A Cooperative Strategy Analysis of Major Asia-Pacific Smart Phone Brands

Abstract

Over the past decades, researchers were focusing on competitive relationships in industries. However, competitive and cooperative relationships are within the industry simultaneously. Firms produce products depend on not only themselves but also others including suppliers, buyers, complementors, and competitors, etc. This study analyzes the cooperation, idiosyncratic resource, and position advantage of major Asia-Pacific smart phone brands in term of operating system, content provider, mobile operator, retail, and component which constitute the cooperative value-added system of mobile phone industry. This study finds that the smart phone brand plays an integrating role and cooperates with operating system, content provider, mobile operator, retail and component as platform, content-added, customization, promotion, and innovation. The smart phone brand firm can expand the circle of cooperation to cover all the major partners and cooperate with partners comprehensively and multilaterally. This study also provides a cooperative framework which is called the Full Moon Model.