CHAPTER CASE 5 presents a firm profitability analysis for Apple and BlackBerry in fiscal year 2012. Although the analysis presented there in allows us to answer the two key questions we set out to accomplish (accurately assess firm performance and compare it to competitors),keep in mind that this is a static analysis. It covers only one fiscal year.
We basically take a snapshot of a moving target. To obtain a more complete picture, managers need to engage in a dynamic analysis, repeating this over a number of years. This will allow managers to identify when and where things went wrong (in the case for BlackBerry) and how to get back on track