Management of Technology and Innovation - The Wireless Industry in the United States - Assignment Example

Management of Technology and Innovation

#1

The wireless industry in the United States is a world leader of high level investments and networks. It has provided many consumers with different quality value and choices. Being a fast growing industry in the past one decade, the industry has many characteristics. The wireless telecommunication has emerged with a lot of innovations that have yielded many changes globally. The first generation of wireless devices was described as analogue. After the introduction of internet there was increase in demand and the 2G technology was introduced. Next, 3G was introduced which provided services at high quality and speed. The 4G technology is the most recent which provides internet services with greater capacity (Lee, pp. 44).

Competition occurs at every chain level in the wireless industry. Consumer demand is growing daily and the want services that are innovative. The ability to provide better services equals to good profits to the industry players. With advanced technology it is possible for all industries to create good products (Siegel, Burgelman and Seltzer, pp. 7). However, customer satisfaction has to be considered.

The market size has expanded as a result of wireless technology. In the United States, there are approximately 3000 companies operating in this industry. The annual revenue from all companies totals to around $190 billion. Mobile phones are heavily used by the Americans and the number of users is approximately 90% of the population (Lee 46). Due to the diversified market, many changes have occurred since 2005. The launching of Iphone3G IN 2008 has brought tremendous change. The number of cell phone users in American doubled in 2 years since the IPhone was introduced. With enhancement of Android services, Google believes that in future cell phones will be used more.

#2

Android is an operating system for mobile technology. Android Inc. originally developed the OS using Linux Kernel. In order to increase access and build a better innovation platform, Google purchased Android in 2005 (Siegel, Burgelman and Seltzer, pp. 5). After developing the Android, Google gave it to the hardware developers to use it for free. Google created a group called Open Handset Alliance. This is a combination of telecommunication, software and hardware developers. The members of this group are able to make profits by selling mobile phones or applications or services.

The one thing that made Google unique from Apple is the permit to developers to download the Software Kit for free. This enabled manufactures to develop applications for mobile phones which would then be accessible in the Android Market. The Android devices are purchased with Google service such as Gmail and Google Maps which have already been installed. In addition, Android offers a free internet browser called Google Chrome (Chandra, pp. 40). Android has gained the largest market share than all other operating systems due to increased innovations.

There are many Mobile Operating Systems including Android, Iphone6, Windows Phone and Blackberry OS. Yearly, the market of smartphones grew by 13.0% in 2014.According to the Q2 sales report in 2015, Android’s figure of the market share was around 82%, that of Apple was 13% and Windows had about 2 %. The use of the open license is one of the advantages that makes Android dominated the share in the market. It allows manufacturers to modify the OS depending on the devices they make. However, Google may fail to support the OS in future due to the increased modifications that are being made.

#3

Google has based its business model on the consumers using the Google Applications. The target is to get billions of consumers to use the Google services. Google believes that almost every American has a mobile phone and most of the keep the phone at hand reach 24 hours a day. Android devices contained thousands of Google Applications. Hundreds of Android devices are being developed and Google allows manufactures to install the applications. The more the people use Android devices, the more they access the Google Services. For example, the Google Play app has been used by billions of people in Android devices to install antivirus in their smartphones (Rollins, pp. 40). The aim of Google is not to get revenue from Android but to get billions of people worldwide to use the Google services.

According to Google, Android has become a major success over the years. As seen in 2015, Android had the largest market share. The main aim of Google is to increase the Android Market in the future. If Google gets billions of people to use Android, then the company will make major profits. The CEO of Google said the greater success of Android will measured when they achieve the billions of numbers as targeted.

In comparison the iOS, the strength of Android has been the ability to capture many manufactures. Google has partnered with companies such as Samsung and HTC, and allows them to manufactures various models of Android devices in their own desired modifications. However, the strength of Android has been regarded as its weakness too. The freedom that manufactures have from Google has made them develop different devices that are similar. This confuses consumers making them choose other smartphone models.

