computers, computer software and servers, and also owns retail stores, called Apple Stores, all
around the world. Their main product line consist in smartphones, tablets and personal computers
(Chetaru 2017).

Founded in 1976 by Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne in a garage in California, Apple
was created in order to sell Wozniak’s hand built device, a Personal Computer named ‘Apple 1’.
Although the product was awed and lacked built in Human Interfaces (a keyboard for example), it
was enough to attract the attention of the multimillionaire Mike Markkula (Chetaru 2017). Five
years after the encounter with Markkula, the aws of the initial design of the computer were xed
and the rst Apple computer - the Macintosh - was designed. At that time a big competitor in the
industry was IBM, but Apple managed to set itself apart from it by revolutionising the personal
computer design. The Macintosh “came with its own GUI (Graphical User Interface) and allowed
for the use of a ‘mouse’ ” (Chetaru 2017).

Not long after the launch, Wayne and Wozniak decided to leave the company and Apple was left
facing not only organisational dif culties, but also technical ones. For this reason, Apple changed
its approach towards the products they wanted to release on the market and decided to

“make high-end products with a high price, which they referred to as the High-Right Policy.
This led to some unique products, such as the Macintosh Portable, a huge brick that
nevertheless had most of the functionality of a Macintosh II. Other products include the
PowerBook, the common ancestor of all modern laptop designs and the Newton, a pet project
of John Sculley (The CEO of Apple after the resignation of Mike Markkula) that pioneered
the PDA, and later assisted in creating the tablet.” ( Chetaru 2017)

The High-Right Policy Apple adopted in the 80s proved to be unsustainable for the company, so the
company tried to introduce products that would be more affordable for their computers. This
initiative was unsuccessful though, which gave Microsoft, another computer on the electronics
market, to rise. By that time, Jobs had also left the company, but his absence didn’t last long. He
returned in 1997 and started the restructuring on Apple: the High-Right Policy was abandoned and
the iMac G3 was created( Chetaru 2017).

“It was cheap, visually unique and powerful for its day, a radical departure from the expensive
and serious looking boxes that could barely keep up with Microsoft. The iMac quickly
became an icon of the late 90s and helped Apple escape from its nancial rut.”( Chetaru 2017)

This point in Apple’s history was de ning for the image of the company and for the brand itself.
They adopted an “underdog” image which made their products seem more accessible to a broader
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audience and not only for people in the business industry( Chetaru 2017). That was in important
turning point for Apple in terms of how it approaches the consumer market. Moreover, when it
comes to its products,

“Apple’s primary focus has moved from desktop computing to mobile devices, the iPhone and
iPad quickly becoming vogue and them mainstream. Apple wasn’t the rst to develop a
smartphone (The Blackberry had a sizable portion of the market long before the iPhone) or a
tablet, but pioneered the futuristic 2001: A Space Odyssey look for any future tablets.”
( Chetaru 2017)

Although Apple was confronted with numerous hurdles since it was rst founded in the small
Californian garage, the company withstood the test of time (so far, at least) and became a global
icon for technological development in the electronics and software industry. Ever since it was
established in 1976, Apple has been a crucial player in the consumer electronics market and is
nowadays one of the biggest brands in the world.

4.3 Apple in China

China is world’s biggest smartphone market thus important for Apple. Still, in the past couple of
months, Apple seems to having a hard time on the Chinese market and its revenue has been
decreasing. Since it has entered the Chinese market, Apple has “pro ted by positioning itself as an
aspirational, luxury brand” (Yang 2019). Apple has made great efforts to localise its products to the

Chinese consumer market and to comply to the strict regulations regarding personal data, privacy
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 and security. Despite this fact, the tech giant is in continuous decline in China, as is shown by the
graphic below1.

This downfall might be because, despite the fact that Apple ful ls the condition of being a luxury
item that transmits one’s social status and symbolic capital, it does not ful l the pricing condition,
which is so important for the Chinese consumer. In this case, Apple’s worldwide reputation cannot
keep it a oat in China. If Apple were to have less competition, it would probably do better, but
considering the other tech brands on the market and the volatility of the Chinese consumers, more
competition is equivalent to less business. This can be observed in another graphic2 provided by
Financial Times

Besides pricing and exoticism, there are other factors in uencing Apple’s success in China which
are also related to the Chinese consumer market. One of these factors is the sense of patriotism
Chinese people are raised with and value during their lifetime. This doesn’t refer to Chinese
consumers opting for national brands because they feel like it is their patriotic duty to buy products
made by Chinese brands, but because of the ongoing trade war between China and the US. Due to
these political and economic con icts, the US is building a bad reputation in China. Sadly, this
matter is cannot be controlled by Apple, but it does in uence them in a negative way.

