Apple's financial success: The precariousness of power exercised in global value chains

The topic of this paper is the Apple Inc business model and how, in a financialized world, the success of this business model is represented by what we term financial ‘point values’. Our argument is that there is a tendency to promote specific point valuation multiples as measures of success, but these values, by their nature, do not reveal the contingent and variable nature of the power relations exercised in and along global supply chains. Firms such as Apple exploit their resources and capabilities to ‘create value’ but also exercise power to recalibrate relationships with suppliers in the value chain to secure ‘value capture’ for financial transformation. Value capture is an active ingredient that can help inform our understanding of the fragility of the Apple business model value proposition and frame a critical argument regarding the precarious nature and sustainability of Apple's substantial profit margins.     

The Apple business model: Crowdsourcing mobile applications

Much to Apple's chagrin, the ‘suicide express’ at the Foxconn manufacturing complex in China has been widely reported. While outsourcing the manufacture of technology components is neither new nor unique, the external sourcing of digital content is integral to the success of Apple's business model. In 2008, Apple opened up their platform to third-party IT developers, leveraging their expertise for the supply of applications. Apple's rapid dominance of the mobile market led to the emergence of a business model that weaves together Internet-enabled mobile devices with digital content, brought together within a closed proprietary platform or ecosystem. Applying a Global Production Network analysis, this paper reports on fieldwork among Apple mobile application developers in Sweden, the UK, and the US. The analysis shows that although some developers experience success, financial returns remain elusive and many encounter intense pressure to generate and market new products in a competitive and saturated market. Crowdsourcing allows Apple to effectively source development to a global base of software developers, capitalizing on the mass production of digital products while simultaneously managing to sidestep the incurred costs and responsibilities associated with directly employing a high-tech workforce.     

Accounting for the Apple Inc business model: Corporate value capture and dysfunctional economic and social consequences

In this special issue the authors account for the Apple Inc innovative business model in terms of its capacity to create and capture value from its global supply chain. The authors argue that there are a number of reasons why the Apple business model may not be sustainable and more broadly explore the dysfunctional social and economic aspects of corporate behavior that seeks to fragment and elongate global value chains to capture value within the firms financial reporting boundary whilst displacing cost and risk.     

Apple's changing business model: What should the world's richest company do with all those profits?

Apple Inc. stands out as the world's most famous, and currently richest, company. To the general public, Apple is known for three things: its intriguing CEO Steve Jobs, who has achieved iconic status in death as in life; its amazing iOS products, especially the iPhone and the iPad, and their predecessor the iPod, which have literally placed sophisticated technology in the hands of the masses; and its stratospheric stock price, which even when in March 2013 it had dropped to 63 percent of its September 2012 peak, gave Apple the highest market capitalization of any company in the world. As a result of its phenomenal success, at the end of fiscal 2012 Apple had $121 billion in liquid assets. In April 2013 the company committed to distributing as much as $100 billion to shareholders in stock buybacks and cash dividends by the end of calendar 2015. By employing the theory of innovative enterprise to analyze how over the course of its 37-year history Apple became so profitable, we argue that there is no economic justification from a risk-reward perspective for this distribution to Apple's shareholders. Taxpayers and workers have superior claims on these profits. In analyzing by whom value is created as a basis for considering for whom value should be extracted, we raise the implications of Apple's changing business model for the future of innovation at this heretofore exceptional American company and even in the U.S. economy as a whole.     

B2B电商平台供应链金融典型模式及其比较分析

在对电商平台供应链金融模式进行总结的基础上,聚焦B2B电商平台的供应链金融业务,对9家典型B2B电商平台开展的供应链金融业务及其产品进行了描述,并从平台涉及领域、供应链金融开始时间、金融产品模式等六个方面进行了对比分析。结果表明:B2B电商平台往往是采取与金融机构合作的方式获取供应链金融资金需求;开展大宗物资交易的B2B电商平台开展供应链金融业务相对较早;与传统线下供应链金融业务相比,B2B电商平台供应链金融在信用融资和订单融资方面更有优势;B2B电商平台供应链金融产品可以根据不同平台以及买卖双方的特点进行创新设计,最后为电商供应链融资业务的发展提出建议。     

