Key Actors in the Mobile Phone Industry: The Smart Phone Wars

INTRODUCTIONThe key players in the mobile phone industry are mobile phone manufacturers, operating system companies, and carriers. The manufacturers are referred to as mobile phone companies in the paper. We focus on smart phone companies, which use an operating system not unlike a computer. Pioneered in the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) era, these phones have been nearly eclipsed by smart phones. A number of technologies are needed for a smart phone to provide value to users. In addition to the operating system, these technologies include discrete applications or 'apps' downloaded from app stores. The competitive nature of the industry, and requirements of high technology, have given rise to patent wars (Levine, Gupta, & Reuters, 2012).The patent wars are analyzed on 2 levels in this paper. First, these appear as litigation among the mobile phone companies, the most visible of which are Samsung and Apple. On a different level, these are wars between and among the operating system companies- Apple iOS, Google Android, and Microsoft Windows Phone. These three companies have accumulated large troves of patents over the years. Google's acquisition of Motorola, in particular, was seen as acquisition of a rich portfolio of patents held by the latter, a pioneer of mobile phone industry. Given the extant emphasis on firm level analyses such as the resource based view (Das & Teng, 2000) in literature, there is a need for an assessment of the role of patents. Extant research on this industry has covered the antecedents of use of mobile phones (Fillion & Ekionea, 2010) and adoption of mobile TV (Shin & White, 2012).In this paper, we study the role of actors in the mobile phone industry through the lens of ANT. The paper addresses the research question: What are the key actors or actants in the smart phone industry, and how would the smart phone wars, inclusive of patent litigation, affect the industry as regards actor networks in the industry? We analyze historical data on leading mobile phone companies and selected actors in related industries. The article is organized as follows. We start with a background on the industry and actor network theory. This section is followed by analyses of companies and selected vendors. The article concludes with discussion, contributions, limitations and suggestions for future research.INDUSTRY BACKGROUNDThe largest mobile phone companies by volume are Nokia, Samsung, LG, and Motorola. In the feature phone era, 1994 to 2004, Ericsson and Siemens were among the leaders. The change in pecking order represents the rise of smart phones, with new players such as Apple and HTC entering the market. Share of smart phones has increased through the years, increasing from 5% of global sales in 2007 to 36% in the second quarter of current year (Source: Gartner). Nokia, Ericsson, and Siemens have large interests in telecom networks, which leverages their relationships with telecom carriers, also referred to as service providers. Service providers are important in that they serve as a direct channel to customers, particularly in the US market where mobile phones are bundled with phone service. AT&T and Verizon have gained in the US, while Sprint and T-Mobile have been weaker as regards subscribers. Finally, the operating system for smart phones is comprised of 'exclusive' iOS used by Apple, and licensed software such as Android and Windows Phone for other companies. These are provided by Google and Microsoft, respectively, and researched in literature (Barnes, 2002). Microsoft extended its well known Windows operating system to Windows Mobile. It has reached a share of around 5-10% in recent years. The latest version, Windows Phone 8, redesigned to be in step with the desktop Windows 8 software, has attracted interest from Nokia and Samsung. Historically, Symbian was a leading standard promoted by Nokia, until it became an independent consortium. Samsung promoted a new standard, Bada, in a similar strategy. …