Organisational Strategy and Leadership

Requirement

The assignment requires you to address the following questions/issues: 
How profitable do you think the industry (of your choice) currently is and what are the factors driving that profitability? Also discuss how will these factor change in the future and what will be the effect of these changes on industry profitability? 
 
Essentially this assignment relates to a critical review of external environmental factors. It requires you to assess the structure of an industry of your choice. The unit of analysis is an ‘industry’ rather than an organization. It is important to have a clear understanding of ‘industry’ as a distinct cluster of organizations. It is pertinent to note that boundaries and membership of many industries has changed quite significantly in recent times. Your discussion of industry analysis should be based on real rather than fictitious or aspirational competitors and their hypothetical actions.  

Assessment Item 1 
You may choose an industry that is either domestic or international in its scope and operations. It will be helpful to clearly specify the boundaries of your industry. You may choose to focus on specific or limited aspects of the macro environment (with clearly articulated justification as to why this is desirable) as against considering all elements of the macro environment and their impact on the industry and its profitability.

Solution

Introduction

For this assignment, the Cell phone industry has been selected as the topic to discuss and find the answers to the two questions of this assignment i.e. how profitable the mobile phone industry currently is along with the factors that drive the profitability and how these factors will change in the future and what will be the effect of these changes in the mobile phone industry. 

Cell phones have become a necessity to almost everyone in the contemporary era, its demand is rising day by day and this is the reason why a lot of companies have started manufacturing mobile phones these days. The mobile phone market has been very concentrated ever since the beginning of the information and communication era that started in the 90s. The phase started with Nokia in a slow process until the smartphones were introduced around 2007, the smartphones became even more popular after the introduction of iPhones by the Apple Company. Mobile phones have changed the way of communication and are regarded as the most used communication tool in the present day. We are becoming dependent on mobile phones for our day to day works. The introduction of smartphones has added a new flavor to the mobile phone industry. The cell phone industry is one of the most booming industries of the world. The advancement of technologies have helped a lot in the success of this industry. 
In this paper, we will critically review the external environmental factors that affect the cell phone industry. We will also go through the literature review related to the cell phone industry, and various related dataand finally in the ‘Finding’ sections we will discuss the answers of this assignment whether the cell phone industry is profitable or not and what can be assumed about its future if the profit-driving factors change. 

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External factors affecting the cell phone industry

  • Political factors: The companies in this industry must be up to date with the change of the laws and rules made by the government in the country where it is operating. The companies should be prepared to change and bring change in its operations and workings as per the laws made in various countries of its operations otherwise, it may lead to consequences.

  • Economic factors: This factor deals with the various factors that drive the consumer purchasing power and spending patterns. The choice, preference and the purchasing power of a customer depends upon the place where he is living and his income level. To change as per the change in the social attitude is must for any mobile phone manufacturing company. For instance, Apple cannot expect to sell more number of mobile phones in underdeveloped countries because the income level of people in underdeveloped countries is very low in comparison to the income of the people of the developed countries i.e. the company can’t control money supply.

  • Technological factors: Every mobile phone company looks upon the technological advancement that are brought into by other competitor companies. They need to monitor and track the features and technology in order to move ahead with the competitors and it also helps them in preparing for new and innovative technologies. 
    (Ballon, 2009)

Literature review

The ‘Diffusion of innovations’ approach was identifies by Orlikowski and Iacono in 2001 as a common theme in technological research. This model is used for a diversity of settings and mobile applications including the South Africa’s mobile banking application (Brown et al. 2003), m- commerce in Thailand (Kini and Thanarithiporn, 2004) and the adoption of mobile and pager in urban China (Wei, 2006). Rather than focusing on individual needs and behaviors, various other diffusion studies are econometric that compares the measure of mobile penetration across or within nation. The penetration rate is described by some by using income and geography (Balimoune and Lutz, 2003), only income (Rouvinen, 2006), the quality of institutional environment (Andonova, 2006) or telecom use/socio-cultural attributes (Kamssu 2005). Other identify distinct pattern of the utilization of mobile rather than trying to fit all nations to a single model.
 