#4

The effort of Google to expand the company and stay a step ahead of the emerging has involved forming partnerships. Google has formed alliances with other wireless industry operators so as to bring smartphones that are affordable and appealing to the consumers. While this will allow Google to increase the Android Market and increase profits, it will allow the partners to also make profits. The CEO felt that the greatest partnerships occur when all parties benefit when serving their consumers rather than giving restrictions to one party.

The partnerships involved having an open network. This will allow the wires operators to develop different charges to customers based on the various services provided. In the year 2010, Verizon and Google revised the policies of the partnerships. They encouraged all stakeholders to be transparent so that everyone is able to know what the other service provider is up to. The alignment with Google goes only as far as the approach of the Open Handset (Siegel, Burgelman and Seltzer, pp. 5). Some of the stakeholders have not been content and wanted Google to allow them to control everything including network connectivity.

The approach was developed by Google to support the Android source. The goal was to bring the wireless industry developers and operators to work together with Google and be fully aligned. However, today Google is still struggling to support the approach. Globally, not all industry players have joined the alignment. In addition, some stakeholders want to take control and develop different ideas that are not in line with the original goals. Some stakeholders are considering forming their own approach.

#5

In the United States market, the report of 2015 shows that Android devices are largely used than the IPhone devices. While Android achieved a market share of above 80%, that of IPhone was only 13%. Despite Google not being the manufacturer of the smartphones, they have managed to make more profits just by the use of the OS in manufacturing of the mobile devices. However, Apple still remains the greatest makers of devices and software (Lee, pp. 47). They have developed many strategies that are seeing many consumers shifting from use of Android to IPhones.

Apple devices are known for their uniqueness and simplicity to use. While Android is used in multiple devices that are confusing to users, Apple only has the IPhone using its iOS Siegel, (Burgelman and Seltzer, pp. 16). The simplicity of the device and uniqueness of features has captured many customers. Apple is considering to develop an open source just like Android and also to diversify the use of the iOS on other devices apart from smartphones.

The approach of the open source for Android is facing competition from that of the Symbian OS. The Symbian is the OS for Nokia smartphones which are largely used in the world today, and have a great share in the market (Chandra, pp. 51). However, the share is less than the previous years because Android phones are more popular. More so, the competition is expected to be stiff in the future between the two open sources.

#6

The players in the wireless industry include the manufactures of mobile devices and the network developers among others. The market disruptors do not get satisfied with getting a good market share. They are after bringing up new models in order to upgrade their status quo. The Republic Wireless Wi- Fi has managed to be a disruptor for the cellular data since it was introduced. About 75% of the internet traffic is carried by Wi-Fi now (Rollins, pp. 53). However, cellular data usage is still high worldwide and some people still prefer cellular data since Wi-Fi has fewer choices of handsets.

Google is an innovative industry but has sometimes been regarded as a disruptor in the telecom industry. The open source approach encourages transparency, but Google has a wide range of projects some of which are not clear to the partners. Some of these projects have been regarded as disruptors in the businesses of other industry players. The expansion of Google has created opportunities and challenges to the competitors. With more expanded technology, it is hard for competitors to compete with Google. Despite having a good Android Market share both large and small companies want to develop competing OS devices. The IPhone device of Apple is likely to dominate the market in the near future (Siegel, Burgelman and Seltzer, pp. 17). Like the former CEO Steve said that the goal of Apple is to create products that consumers cannot live without. This device may make other smaller market to fail to navigate in the future

Apple and Google continue to be the top most players in the wireless technology. The question remains which of these two will dominate in the future? Competitors like Amazon and Facebook are likely to be disruptors in future.

Work Cited

Chandra, Mohan I. Operating Systems. PHI Learning Private Limited: Delhi, 2013. Print.

Lee, In. Mobile Services Industries, Technologies, and Applications in the Global Economy. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2013. Print.

Rollins, Mark. The Business of Android Apps Development: Making and Marketing Apps That Succeed. New York, N.Y: Apress, 2011. Internet resource.

Siegel, Robert, Robert Burgelman, and Michael Seltzer. "Google And Android In 2015 (C): Looking Towards The Future". Stanford Business. 2015. Web. 15 Apr. 2016.