PDA Case Study

Many PDA companies simply ran out of money by 1994.

2. Could early PDA companies have done anything differently to survive? Stretching their investments to allow the market to warm up to the new PDA incept and time to resolve technical challenges would have allowed more PDA companies to survive. According to Schilling, the surviving companies included those that specialized in industrial devices.

Palm Computing, entered the market late and produced a streamlined PDA that captured the attention of the market This Is also discusses the following timing of entry opportunities for those who can innovate, respond to feedback from the customer and develop the product in quick cycle: Understand Customer Preferences To have more choices in its timing of entry, a firm needs to be able to develop the innovation early or quickly. A firm with fast-cycle development processes can be both an early entrant, and can quickly refine Its Innovation In response to customer feedback.

In essence, a firm with very fast-cycle development processes can reap both first- and second-mover advantages Can the firm withstand early losses? The first mover bears the bulk of R&D expenses and may endure a significant period without revenues; the earlier a firm enters, the more capital resources it may need. Does the firm have resources to accelerate market acceptance? Firms with significant capital resources can Invest In aggressive marketing and supplier and distributor placement, Increasing the rate of early adoption.

Is the firm’s reputation likely to reduce the uncertainty of customers, suppliers, and distributors? Innovations from well-respected firms may be adopted more rapidly, enabling earlier successful entry. (Schilling, 2008, Cap. 5) 3. Why was Palm successful where so many others had failed? Palm entered the market late.

Many secondary, or late movers, have been more successful than first movers. As a second or late mover, one can benefit from the ability to take advantage of various Investments made by the first mover. Second movers also nave teen advantage AT annalist.

I Nat Is, second movers can learn Trot the mistakes of first movers (business/ marketing as well as technical/ product improvements). Failures or lessons learned are often the best teacher – allowing late movers to take advantage of technical enhancements or customer feedback that may not be available to first movers.

It is evident that if a company understands the customer’s needs and delivers products or services that are of better quality or design than the first mover, the second or late mover company (in this case Palm Computing) will be more successful that the first mover in that market.

Unfortunately, he introduction of smartness in early sass, halted Palm’s sales of Pads. Palm responded with the release of the Tree smartened (Wisped, Palm PDA). 4. Was being late to the smart phone market a disadvantage for Apple? What factors enabled Apple to successfully enter when it did? In 2003, smartness were introduced into the market by competitors such as Monika, Ericson, and Samsung. Within Just 3 years after its introduction, 13+ million smartness had been sold by primarily these large companies.

Being late to the smart phone market was clearly an advantage for Apple. It allowed Apple to perfect its product and develop a unique reduce with features and a design unlike any other smart phone device on the market. This strategic advantage has certainly enabled Apple to grow leaps and bounds above its competitors. 5.

Are there increasing returns in the smart phone market? Is it likely to eventually pick a single operating system as the dominant design?

Sales will continue to grow in the smart phone market as phones continue to evolve to handle more and more features that not only provide calling services, but also computing and intranet services as well. Smart phones have become more off standard for personal and professional use. Dominant Designs become the ‘De factor tankard’ overtime and represents what the majority of the market engineers or designs to as being the standard (Schilling, 2008, peg. 65). For PC’s, Microsoft has been successful in creating the dominant design for operating systems – Windows.