Innovation in Mobile Telecommunications Industry: Smartphones - The Iphone experience - Essay Example

Likewise, changes and innovations that span across international shores bring stiffer competitions that drastically stir the global mobile telecommunications arena. From a published report written by Hockenson (2012), the author revealed that the United States has actually been recently toppled from the top level in the global telecommunications market due to speed, price, and cutting edge technology. The source of the problem was pinpointed to lack of competition in the domestic market, severe limited resource, and lack of government support (Hockenson, 2012).

The current study hereby aims to explore innovation theories that are applied in the mobile telecommunications industry, in general. Specifically, the application of these theories would be examined through the introduction and growth of smartphones, particularly focusing on iPhone. As emphasized, “it was really the arrival of the iPhone that forced the industry to change. Rather than controlling the apps and portals market, the industry has become a broadband infrastructure facilitator. This has created a new growth area in the industry which is based more on infrastructure than on apps or services” (Budde, et al.

: Executive Summary, 2012, par. 2). As such, the innovative theories and applications exhibited and manifested by iPhone would be presented in greater depth and detail. 1.1 Innovation: Background The origin or historical background of innovation was discussed in Godin’s (2008) working paper who provided a genealogical history of ‘innovation’ by exploring three hypotheses: “(1) innovation is about novelty (arising from human creativity), as etymology, dictionaries and history suggest; (2) the history of innovation as “creativity” is that of three concepts (and their derivatives): Imitation > Invention > Innovation; and (3) innovation as a break with the past” (Godin, 2008, p. 8). Its historical backdrop has therefore been studied by various scholars since 1890 to contain the abovementioned hypotheses, and summarized as Table 1, below: Source: Godin, 2008 From the table, it could be deduced that innovation as addressing the customers’ or organizations’ needs and problems only emerged in 1983 through the study conducted by Rogers (1983).

It is through these historical evolution that contempory theories and concepts of innovation in contemporary times emerged. 1.2 Definitions Prior to discussing the theories and application of innovation in the mobile telecommunications industry, it is imperative to disclose significant definitions of the term ‘