A Comparative Study of Cellular Phone Industry Policies and Innovation Strategies in East Asian Developing Economies

• Main Authors: Yu-Hsueh Hsu, 徐玉學
• Other Authors: Jin-Li Hu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/26369941181435660472

博士 === 國立交通大學 === 經營管理研究所 === 96 === The production of more and more basic goods and services, even IT product are being transferred from the high-wage economies of the North to the low-wage economies of the South. Organizations are increasingly turning to outsourcing in an attempt to enhance their competitiveness due to globalisation, especially in IT industry. Through outsourcing, manufacturing costs as well as investment in plants and equipments can be reduced. On the other hand, the researcher (Lessard 2003) also indicated that the typically international industry has some characteristics such as economy of scale, comparative advantage, and so on. In the ICT industry, due to globalisation and the trend in world trade, major cellular phone makers, Nokia and Motorola, sell their phones in most of countries with advantage of economies of scale and a firm's comparative advantages. For latecomers, in order to compete with foreign leading companies, they should take advantage such as economy of scale or market niche expect policy protection. Therefore, this paper tries to find out the benchmark and developing models for developing economies. Our research target focuses on the cellular phone industry in East Asian developing economies including China, Korea, and Taiwan. China’s mobile industrial policy has affected the development of its mobile industry as a whole. China focuses on extending domestic venders’ market share by combining the industrial policy and domestic market supply/needs. However, setting up R&D ability is an important issue in the next step for the China’s mobile industry. In Korean model, this paper shows that South Korean firms’ R&D efficiency has generally been superior to European and American competitors in the past years, and their innovative power came from three sources: interaction with operators, getting the information of service and applications from service providers, and internal and external competition. After successful experiences in innovative products for the domestic market, South Korean cellular phone makers use customised design with foreign mobile operators and their foreign R&D centres to localise design and modifications in order to meet foreign market demand. Finally, this paper compares the development modes of major cellular phone and NB/PC manufacturers as two OEM client-oriented industries in Taiwan. Because the cellular phone is a type of consumer product with relatively less standardization, and Taiwan’s cellular phone makers have used different approaches to attract global OEM outsourcing orders in addition to cost down, the experience of these manufacturers as latecomers shows how they have implemented R&D resources more effectively in the face of non-standard products. Due to different industry ecosystems, Taiwan’s cellular phone makers pay more attention on R&D activities in order to attract their OEM clients by developing relatively complete product lines.