A large group of studies emphasizes on the role policy environments play in structuring the availability and affordability of mobile phone services all across the developing nations. It is observed that the mobile carriers worked in an environment like Laissez-faire only in the nation of Somalia where for few weeks no government was operating. In every other country, the respective government play a key role in the allocation of spectrum, shaping the competition and privatizing & liberalizing the existing markets.  Developing world’s cross national assessment find users who treat mobile phones as both a substitute and a complement. (Garbacz and Thompson, 2005, 2007), with the debutant phone user choosing a mobile line instead of a fixed one. The national level penetration and environment variable was used by Hamilton in 2003 to state that completion in mobile service leads to the improvement in landline availability. 

A stochastic model was used by Thompson and Garbacz in 2007 in order to identify a positive effect of mobile phones on productive efficiency in the developing countries. A paper researched by Waverman et al. 2005, for Vodafone called “Africe: the impact of mobile phones” took a wider view reporting that the higher level of mobile penetration results to a higher rate of growth of Gross domestic product especially among the low income developing countries. Few studies integrating the much larger theme of adoption. Many researcher consider mobile as co-constructed phenomena i.e. what are the technologies available in the mobile phones provides by numerous companies and how do people choose to use it (Kumar and Thomas, 2006). When the research illustrates the significance of context and active use, it result to a rich variety of studies ranging from political to economic development to the design. Bell in 2005 argued that the mobile phones are used for everyday uses. Wei and Kolko in 2005 detailed about the cultural factors and the economic constraints that impact the people at large. The basic feature of conversation and talking is provided by the mobile phone companies along with lots of other important and features of everyday use like alarm, radio, conference call etc. The implication of mobile technology and its significance have been looked upon by the previously isolated rural areas of countries like India, Nigeria and the Philippines (Nagaska, 2007).  The practice of leaving intentional missed-calls, or ?beeping‘, (Donner 2007; Sey 2007) is another example of how the process of appropriation by users in the developing world leads to the creation of new‘mobile uses that nevertheless reflect and reinforce existing hierarchies, norms, and social relations. These days various mobile companies offer various talking cards and affordable tariffs. The facility of sending and receiving messages have been given to the users (Donner, 2007). When a user calls someone and if that person does not pick the call, it appears to the screen as “missed call” to make the person know that someone wanted to talk but the phone was not picked up. Mobile phones have intertwined with lots of elements of social life. Some scholars too describe mobile phones as religious and spiritual, practices. 

In the entire literature review, we discussed how the introduction of mobile phones have changed the life of people all across the world and how the various mobile service provider companies are playing a key role in this. With change in time, the design and feature of mobile phones are changing depending upon the need and requirement of the users. The mobile technology has grown a lot and is still growing i.e. it is a never ending process. 

Findings

From the discussion we found that the cell phone industry has become a very successful industry within a very short span of time. The Smart phone have brought a revolution in the mobile industry in absolutely positive way. All the mobile phone manufacturing companies have very tough competition with each other which results to the innovative ideas and technologies in this sector. 

The cell phone industry is highly profitable in the current time because its demand is very high in the market. Every individual wants to have a mobile phone with the latest technologies in it. The increasing competition in this industry has lowered the prices of mobile phones to such an extent that buying a smartphone is not at all a big deal unlike in the early period when cell phones were considered to be as luxury goods and the common man was far away from its reach (Goggin, 2012). It can be said that the profusion of features and applications in the cell phones have been driving the profitability of the cell phone industry. It’s very common to see that companies come up with new technologies/ features in its phones to which people get attracted very easily thus the sale of the particular company increases thereby increasing the profitability. However, the competitors copy the new ideas and use it in their phones thus giving way to other companies to come up with new features. This is an endless process and in the fight between the companies, the people get benefitted the most as they get the latest phones for comparatively lower prices. 

As the cell phone industry is growing day by day by implementing the new and advanced features in the mobile phones, it can be said that the driving factors of profit viz. the features, advanced technologies, designs will also change with the change in time. Whatever is new today will become outdated tomorrow and the progress will go on. However, considering the past, it can be assumed that the future of mobile industry is very bright as the mobile phones have become more than talking device, it has become a need and necessity of everyone and the time is not too far when mobile phones will become mandatory for everyone to carry. New technologies will develop in the coming future and various new things and features will be added to the mobile phones thereby its demand will always rise and so will the profitability of this industry.

