low cost
Levels of Product Differentiation in the Global Mobile
Phones Market
The sixth product level called compliant product is a connecting element between the physical product characteristics and the strategy of the producer company
Stanimir Andonov*
The article discusses the differentiation among the product offers of companies working in the global markets, as well as the strategies which they use and could use in that respect.
The main idea of the paper is that the principle “differentiate or die” (Jack Trout) has died.
Today the global brands don’t strive to differ from their competitors in everything and at any cost. As an example, let’s have a global look at the business of mobile phones. In June 1998 Ericsson, Nokia,
Motorola and Psion established their own International Strategic Alliance, a private independent company called “Symbian”. Symbian Ltd. is an independent, for-profit company whose mission is to establish Symbian OS as the world standard for mobile digital data systems, primarily for use in cellular telecoms. So, the three biggest mobile phone companies at that time and Psion, a mobile PC company, created a new way for competing and differentiating. Today Symbian Ltd. is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. Figure 1 shows the percentage of shares of each shareholding company:
Figure 1 Shareholding companies of Symbian and their percentage of shares
Source: Symbian Ltd. – Company Ownership, http://www.symbian.com/about/ownership.html
Levels of product differentiation
Porter has suggested that most industries contain strategic groups of close competitors – groups of firms within an industry that follow the same strategies or ones that have very similar dimensions. For example, similar strategies might include the targeting of the same market segments, the use of identical or similar technology and the employment of the same specialist distributors.
1
1
Porter, M., “Competitive
Phones Market
The sixth product level called compliant product is a connecting element between the physical product characteristics and the strategy of the producer company
Stanimir Andonov*
The article discusses the differentiation among the product offers of companies working in the global markets, as well as the strategies which they use and could use in that respect.
The main idea of the paper is that the principle “differentiate or die” (Jack Trout) has died.
Today the global brands don’t strive to differ from their competitors in everything and at any cost. As an example, let’s have a global look at the business of mobile phones. In June 1998 Ericsson, Nokia,
Motorola and Psion established their own International Strategic Alliance, a private independent company called “Symbian”. Symbian Ltd. is an independent, for-profit company whose mission is to establish Symbian OS as the world standard for mobile digital data systems, primarily for use in cellular telecoms. So, the three biggest mobile phone companies at that time and Psion, a mobile PC company, created a new way for competing and differentiating. Today Symbian Ltd. is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson. Figure 1 shows the percentage of shares of each shareholding company:
Figure 1 Shareholding companies of Symbian and their percentage of shares
Source: Symbian Ltd. – Company Ownership, http://www.symbian.com/about/ownership.html
Levels of product differentiation
Porter has suggested that most industries contain strategic groups of close competitors – groups of firms within an industry that follow the same strategies or ones that have very similar dimensions. For example, similar strategies might include the targeting of the same market segments, the use of identical or similar technology and the employment of the same specialist distributors.
1
1
Porter, M., “Competitive