Analyse the Effectiveness of Communications Between Different Firms and the Consumer in the Mobile Devices Industry
Analyse the effectiveness of communications between different firms and the consumer in the mobile devices industry Abstract This essay mainly focuses on discussing effectiveness of communications within the mobile phones industry, and takes Nokia and Apple Inc. ‘s cases as comparable examples. I analyse their effectiveness of communications of firm’s products, marketing and strategies, which effectively make a huge influence on the prosperity of different companies. I also make some personal predictions about the companies.It is, in the mobile devices industry, categorized by several kinds of portable devices, like mobile computers, digital still camera (DSC), digital video camera (DVC), pager, mobile phones, personal navigation device (PND) and tablet computers.
Today, I will only focus on analysing effectiveness of communications in the mobile phones industry. The technology of communication has been developing significantly, ever since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and the first hand-held mobile phone was subsequently invented by Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973 [1].Now mobile phones become increasingly necessary.
I may say nearly everyone has cell phones up to now, which push the mobile phones market changing rapidly. Why this market keeps dynamic and is so competitive? I will discuss the reasons for it. Firstly, manufacturers are extremely enthusiastic to distinguish their products from others. And secondly, technological innovation is developing so fast. That’s why you may easily find that different products have too much plethora of different features to push users rolling out mobile phones.So how do firms communicate better with such rapidly changing market? Take the cases of the Nokia and the Apple Inc.
for example. I will firstly talk about the products and strategies of these two companies. It is clearly that marketing strategies have been fundamental for all the high-technology firms that have managed to survive the technology crash of 2001 and even to thrive after it. One advanced leading marketing specialist for numerous high-tech companies said that “Marketing is everyone’s jobs, marketing is everything, and everything is marketing”.To better understand it, we define the meaning of the term “marketing”, by referring to “determine the needs and wants of the appropriate markets and to be profitably produce the desired product or services by being more efficient than the competition” as its main task, and also the definition of the American Marketing Organization (AMA) “Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals”.With a right price at right place and right time, marketing is devoted to making this kind of product available and acceptable to customers [2].
In the first quarter of 2006, Nokia sold over 15 million MP3 capable mobile phones, which means that Nokia is not only the world’s leading supplier of mobile phones, but also the leading supplier of digital audio players (MP3 players). At the end of the year 2007, Nokia managed to sell almost 440 million mobile phones, which accounted for 40% of all global mobile phones sales [3].Why did Nokia outpace sales of other mobile phones? We all know that in the same age with all this technology available in the communications it is obvious that Nokia has lots of rivals like: Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Siemens, Panasonic, NEG, Sagem and Toplux etc. So what’s the reason Nokia is more successful than others? The first reason is due to their products’ superior features, like lighter, more multi-functional and more original than other firms’ products.
When are other phones as heavy as bricks, Nokia launched the first lightest phone- Mobira Talkman in 1984. Though compared with present phones, Talkman is absolutely clumsily heavy and it was truly a brick but a first step to lightweight, tiny models of today [4]. In June of 2000, Nokia and Real Networks Inc. hook up to develop technology that will deliver audio and video contents to future mobile devices. Afterwards, in 2008, Nokia began a program named “Come With Music” to make its customers download music with no harge, which is a good strategy to attract customers. In the following year, Nokia had released music and social networking phones and Twist phones that can swivel open keypad with a 3mp camera together with web browsing function.
With originality and curiosity, you really feel you can’t help trying the newly released phones, can’t you? Also, Nokia has a good slogan “Connecting People”, “Our goal is to build great mobile products that enable billions of people worldwide to enjoy more of what life has to offer.Our challenge is to achieve this in an increasingly dynamic and competitive environment. ” It communicates well with consumers because it makes consumers feel more facilitated to use Nokia phones. Thirdly, Nokia has several resources and core competencies that can be used to offer best products to final consumers, among them the biggest is knowledge, research & development and production. Their higher investment to research & development is one of success factors [5]. Having analysed Nokia’s reasons accounts for success, how about the case of an iPhone?According to the latest research from Strategy Analysis, Nokia was overtaken by Apple as the world’s biggest smart phone maker in the second quarter, when shipments declined 34 percent from last year to 16.
7m, compared with the 20. 3m iPhones shipped by its US rival in the same period. Apple has been reported previously to become the largest smartphone vendor in terms of revenue and profits. Now it has been four years after the original iPhone released, apple has become the world’s largest smartphone vendor with 18 percent market share.Apple’s increase remained strong as it expanded distribution worldwide, particularly in China and Asia [6].
One quite amusing thing I would like to mention here is when I asked my acquaintances around who use iPhone why they opt this brand, about one third of them told me because it’s manufactured by Apple while others said because iPhone’s distinguished features which I will mention later on. I think the reason why iPhone is successful, is that it has a range of distinguished features. As we know, iPhone has a big smooth screen – multi-touch sensing screen.So it’s quite easy and interesting to only use fingers to control iPhone. Since iPhone is fully compatible with both apple computers and software, it’s also “one-click-sync” ready for computers using Microsoft OS through the iTunes Window version, hence iPhone users are enjoying calendar, contacts, emails, and documents synchronization, and also availability of all sorts of music and video contents, applications through app store where billions of applications can be downloaded both free and charged.
