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ABSTRACT

Purpose: This paper examines different product innovations and the competitive strategies of three smartphone manufacturers: Samsung, Apple and Huawei.

Design/methodology/approach: The data was collected from annual publications from these companies, including reports of research-development expenses, market shares, shipment volumes, and net incomes, and were used to estimate innovation and competition in the smartphone industry.

Findings: These results show that the stronger smartphone manufacturers' for innovation, the more they were competitive in terms of numbers of customers, net income, and market share.

Practical implications: Expenditure on marketing and research development aimed at inventing and developing innovative concepts builds companies' competitiveness and therefore is imperative for increasing their net profit and market share.

Originality/value: This article benchmarks practical measures of competitiveness and product innovation which can be used to evaluate future business strategies. It also describes smartphone evolution in the context of the innovative culture and competitive strategies implemented by key manufacturers.

Keywords: Competitive strategies, Innovation, Benchmarking, Research and development, Industry

1.INTRODUCTION

Smartphones combine the practicalities of mobile phones and personal computers (Nanda, 2008) and have now become part of users' everyday lives (Castells, 2006). Moreover, their technology is being continuously and rapidly improved as manufacturers innovate in order to maintain their competitive edge (Park et al., 2007). From an industry perspective, manufacturers innovate in order to improve the quality of their products, thus contributing to customer satisfaction and increased sales. Innovation and competitiveness are intertwined and so many industries focus on developing an innovation strategy to maintain a competitive advantage because a strong innovation culture culminates in numerous new ideas, services, or products being released to the marketplace (Moser et al., 2016). Therefore, the cultivation of such a culture can be thought of as vital in any organization aiming to create an advantage against their competitors (Abdmajid, 2007) and furthermore, is a route to increasing creativity, establishing values, and improving overall performance (Szczepańska et al., 2014). Competitiveness gained through strong innovation helps to meet customers' changing demands thus generating profitability and market share. However, true innovation is challenging, and is affected by many factors, including the corporate environment or cultural beliefs that exist within an industry and which guide companies' values, knowledge, imagination, and creativeness. To help understand the potential obstacles manufacturers may face in...

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