Financialization across the Pacific: Manufacturing cost ratios,supply chains and power

This article argues that thirty years ago favourable cost conditions helped build productive power in Asia, whereas now US financial power drives and benefits from low labour costs in China, using the very different supply chain positions of Apple Inc. and Foxconn International Holdings (FIH) as examples. In the first section, the authors bring together the literatures on financialization and global supply chains to contextualise the pressures and outcomes discussed. A temporal dimension is added in section 2, using macro evidence on labour costs to compare new entrants into the industrial world order since the 1970s. The article then presents company illustrations in sections 3 and 4, deconstructing Apple's financial success and its trans-Pacific relations with its handset supplier FIH. The article concludes by observing that the rise of the post-national corporate player changes the alignment between large corporate interests and the US economy where Apple hoards its cash surplus and the success for the stockholders does not align with the broader needs of the US economy and society.     

金融科技助推供应链金融风险控制研究

传统信贷业务中,商业银行通常将风险评估重点放在企业的评级和财务状况上。在供应链金融业务中,授信因交易而存在,资金流、信息流、物流是评判业务可行性的基础。供应链金融最大的风险点在于不完整信息下的信用风险和不对称信息下的道德风险。防范化解供应链金融风险,除了运用常规风险管理手段,更要积极引用大数据、物联网、区块链、人工智能等金融科技手段来提升供应链金融的风险管理能力。本文通过分析供应链金融面临的风险,以基于B2B平台的供应链金融模式为例,运用Logistic回归方法构建中小企业信用评估模型,对供应链金融风控体系建设进行实证研究,并围绕金融科技提升商业银行供应链金融风控能力提出建议。     

La cadena de suministro del mezcal del estado de Zacatecas Situación actual y perspectivas de desarrollo

Mezcal is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from the agave plant native from Zacatecas, Mexico, one of the seven States in Mexico which owns mezcal designation of origin (DO) and it is the second agave producer in the country; therefore; the agave-mezcal industry is a strategic activity in the State. Since several agents interact in a non-articulated way in the industry, the main objectives of this study are: 1) to get reliable information of the whole process, and 2) to develop a supply chain tactical planning model of this industry. Initially, an preliminary research identifies basic information related to business processes, using structured primary data: interviews and surveys. Taking into account the gathered basic information, the tactical planning model of the supply chain is developed. This analysis considers the relationships among small-to medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The results of this study allowed obtaining information related to the industry; the identification of specific opportunity areas in the agents' interaction, and the evaluation of the potential and constraints that the Zacatecas' agave-mezcal supply chain has.     

Toward an ontology‐driven blockchain design for supply‐chain provenance

An interesting research problem in our age of Big Data is that of determining provenance. Granular evaluation of provenance of physical goods (e.g., tracking ingredients of a pharmaceutical or demonstrating authenticity of luxury goods) has often not been possible with today's items that are produced and transported in complex, interorganizational, often internationally spanning supply chains. Recent adoptions of the Internet of Things and blockchain technologies give promise at better supply‐chain provenance. We are particularly interested in the blockchain, as many favored use cases of blockchain are for provenance tracking. We are also interested in applying ontologies, as there has been some work done on knowledge provenance, traceability, and food provenance using ontologies. In this paper, we make a case for why ontologies can contribute to blockchain design. To support this case, we analyze a traceability ontology and translate some of its representations to smart contracts that execute a provenance trace and enforce traceability constraints on the Ethereum blockchain platform.     

Income Redistribution,Consumer Credit,and Keeping Up with the Riches

In this study, we set up a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with upward looking consumption comparison and show that consumption externalities are an important driver of consumer credit dynamics. Our model economy is populated by two different household types. Investors, who hold the economy's capital stock, own the firms and supply credit, and workers, who supply labor and demand credit to finance consumption. Furthermore, workers condition their consumption choice on the investors' level of consumption. We estimate the model and find a significant keeping up mechanism by matching business cycle statistics. In reproducing credit moments, our proposed model significantly outperforms a model version in which we abstract from consumption externalities.