Smart wars: strategies and future directions in the smartphone sector

The thesis "Smart Wars: strategies and future directions in the smartphone sector" deals with the evolution of the smartphone sector, starting from the mobile phones concepts back in the 70’s, until the recent wars in the market, with major players like Apple, Samsung and Google; furthermore, in the final chapters, will be analyzed a number of possible competitive scenarios, as new types of products are expected to be launched very soon, and each one of those are able to spread new shocks in the industry.
The study introduces some valuable theoretical tools, such as:
• Industry clockspeed, apt to analyze past events in an "evolutionary" temporal perspective;
• The framework created by Valdani and Arbore, which divides the competitive maneuvers in movement, imitation and position games;
• Network economies and their impact on competition;
• History and effects of open source software in high-tech sectors;
• Patents infringements and subsequent litigation between companies.
Starting from the cell phones integrated into cars, the industry evolved through the application of digital technologies, like GSM; Nokia, the company that has been able to capitalize on the advent of these technologies, then tried to impose its own pace to the competition speed , but it failed to foresee the evolution of the sector, where later triumphed the choice of focusing on customer experience, made by Apple and Google.
These choices have caused a jolt in the market share, not only in the field of mobile telephony, where the "feature phones" have recently been surpassed in terms of sales from smartphones, but also in related sectors, such as the PC one, which is losing ground to products such as tablet and ultrabook.
The thesis also emphasizes the strategic particuliarities of the companies involved, especially in the field of innovation; furthermore, it will mention of how new products will be launched shortly, as an attempt to avoid the hypercompetition, the result of a status quo in the industry, as it is very close.