Timing of Entry: From PDA to Smart Phones

Timing of Entry: From PDA to Smart Phones

Introduction

“Customer preferences and relevant timings for a product's introduction are the factors which offer success to new entrants in the market”

There are different theories regarding the entry of a product or a company into the market with its innovative product. Sometimes being the first mover benefits the company and sometimes it does not. Similar is the case with being the last entrant into the market. In this paper the case of Palm and Apple has been studied. Unlike other PDA companies, Palm got success when it penetrated into the market on the other hand Apple also emerged as one of the most successful product line in smart phones industry despite of being a late mover. The factors that enabled their success were the uniqueness of their innovations, market analysis and preferring customers as top priority.

Discussion

Why did most of the early PDA companies fail, even if they had innovative and sophisticated product designs?

The early PDA companies failed, for the most part, because they did not have enough finance required to wait until the customer's value and learn about functions offered by a PDA. Other than waiting for the customers, these PDA companies also had to wait for the technological development in several areas such as modems, hand writing recognition software, memory power and batter (Johnson, 2006). The final blow to these companies was blown by Microsoft when the entry of WinPad was announced by it. The buyers of PDA, who were already in less number, halted to for the WinPad and stopped ordering the early PDA. Is there anything early PDA companies could have done differently in order to survive?

Though this is a complicated question but there are something for sure which can be learned from the experience of PDA companies. Firstly, the early entrants require much more capital or finance because the revenue base and ROI will remain very less for the long period of time. This proposes that the early PDA companies must have advantaged by looking for joint ventures by bigger firms with more finance. The association formation among early PDA companies, developments of enabling technologies and developers of complements may also have assisted develop convergence in the form PDAs could avail and aid time for development to PDA so they could closely reflect the development of critical compliments and capable technologies. PDA companies ...