There are four key components that every business must have to succeed: 1. Products (more products are better up to a point) 2. Sales + Marketing (more sales a

There are four key components that every business must have to succeed: 1. Products (more products are better up to a point) 2. Sales + Marketing (more sales are better) 3. Efficient Distribution (less cost is better) 4. Research + Development (leading to more value and higher prices) The genius of Apple is that they've put together three more or less separate companies into a totally integrated system. Apple USA handles points 2 and 4. Apple Foxconn handles point 1. Apple Global Retail + Online handles point 3. Apple 1.0 originally struggled with distribution since they had to compete with all other manufacturers for shelf space. The return of Jobs led to Apple 2.0 and the creation of their OWN distribution channels. (Note: this only applies to their bigger markets, in the smaller markets it's more efficient for them to NOT have official Apple stores.) Their position in the market is, for the time being, unassailable given that: 1. Their giant stockpile of money and established supply chains gives then unbeatable efficiencies. 2. They have top design/marketing/sales and R&D talent and massive IP protection. 3. They have an ever growing list of retail stores to distribute their products 4. They have some degree of consumer lock-in via their app stores. The only way they can lose, at the moment, is if they stop coming out with innovative products. Other tech companies have retail stores such as Sony. But they are a business/engineering firm with an endless list of products. They've got something like 16 46" TV models alone. Their retail outlets can't possibly house their entire product line, making them extremely inefficient. Japanese companies are also fond of purpose built single-use type devices that are poorly integrated together, rather than generic multi-purpose computing devices like Apple. Sony should really throw away 80% of their product line and keep only the highest selling gadgets, then hire some new marketing and r&d talent to start building better things that people actually want. Otherwise they are toast.