Salient Opportunities and Threats That Exist in Motorolas External Environment - Case Study Example

?A. Describe the salient opportunities and threats that exist in Motorola's external environment. Opportunities for Motorola are great and tremendousin the industry where it belongs. First, its best opportunity is its being the pioneer in its industry. This means having more windows of opportunities to be opened up for its business operation. For instance, Motorola’s merging, acquisition and partnership from the beginning with companies such as Ford Motor Company, General Instrument Corporation and others proves that great windows of opportunities were waiting for Motorola as a pioneering company in its industry. Furthermore, the increasing demand of products and services it offered from the start proves to be a remarkable opportunity in its part. This means that if this has to be applied in the present context, since Motorola has long been established in its industry, the opportunity is that it has the chance to cater the increasing and ever changing market needs. Another opportunity for Motorola is the vast demand for products and services it is in tune with at present. The existence of LG, Apple Incorporated, Nokia and other related companies is a proof that the industry where Motorola belongs is competitive and is a good venue to conduct business that will last for long. Apple Incorporated is known for its highly innovative products. This means that there are more things to be discovered in the industry where Motorola is engaged at present time. This means an opportunity for Motorola to discover and rediscover things on its own and introduce them to the market. The above mentioned opportunities are very important for Motorola. However, there are also corresponding threats that move against it. The first significant threat is a struggling economy. The 2008 economic downturn proved to be a remarkable threat in the case of Motorola. Economic condition is outside the bound of Motorola’s control and it definitely has significant impact on its part. Its financial stability has been quiet affected by this. This resulted to Motorola’s struggling mobile device business which further frustrates its stakeholders at the bottom line. Another significant threat is Motorola’s competitors. The varying strategic moves of Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, LG Electronics, Apple Incorporated and others have tremendously created varying competitive advantage in Motorola’s industry. Each competitor is trying to create their own competitive advantage because they want to be a cut above the rest of the key players in the industry (Porter, 1990; Porter, 1998). For instance, the reason why Nokia was not completely harmed by the 2008 economic downturn was due to its ability to effectively use its strategic acquisitions, partnerships and industry leading in research and development. Apple Incorporated on the other hand is aiming to be the top and leading company of products in their latest innovation. LG anticipates customer needs. Samsung is very aggressive in its expansion into developing markets while enhancing strong brand awareness for its high end products. However, it did not overlook the fact that it needs to significantly manage its mid-to-low range products to cater a wide range of customers. It is important to consider that the competitors of Motorola are significant threats because they know what they need to do in the market and they are certainly good at creating strategies that will push them up to their competitive advantage. B. Describe the company's most prominent strengths and weaknesses. Motorola’s strengths involve its ability to understand fully the entire industry and the changing needs of the market. This is due to the fact that it is the pioneering company in its industry. Thus, it has remarkable ideas that could be turned into profit. It has sufficiently created a name and has long been established compared to its competitors. In this, there is no way that it could not surpass the competition. Thus, what it needs to do now is observed what the competitors are certainly doing why they came up to be a success in the industry. The following things done by Motorola’s competitors are certainly what were lacking in its strategic options and they could be considered as its eventual weaknesses. For example, Nokia is very effective in its use of strategic acquisition and partnerships leading to research and development. Samsung is good at its expansion strategy into developing markets. LG is good at anticipating customer needs and Apple Incorporated is the leading company when it comes to focus differentiation through innovation. If these have to be critically considered, Motorola certainly is lacking the very basic and specific focus it has at present because the very reason why its competitors succeeded in the first place was due to their ability to discover and fill what the market needs. C. Describe the advantages and disadvantages associated with each of Motorola's strategic options. Partnership, merging and acquisition prove to be remarkable on Motorola’s success. The advantage of them is that the company was able to maintain its growth over the years because financially this has contributed to its stability. However, the disadvantage part of it is that Motorola has been so focused on it without even considering the things that were specifically considered by Samsung, LG and Apple Incorporated. For instance, Samsung is very aggressive at its expansion into developing markets while LG was impressive with its anticipation of customers’ needs. These are just some of the things that Motorola overlooked as it was so focused at creating partnership and thinking of its financial stability to compete. Motorola and its alignment of business into operating segments can be considered good at the start as far as restructuring its organization is concerned. This is due to creating a clear path for its entire business operation. However, considering that its competitors are focused on specific strategies just to be able to maintain their market share, Motorola’s move sounds too ineffective in the long run and it does not create too much impact. The same applies to its product portfolio. Apple Incorporated has already created essential move of maintaining its customers and market share through its highly organized product portfolio. Thus, the disadvantage of this in the part of Motorola is the thought that there is nothing new with its strategic moves at all. D. Describe how the corporation's strategy and organizational structure can be designed to solve the company's strategic issues. The design should be simple and everything should be based on customers’ needs and prevailing trend. The design should be based on rediscovering and creating something new based on the prevailing needs and demands of customers. Thus, Motorola’s strategy and organization structure should be designed in a way where there is too much focus on research and development. This is due to the fact that everything in the market or in the industry where it belongs is a matter of rediscovering and creating something new for the customers that will essentially fill their both prevailing conscious and unconscious need (Kotler et al., 1999; Boone & Kurtz, 2006). For instance, it is good that the CEO should be market oriented and research driven individual. E. Explain how Motorola should proceed. Motorola should proceed by studying its competitors’ strategic moves in the first place. It has to understand what they are doing and find out what it has essentially needs to do in order to compete and create its competitive advantage based on prevailing customers’ changing needs. References Boone, L. E., and Kurtz, D. L. (2006). Contemporary Marketing (12th ed.). Ohio: Thompson/Southwestern. Kotler, P., Saunders, J., Armstrong, G., and Wong, V. (1999). Principles of Marketing (2nd European ed.). Cambridge: Prentice Hall. Porter, M. E. (1990). Competitive Strategy. New York: Free Press. Porter, M. E. (1998). Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance. New York: Simon and Schuster. Read More