The Rising and Fall of Mobile Phone Enterprises: Patent-Based Competitive Advantage Analysis

Abstract

The mobile phone has been one of the most critical technological innovations in the last three decades. However, the pioneer and legendary mobile phone grants no longer hold their competitive advantage. Nowadays, many major mobile phone manufacturers are just newcomers of the past ten or fifteen years. The development of the mobile phone industry is a massive example of revealing the sustainability of competitive advantage and exploring the role of the patented invention in the competitive position of technology products. The current study analyses the rise and fall of mobile phone companies from the perspective of patent analysis. We summarize the key market shareholders of mobile phones between 1990 and 2019 and search the patent database to obtain the number of patented inventions of these mobile phone companies. The study analyses the yearly trend of patented inventions in different technology fields. By correspondence analysis, the study figures out the technological competitive advantage of these mobile phone companies in different periods. We aim to explore the rise and fall of mobile phone companies from the perspective of patented innovation and to realize the role of technology advantage as the roots of competitiveness in the mobile phone industry.