Research in Motion

Résumé du document

1. What are the dominant economic characteristics of the wireless communications industry? What are the
distinguishing features of the market for smartphones?
2. What is competition like in the wireless phone industry? Which of the fi ve competitive forces is strongest? Which is weakest? What competitive forces seem to have the greatest effect on industry attractiveness?
3. How is the wireless phone industry changing? What are the under lying drivers of change and how might
those driving forces change the industry?
4. What strategic approach has Research in Motion chosen to employ in international markets? Would you
characterize its strategy as a global strategy or a localized multicountry strategy? How has it utilized location to build competitive advantage?
5. How important is it for Research in Motion to increase the size of its pool of software developers? What are the different options for substantially increasing its R&D staff?
6. Which option for increasing the number of software developers should Research in Motion pursue? Explain how your recommended course of action is consistent with Research in Motion's resources, organizational capabilities, and management preferences.

Extraits

[...] Apple is trying to push its products among enterprises and Microsoft is also doing so thanks to strong investments in marketing. The industry is thus changing toward a competitive sector with several different actors What strategic approach has Research in Motion chosen to employ in international markets? Would you characterize its strategy as a global strategy or a localized multicountry strategy? How has it utilized location to build competitive advantage? The strategic approach chosen by RIM was to expand geographically by recruiting worldwide. It expanded to two new locations in Canada and multiples locations in the United States. [...]

[...] Explain how your recommended course of action is consistent with Research in Motion's resources, organizational capabilities, and management preferences. RIM should try and really go global instead of using its localized multi-country strategy in order to benefit from multiple research centers in different parts of the world. This course of action is consistent with RIM resources, capabilities and preferences as it already has customer services operations and marketing offices worldwide. It needs to use this already existing network to develop R&D centers. [...]

[...] Research in Motion 1. What are the dominant economic characteristics of the wireless communications industry? What are the distinguishing features of the market for smartphones? The wireless communications industry expanded exponentially over the last few years. Indeed, the number of wireless subscriber connections worldwide had reached 3 billion by the end of 2007. Asia Pacific alone represented 1,285.5 million mobile telephone users, and 254 million users for the United States. As an example, India was experiencing the fastest growth with a 60% growth rate. [...]