IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/mgmchp/978-981-95-0545-6_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Is Apple a Manufacturing Company?

Author

Listed:
  • Xinwei Cao

    (Jiangnan University)

Abstract

This chapter explores whether Apple is a traditional manufacturing company and its impact on the definition of manufacturing. Apple produces hardware like phones and computers, which superficially aligns with manufacturing characteristics. However, its asset-light operating model—mainly outsourcing production, avoiding large-scale fixed asset investment, and focusing on design and R&D—differs significantly from the traditional manufacturing model with high fixed assets and low profit margins. Apple ensures product quality through strict supply chain management, even though production is outsourced. This strategy allows Apple to quickly adapt to market and technological changes, maintain high profit margins, and redefine the traditional manufacturing industry, driving the shift toward technological innovation and efficient management.

Suggested Citation

  • Xinwei Cao, 2025. "Is Apple a Manufacturing Company?," Management for Professionals,, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:mgmchp:978-981-95-0545-6_2
    DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-0545-6_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:mgmchp:978-981-95-0545-6_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.