Apple has an amazingly effective global strategy - consider the world as one market. A good example of this is the iPod, which is the exact same everywhere. Like many companies around the world, Apple has the task of answering what decisions will be made locally or globally and which products will be tested in a particular market or rolled out to others. .
As in any marketing strategy, global marketing has advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage of a global strategy is that it enables a company to leverage economies of scale. When it sells the same product worldwide, it can buy raw manufacturing materials in bulk, potentially saving the company millions of dollars per year. Economies of scale can save companies money in labor, packaging, and marketing material costs, as well. Apple uses efficiency to its advantage when making its products universal; this helps to lower overall costs. Apple strategically deals hard with contractors used to manufacture its products in order to stay competitive with higher profits. .
The life cycle of a product that a company makes has a big factor in the sales of its products. Global strategy also is useful with regard to product life cycle. A company can phase its release of products, introducing older products into newer markets, and saving the launch of a product's most recent version for well-developed markets. For example, Apple could sell its older-model laptops, particularly unsold, leftover stock, to a less-developed market after it launches a new laptop model. The older model may be outdated by American or European consumer standards of operating speed and random access memory, but the strategy is a way to get rid of old stock as long as it is on par with competition in the less-developed market.
One of the latest markets Apple entered with its smartphone was China. The iPhone in China is very interesting, so interesting it is compared to as an "exotic pet ".