4.2 Apple Localization Strategies - worldwide

1 https://www.ft.com/content/6 71730-0f16-11e9-a3aa-118c761d2745
2https://www.ft.com/content/6 71730-0f16-11e9-a3aa-118c761d2745
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 It is widely known that Apple has a “one size ts all” approach when it comes to its products. The
design of its products is standardised, the range of products is the same for all countries and there is
theoretically no visible localisation. Although this kind of standardisation makes a strong statement
about the brand, it can be interpreted as culturally insensitive and can damage its reputation.
Despite the fact that Apple opts for a “one size ts all” strategy for its products, it shows its cultural
understanding by localising other parts of the business.

First of all, Apple localises its Apple Stores. In this sense Francoise Hovivian explains:

“Apple has stores all around the world. For each of these stores, Apple follows a strict
customer service protocol, which is tailored to each region. That creates insane loyalty and
attachment, because the local staff uses a personalized approach to communicate with
customers.”

By localising elements like architecture, interior design or the surrounding environment for the
culture, Apple manages to create a comfortable space for communication with its clients.
Further, Apple also localises their commerce website. In this sense, as in the case with the Apple
stores, it is important to understand that the company keeps its brand image and the elements of its
corporate identity, and localises for the different cultures based on that. In the case of their website,
the principles of the design, for example the iconic minimalism, is the same for all countries, but the
content is “highly customized in the local language, trans-created, or reviewed by local copywriters.
You nd that same high translation quality in all of Apple user guides and documentation, even
though Apple’s user-friendly design approach makes the use of guides somewhat obsolete”
(Hovivian). This is the case not only for their website but also for their advertisements.

One can notice that Apple chooses to localise very little, but this is mainly due to the fact that Apple
is a culture in itself. Steve Jobs created such a strong image for the brand, that it becomes desirable
for the consumer market without putting any effort into it. This can be observed also through the
fact that Apple is absent from all social media platforms in the sense that it hasn’t opened any
accounts on ant of the platforms.

4.3 Apple Localizing for China - Strategies and Hurdles

Based on the observations made in the former chapters, one can notice that Apple ’s main strategy
when it comes to the global market, thus also China, is globalisation instead of localisation. Or at
least localisation does not concern the products they sell per se. What apple does in terms of
localisation in China is the fast that they are opening more store in the country, each localising the
shopping experience of customers, they are making efforts to show Chinese consumers that they
want to take better care of their needs (for example by opening a data collection center in China),
they are localising the content of their website and of their advertisements, and they are turning to
Chinese online advertising platforms i order to advertise.
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 When it comes to localisation of ads in particular, Apple learned a lot from its past mistakes. After a
translation error in one of their advertisements for Hong Kong, where the promoted slogan for the
iPhone 7, “This is 7”, was falsely translated into Cantonese and sounded like “This is male
genitalia” (Animucka, 2016), the company changed its localisation strategy. Although such mishaps
can seem funny, they are not for the image of a brand and its reputation, especially for a big
company such as Apple.

As mentioned, after this event, Apple changed its localisation strategy for China (and also for other
countries where translation and localisation was poor). They started hiring local advertising
companies to create advertisements. In this sense, the translation component of localisations turned
into transcreation.

Although Apple seems to be failing on the Chinese market, it is not because it failed to localise its
ads. On the other hand, one can say that due to past mistakes, China managed to learn form their
mistakes and adapted to the needs of the consumer Market. In this sense they adopted a very tting
strategy, which is hitting local advertising companies to manage their advertisement campaigns.
Translation was replaced with transcreation. Still, China is having a poor time on the Chinese
electronics market, as was shown earlier. It is important to understand that the reason for tis in not
awed localisation of advertisements, but other geo-political factors and relationships between
countries, that Apple cannot control.
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