2. In the macro environmental level, political, economic, socio-cultural and technological trends have great influences on Apple. Political trends include laws and regulations made to regulate the firms. For example, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) was introduced in 2011. When the online music downloading has great negative effects on recording industry. The PIPA influenced Apple make it successful being the first legal site that allowed music downloads on a pay-per-son basis. (Apple Inc. in 2012, p.8) Also, “The recording industry spent years trying to sue its way back to prosperity, before Apple launched iTunes and proved there's still a market for music ” (Kline, 2014). Not only the political trends affect the way apple run iTunes, but also iTunes changes the whole market of music at the same time.
Economic trends are the economic direction that influences customers’ purchasing ability. During the global economy depression for the past few years that inflation rate and unemployment rate are very high and people has low buying power, it has great influence on most industries. Customers have to lessen their spending on luxury products. “The 8-gigabyte iPhone 3G, which came out last year, now costs $99, instead of $199. When the iPhone debuted two years ago, eager Apple fans had to shell out $499 for a 4-gigabyte version and $599 for 8 gigs”(Apple responds to recession, 2009), it indicates that the economic trends affect Apple’s sales. As a result, it has to lower the price of the least new iPhone in order to make as many profits as they can. Also, “It lowered the price on the ultra-thin MacBook Air to $1,500 from $1,800” (Apple responds to recession, 2009). Socio-cultural trends mainly depend on the beliefs and values in a society. Since customers value portable music players as important inventions, it leads Apple to open iTunes Music Store to satisfy the needs of customers. As it introduced in Apple Inc. in 2012, “ the launch of the iTunes store had a galvanic impact on iPod sales” and iPod sales increased from 78,000 to 304,000 units in one quarter. Technological trends are the changes related to new technology and affect firms to make new innovations. In the recent