Evolution of firms’ product strategy over the life cycle of technology-based industries: A case study of the global mobel phone industry, 1980 – 2009

This paper adopts industry life cycle approaches to understand better the changing rationales for product strategy development in the worldwide mobile phone industry. Based on both primary and secondary sources, we find that mobile phone manufacturers have radically changed their product strategy over the industry life cycle in response to various factors, such as the intense globalcompetition and the need to respond rapidly to changes in technology and mass consumer preferences. We also find that, when the mobile phone industry entered a stage of shake-out in the 2000s, contrary to the prediction of the classicalproduct–process life cycle model, mobile phone manufacturers focused their strategy not only on process but also on product innovations. The continuous launch of new and advanced product technologies served mainly to stimulate the demand for replacement purchases. We observe this unexpected key role ofproduct innovation to be very strong also in the stage of industry maturity.