An Industry Analysis Of The Smart Phone Industry

The sensation of the iPhone is obvious in person; everywhere you go, someone has one of these devices in their possession. With millions of units selling every year, it is no wonder that the device is becoming highly ubiquitous and iconic. Like other Apple products, the iPhone is something that is easily recognized all around the world. The same phone has been selling for over four years now with cosmetic and hardware updates for each year’s new iteration, along with an operating system that is becoming more refined. Since its release in 2007, the iPhone has been a massively successful product for Apple, who has sold more than 100 million units in the iPhone's first four year, including 18.6 million in the first quarter of 2011 (Artman). Other competitors make smartphones that are better than the iPhone in many ways, yet Apple is selling more than ever. Other companies release new phones faster than the yearly refresh of Apple’s iPhones, but the latest isn’t always the greatest. It isn’t the technology that makes the iPhone successful, but rather the cool factor that the device expresses (Mintz).

* The fast shift of the mobile device industry and the fierce competition (especially from Samsung) may force a company out of business in a few years.

New top-end mobile phones such as the Apple Iphone are allowing a new class of mobile to emerge in the world today. Combined with its ease of use, rich design, and well-organized application system through Apple App Store makes the Iphone an appealing platform for development of other smartphones. The Apple IPhone was released on June 29, 2007 by CEO of Apple Steve Jobs (Honan). The IPhone offers many of the innovative features found on competing devices, but it also differs from other smartphones on the market.

In spite of being a branded and reputed company, there is other several companies which are producing Smartphone like Samsung, L.G., and Sony so on. So there is a tough competition among these company to increase their consumer and sales. One of major threat is that other Smartphone have same operating system ( android) but iPhone has its own operating system(IOS) and cost of the android phone are cheap compare to iPhone. Furthermore, Apple biggest competitor Samsung has large number of phone in competitive prices so most of the customer are interested on other phone, as well as there

Apple and Samsung are the two greatest organizations with an industry of the greater part the worldwide cell phone advertise. Consistently, both Apple and Samsung are getting new developments their mobiles, which extraordinarily expands their cell phone deals. Since there is though competition in the present world, Apple created a trend by introducing IPhone to the world, which is one of the best feature smartphone with high security. According to Business Insider, “Though apple is getting more profits and experiencing the first place in the market, then came the competitor Samsung, Samsung introduced the Galaxy S smartphone which made the apple market

Over the last decade, electronic-based companies such as Samsung and Apple have collaborated with cellular-phone carriers, and have studied the average consumer to find endless ways to improve the cellular phone. As a result, the smart phone was born. With their ability to provide users with instant access to communication, entertainment, Internet access, calendar, news, social media, and much more, the smart phone revolutionized and shifted the path of modern technology. In 2006, Apple began this revolution with their release of the iPhone. Being the first proper smart phone, many other companies attempted to mimic the unbeatable features and technology that Apple had included with the iPhone.

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.

On June 29, 2007, Apple Inc. launched sales of the iPhone at Apple and AT&T stores across the country. Many hours earlier, enthusiastic customers lined up outside stores to get the first iPhone in their hands. The iPhone is more than just a breakthrough mobile-phone device. It is a strategy that may expand Apple's sphere of influence. Apple elegantly combined a mobile phone, mp3 player, and personal digital assistant (PDA) on the same machine characterized by its unique, innovative design.

With the iPhone, unlike the iPod, Apple is not creating a new market it is “muscling the mobile market” (BBC). In fact in the UK, more than 80% of the households have already a mobile phone; however the mobile market is changing so the customers are not only buying a mobile phone for its functionality but also for the other features that it can provide such as the design for example. Since, there is an established market; there will be two main types of competition: one against the distributor and another one against the product.

Once again Apple has been the first to the market when it comes to new features such as the touch screen, which has helped to keep its competition at arms length. Like all other Apple products, the smartphone is seen by many consumers in the industry as fashionable and a must have. Also Apple’s online music store support has also been a huge lift to its smartphones, as consumers can download music and thousands of applications.

Smartphone market is fast-moving and very high competitive due to intense competition between two big smartphone producers, Apple and Samsung. At the beginning, Apple dominated this market solely by introducing a new innovative type of smartphone by Steve Jobs that has revolutionized people lifestyle and mobile industry. A few years after launching iPhone, a new fast following competitor, Samsung came into this market, and their sales have outperformed Apple from the year 2011 (According to Chart A1 in Appendix). In term of developing their product, Samsung has created its products by following Apple’s technology since the beginning of producing its smartphone, therefore there are many patent lawsuits between them. Since Steve Job passed away, Apple has continued to develop its core competence, which is an innovation of new type of smartphone that could help them to take back their market share from its rival, Samsung. Nonetheless, the competition between Apple and Samsung will still continue intensively in the future.

With Apple being so far ahead of their competition, the only problem one can foresee in Apple’s future is how long they can sustain such innovation before they plateau. Apple does a phenomenal job at releasing their innovative products before their competition, but if their innovation cannot hold steady, this may lead to changes in demand for their products considerably. This can be seen with their release of the iPhone, the first successful touch screen cellular phone. Although people swarmed to the iPhone when it was first released because of its advanced technology, as the years have passed, other similar designs, including those with android and windows based operating systems, have drawn a considerable portion of the market. A clear representation of Apple’s attempt to regain some of this market can be seen when the iPhone was released to Verizon Wireless’ customers in

Apple Inc. has launched its iPhone in January 2007 (telegraph) as a new product in the market with latest technology and it was the first multi touch smartphone adding the feature of iPod and received an overwhelmed response by selling 270000 units. It had created a new record for a new company like apple, iPhone had laid a stepping stone for the success of Apple and till this time iPhone is the best seller product of Apple Inc. during first quarter of 2016 apple has sold over 74 million iPhones worldwide. (statista, 2016).

In 2007, Jobs invented the iPhone, a user friendly smart phone, which launched the smart phone market as we know it today. Until the emergences of other companies in the smart phone industry Apple monopolized the smart phone market. Although, other competitors are producing smart phones, Apple still continues to be successful when it comes to sales. For instance, Apple’s new iPhone 5S models sold more than 9 million units in their first weekend, and the company has earned praise for

1. The Smartphone industry is a well established market and the threats of a new entrant is low, as technology needed to rival the devices already available is quite advance if they want to differentiate from them