Conclusion

We discussed a lot about the importance, structure and key profitable areas of the mobile phone industry. We came to know how the advancement of technologies and the implementation of attracting & useful features have brought a revolution in the cell phone industry. The cell phone industry is growing day by day and becoming one of the most successful industries in the world. In this highly competitive world, every organization in this industry is giving tough competition to the competitors by giving best and latest features in the mobile phones to the customers at an affordable rate. The companies have started concentrating on attracting more number of people rather than concentrating on profit maximization. For instance, recently, the Apple smartphone company lowered the prices of its iPhoneby more than 50% in India in order to capture maximum number of customers and apart from this, it also wanted to give its rivals like Samsung, Xiaomi, htc etc. an extremely tough competition as the market share of Apple iPhones was decreasing day by day and the rival companies were capturing the market very easily by providing the best featured mobile phones at very cheap rates.
The future of mobile industry seems to be very bright and successful because the advancement of technology is a continuous process which can never stop and therefore, the mobile phone manufacturer companies will continuously work on bringing new features as soon as possible thus benefitting the customers. The profitability of the mobile industry is very good due to the high demand of mobile phones by the people. It can be concluded by saying that the changes in the features and technologies related to the mobile phones in the coming future will positively affect this sector. 

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References

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  • Baliamoune-Lutz, Mina. 2003. An analysis of the determinants and effect of ICT diffusion in developing countries. Information Technology for Development 10:151-169.

  • Ballon, P., 2009. Control and Value in Mobile Communications: A political economy of the reconfiguration of business models in the European mobile industry. Available at SSRN 1331439.

  • Donner, Jonathan. 2004. Microentrepreneurs and mobiles: An exploration of the uses of mobile phones by small business owners in Rwanda. Information Technologies and International Development 2 (1):1-21.

  • Garbacz, Christopher, and Herbert G. Thompson. 2005. Universal telecommunication service: A world perspective. Information Economics and Policy 17 (4):495-512.

  • Goggin, G., 2012. Cell phone culture: Mobile technology in everyday life. Routledge.

  • Kamssu, Aurore J. 2005. Global connectivity through wireless network technology: A possible solution for poor countries. International Journal of Mobile Communications 3 (3).

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  • Kolko, Beth E., Emma J. Rose, and Erica J. Johnson. 2007. Communication as information-seeking: The case for mobile social software for developing regions Paper read at 16th international conference on the World Wide Web (WWW), at Banff, Alberta, Canada

  • Kumar, Keval J., and Amos O. Thomas. 2006. Telecommunications and development: The cellular mobile 'revolution' in India and China. Journal of Creative Communications 1 (3):297-309.

  • Nagasaka, Itaru. 2007. Cellphones in the rural Philippines. In The social construction and usage of communication technologies: Asian and European experiences, edited by R. Pertierra. Quezon City: The University of the Philippines Press.

  • Orlikowski, Wanda J, and C Suzanne Iacono. 2001. Research commentary: Desperately seeking "IT" In IT research - a call to theorizing the IT artifact. Information Systems Research 12 (2):121.

  • Rouvinen, Petri. 2006. Diffusion of digital mobile telephony: Are developing countries different? Telecommunications Policy 30 (1):46-63.

  • Waverman, Leonard, MeloriaMeschi, and Melvyn Fuss. 2007. The impact of telecoms on economic growth in developing nations. Moving the Debate Forward: The Vodafone Policy Paper Series #3 2005 [cited November 1 2007]. Available from http://www.vodafone.com/etc/medialib/attachments/cr_downloads.Par.78351.File.tmp/GPP_SIM_pa per_3.pdf.

  • Wei, Carolyn, and Beth Kolko. 2005. Studying mobile phone use in context: Cultural, political, and economic dimensions of mobile phone use. Paper read at International Professional Communication Conference, July 10-13, at Limerick, Ireland.

 

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