His second goal was to boost productivity to the levels of Britain's main competitors, enabling greater prosperity.

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The company differentiates itself from competitors on a number of levels.

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"There's no question that our net debt levels give us a disadvantage to our competitors because of the interest, " said Mulally.

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And Apple managers are obsessive about staying ahead of competitors with better solutions that introduce new technologies, and higher levels of user productivity.

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Although production costs at our Devens facility have steadily decreased, and are now below originally planned levels and lower than most western manufacturers, they are still much higher than those of our low cost competitors in China.

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