An Industry Analysis Of Smart Phone Industry

The information systems can make the company realize the reasons for the deficiency of competitive advantages in T-Mobile by using the Michael Porter’s (Laudon, 2014, pp. 124) competitive forces model to analyze the T-Mobile, its competitors and the environment.

1. Evaluate HTC’s performance to date. What are its competitive advantages and vulnerabilities? Be sure to elaborate on HTC and its competitors’ positioning on performance and cost.

- The smartphone industry is very capital intensive due to high research and development (R&D) costs and expensive manufacturing facilities. This raises the barrier of entry and makes it difficult for small companies to enter. Many of the firms that compete in this industry have existing long-term contractual relationships with mobile carriers and benefit from their significant brand equity. These companies also have a great deal of knowledge and experience through economies of learning, which gives them a major cost advantage over smaller entrants. New entrants will have difficulty getting carriers to adopt their phones because many carriers are already in profitable deals with the large mobile phone manufacturers.

There are many competing brands of smart phones and Samsung has reported a decline of profits in 2014. Information from GSM arena shows than Samsung released 54 new phone models in 2014 , compared with 24 by HTC , 11 Motorola and 2 by Apple, leading to increased production costs and lack focus on a specific customer segments thereby losing some of its competitive advantage (GSM Arena , 2015).The lack of popularity of its own OS (Tizen ) and dependence on Google’s Android platform makes it vulnerable on google to develop an “ecosystem”. There are component integration issues as well as loss revenue from potential App sales (Strategic Mangement insight , 2015). Negative publicity from litigation due to patents are likely to continue as technology patents are vague and Samsung with is large portfolio is likely to infringe on some of the patents (Tibken, 2014).

Over the mid-year, Apple was offering a little more than half of the worldwide premium cell phones, and Samsung was offering just shy of 25%. By December 2016, those figures had developed to 70% and 17%, separately” (Richardson, 2017).

In the opinion of Baumol and Blinder (2011, p. 235), "monopolistic competition is a market structure characterized by many small firms selling somewhat different products." The authors in this case further note that the output of each entity is small in comparison to the market's aggregate output of competing but closely related products. With that in mind, the mobile phone market exhibits some key characteristics of monopolistic competition. In this market, customers in need of mobile phones are presented with a wide range of options to choose from. For instance, a customer who enters a mobile phone handset shop has the option of purchasing a Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry or even an LG handset. All these products despite being closely related are also largely differentiated. As Tucker (2010, p. 268) notes, "the key feature of

tablets and watches of today the company has always been on the verge of cutting edge technology.

Apple’s iPhone and iPad has gained a large share of the smart phone and computer tablet market.   Mitchell (2011) noted that competitors have released their own versions, and almost overnight, a new technological commodity has become a competing force in the business world. Apple has introduced many innovative features and has redefined the mobile-device and computer tablet landscape forcing the competition to evolve and play catch-up in many cases (DesRosiers, 2010).

Porter 's five forces analysis is a framework for industry analysis and business strategy, consisting of five rules: Threat of new competition, Threat of substitute products or services, Bargaining power of buyers, Bargaining power of suppliers, and Intensity of competitive rivalry. By apply this model to the Apple company, we may know if the competition in this field is vigorous or not, and if Apple is safe in terms of being an attractive industries or not.

The device commonly regarded as the first to realise widespread success in the smartphone market was the Blackberry. However the handset, referred to as the ‘crackberry’ (Middleton, 2007) after the feeling of addiction many users felt towards it, was quickly joined in the market by companies such as Apple and Samsung. The intriguing market seems to be constantly evolving and is still an emerging market subject to multiple market forces. Many economic theories can be applied to this market including Monopolistic Competition, Platform Competition along with Network Effects and Tipping Points. The market has seen the evolution of smartphones from a keyboard based device with closed operating systems into thin, touch

The product that I have selected will be in the telecommunication arena. There are four major companies that compete for exclusivity for marketing purposes over my elected product of Apple product/s. There is one major competitor to my product and that would be Samsung and Sony, however, the smart-phone is no comparison to any other phone in my era to date.

In this following report I will discuss the phone industry and analysed it in great detail. I will analysis the market structure and try and understand why the mobile industry falls to heavily oligopoly structure. I will highlight all the structures, however I will discuss in detail how, for example Vodafone can be incorporated in the porter’s five forces method to show how the mobile industry has devolved over the years and to understand if consumers are driven by the actual technology of the phone but if it driven more by style.

The case study of “Disruptive Innovation” is a studying that concentrated and described an innovation as the affordable price products for people in the entire world to use. This research indicated about certain disruptive innovations such as the laptops, the routers, smartphones or desktop photocopier that are the substitutions for other companies’ commodities. Furthermore, Porter five forces strategy is a structure to examine the level of competition in today’s market and to make an improvement for the business strategy. Likewise, these forces are including: the threat of new entrants, when suppliers have power, when customers have power, the threats of substitutes and intensity of competitive rivalry. Therefore, this report was assigned to analyze Porter’s five forces strategy for applying toward the case of disruptive innovations and demonstrating on how it affects or relates to most of the companies worldwide.

In this paper, we are going to discuss Porter’s “six-forces model” and its effect in industries. With this model, companies can determine the attractiveness and profitability of a market and also determine its competitiveness. Companies need to develop strong corporate strategies in order to structure the six forces to their advantage and strengthen their market position. This model can add advantages or disadvantages to industries in competition depending on the situation. The model has its strengths and weaknesses, which are going to be discussed in depth in this paper. Porter’s “six-forces model” is structured as follows: first we have the horizontal forces which include threat of substitutes, threat of new entrants and competitive rivalry

EV: Generally, the threat of substitutes is low in the smartphone industry as there are not definite products that can readily substitute the smartphone. Consumers rely heavily on Smartphone and would not be able to find a close substitute that has all the function of a mobile phone. Furthermore, Nokia is a long and established company with many loyal customers. These people may continue to stay faithful to Nokia and are hence less resistant to change. Also, the perceived level of product