I should not neglect the big advantage that iPhone holders may feel quite easy to download any applications both from the app stores in iPhone and iTunes in their laptops. In that case iPhone is a multitasking mobile device with the ability to satisfy many individual needs in an all-in-one principle [7]. As for iPhone4, you can also enjoy face time and both front and back cameras with 5. 0 megapixels, which are brilliant features that other firms’ products do not have in the same time.Afterwards, in US, pre-orders for purchasing iPhone 4S contract started on Oct 7, 2011 and unlocked (contract-free) devices sales started on Oct 14.
IPhone 4S, as the fifth generation of iPhone, though retains the exterior of iPhone 4, it host a range of improved hardware specifications and software updates compared to previous models. Integrated software and hardware changes support new user interface and functions by Apple. The highlights included voice recognizing and talking assistant called Siri, personal computer independence, cloud-sourced data (iCloud) and an improved camera system with 8. megapixels [8]. With the launch of the pre-order, AT said that the demand for the iPhone 4S was “extraordinary” [9].
Using cutting-edge technology, iPhone, with original and unique features, attracts loads of consumers. IPhone has quite many good features, which just now I mentioned many. Now I will show you Apple’s strategies compared with Nokia’s and briefly with other companies. Firstly, Apple makes the best advantage of their brand; they know people have good comments on Apple’s products. For example, many people who are interested in iPhone have previous Apple experiences.
They follow iPhone because they get accustomed to using Apple’s products like iPod and MacBook etc. , so they tend to continue using Apple’s products. This means to be successful a company needs to be a global brand-Nokia will need be a global brand, though it succeeds in some places like India and Northern Europe very hard to do globally. Secondly, Apple has a powerful team and they create multi-functional iPhone. Jobs hired extremely smart people and they did things that other firms will never touch, like they have three special meetings named:Brainstorm meeting—leave your hang-ups at the door and go crazy in developing various approaches to solving particular problems or enhancing existing designs. This meeting involves free thinking with absolutely no rules.
Production meeting—the absolute opposite of the brainstorm meeting, where the aim is to put structure around the crazy ideas and define the how to, why, and when. They also have meetings with the internal clients to educate the decision-makers on the design directions being explored and influence their perception of what the final product should be.These meetings continue throughout the development of any application. If you have heard stories of Jobs discarding finished concepts at the very last minute, you understand why the team operates in this manner. And they didn’t do market research, what they designed were Jobs and his teams’ perceptions of what they think are cool [10]. Thirdly, they use different sales methods.
For instance, there are many direct stores selling Apple’s products and normally iPhones and others devices are on display. “Touching is believing”, as Apple’s print ads said.In this way, consumers can touch and feel iPhone for real and experience its extensive functions and execute various applications. So people are more likely to enter Apple shops and know more about Apple’s products, which is one of the best ways to advertise and chances are that people may want to own their phones after knowing and experiencing iPhone’s powerful functions. Also people can access Apple stores online, by filling out their personal details. What you need do is just to wait for delivering to you, which is quite convenient to businessmen/businesswomen and other groups of people who don’t want to spend time buying.
In addition, they do some bundling selling. People who want to own iPhone can also sign contracts with service providers like Vodafone, Orange, etc. By signing contract with carriers, you may get free calling minutes and mobile phone at the same time. Also, people may be persuaded to buy after seeing print advertisements such as ads through TV, newspapers, magazines and videos. In the past two decades, Apple has become quite well known for its advertisements, which are designed to reflect a plan of marketing their products to creative individuals [11].All of these work! To sum up, Apple, as a challenger since 2007, had taken a significant proportion of the smart mobile market, which was originally the games of Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and etc.
Many years had witnessed the importance and effectiveness of communications with consumers. Ironically now, Motorola had been a sub-company of Google; Nokia is at the edge of bankruptcy and has no way except of marrying Microsoft. However, I believe there is another watershed, i. e.
the death of Steve Jobs, and possibly the launch of Lumia 800 of Nokia.Things will change, I believe. References: 1] Heeks, Richard (2008). “Meet Marty Cooper – the inventor of the mobile phone”. Source: http://news.
bbc. co. uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/8639590. stm 2] Eric Viardot, “Successful marketing strategy for high-tech firms”. Source from http://books. google.
co. uk/books? hl=en==suLOB1razyUC=fnd=PR11=nokia%27s+marketing+strategies=-oXgfXGhRs=VKm2q0CgD1SsznwXoJTvmPzcCDM#v=onepage=nokia’s%20marketing%20strategies=false 3] Nokia Wikipedia.Available from http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Nokia 4] Melbourne Mobiles (2009). “Nokia Success Story, Mobile Phone Market History”.
Available fromhttp://www. articlesnatch. com/Article/Nokia-Success-Story–Mobile-Phone-Market-History/790822 5] “NOKIA”. Available from http://www. 123HelpMe.
com/view. asp? id=148991 6] “Strategy Analytics (July 29, 2011): Apple Becomes World’s Number One Smartphone Vendor in Q2 2011”. Available from http://www. businesswire. om/news/home/20110728007223/en/Strategy-Analytics-Apple-Worlds-Number-Smartphone-Vendor 7] “Apple’s iPhone Launch Marketing Strategy Analysis”. Available from http://www.
slideshare. net/bkiprin/apples-iphone-launch-marketing-strategy-analysis-2858373 8] Ionescu, Daniel. “IPhone 4S Pre-Orders Begin”. PC World. Retrieved October 7, 2011.
Source from http://www. pcworld. com/article/241372/iphone_4s_preorders_begin. html 9] “AT&T: Initial demand for iPhone 4S ‘extraordinary’ “. Usatoday.
com. 2011-10-08. Retrieved 2011-10-15 10] “You Can’t Innovate Like Apple”. Available from
