Huawei Competitive Advantage

HTC’s competitive position is not sustainable. In fact, the disappointing financial performance in Q1 2012 and the increasingly decreasing operating margin all points to a slower growth. Besides the statistics, HTC also face several imminent threats, such as the popularity of Samsung and Apple’s smartphone offering, the increase in competitors in the smartphone market, the shift in market, from operator push to brand pull, and the ongoing patent war with Apple. However there are also opportunities HTC can take advantage of to keep its competitive position. The opportunities are presented in the high growth rate of Smartphone Market, 61% in 2011, and the lack of well made Android Tablet.

- The Threat of Substitutes is high, since mobile product-life cycles are short. For example, Motorola is currently

See Chapter 1, Exhibit 01: Strategic management consists of the analyses, decisions, and actions an organization undertakes in order to create and sustain competitive advantages:

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).

In order for companies to be successful in a constantly changing environment a strategic management plan will need to be developed which consists of four phases: basic financial planning, forecast planning, externally oriented (strategic) planning, and strategic management.

“We always keep on pace with the demand of our end customers, delight them through continuing maintain a close relationship between manufacturing, ongoing Research and Development as well as working closely with supply chain and outsourcing partners, to provide cost-effective, high-quality Smart phone, wireless devices and software to our customers, internationally. Constant Training and Development program and strong culture practices are held to motivate the employees, also, to ensure infinite innovation and creation come out from them. Most importantly, offer attractive

We have selected Huawei Technologies Company Limited for our MIS project. We selected Huawei Technologies Company Limited because this is a Chinese company .At first we selected Citycell (Telecom Operator), but when we visited City cell we learnt that City-cell is now using Huawei product, and Huawei is a Chinese company. We know about the quality of Chinese product. Most of the Chinese product can not make people happy or satisfied. But we found that Huawei now is one of the top positions in the world. This inspired us about the Huawei.

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.

Nokia has been one of the brands that are in the last 20 years been synonymous with high-quality phones. Till 2007, Nokia had a market share of 80% in the smartphone market, and the main reason for losing ground during the “second coming of the smartphone age” was due to the weak position of Nokia in the “technological system” (or ecosystem).

Samsung electronics has come a long way from being the world’s leader in semiconductors to becoming a top competitor in the mobile handheld industry. Samsung’s dynamic capability frameworks and resources allowed the company to gain competitive advantage and achieve growth in many different markets. Some of these capabilities and resources that led Samsung’s success include; the ability to recognize opportunity through a visionary management team, intense acquisition of technology and learning, product and process innovation, a fluid manufacturing and assembly system and the ability to develop partnerships and joint ventures.

‘Strategic Management’ is a very complex term as many eminent researchers and scholars have had different views and conclusions on strategy. According to White (2004), “Strategic Management involves both systematically developing an idea together with its implications and testing the empirical validity & usefulness of that idea against the real world.” Thus strategy is not only about planning for future but also about confirming the validity of the hypothesis considered and implementing it successfully. Strategy formation may take various forms such as implicit, explicit or emergent. Implicit strategy is a strategy formed by intuitions of an individual. As per implicit strategists, strategic management is about reading the environment

Strategic management can be defined as a bundle of decisions and acts which a manager need to do to achieve better performance and a competitive advantage for their organization. Also, strategic management is a continuous process that evaluates and controls the business and the industries in which an organization is involved. First need to evaluates its competitors and sets goals and strategies to meet all existing and potential competitors; and then reevaluates strategies on a regular basis to determine how it has been implemented and whether it was successful or does it needs replacement. Moreover, strategic Management gives a broader perspective to the employees of an organization and they can better understand how their job

HTC Corporation (HTC) is a Taiwanese operation founded in May 1997 in Taiwan, which is one of the most influential, creative and leading players in global telecommunications with an n increasing influence in the industry’s future (HTC quietly billion, 2012). HTC’s portfolio includes smartphones and tablets powered by the Android and HTC Sense™ operating systems (HTC Annual Report, 2010). Focusing on smartphone market; devoting to innovation and design in the mobile phone industry; and committing to develop exceptional technology and products to cater for the diverse and exceed needs of users are HTC’s current brand strategies. In addition, HTC response to market changes fast and provides

Besides, to succeed its challenge Cisco in this industry, Huawei’s needed to show it pin-point company strategy on its capabilities and core competencies, generic competitive strategy framework and international strategy to against Cisco.

1. While brands differentiate between different Smartphone to a certain extent, smartphone in the same price range have mostly the same function3.