The Porter's Five Forces tool is a simple but powerful tool for understanding where power lies in a business situation. This is useful, because it helps you understand both the strength of your current competitive position, and the strength of a position you're considering moving into.(Articles: MindTools.com)
Six years to the month after Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone, the smartphone industry’s
go-go years are officially over.Cautious commentsfromSamsung Electronicson Fridayunderlined themessage conveyed by the latest quarterly results fromAppleearlier in the week:even as it scales new heights, the smartphone market is entering a phase in which vaultinggrowth rates
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and high profit margins
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will be much harder to come by. (Waters, 2013)The developing world, is riding a wave of cut-price devices, many of them closer in nature tofeature phones than the high-end smartphones that have put Apple and Samsung at the top.(Waters, 2013)
Apple’s shares continued to slip following its announcement of weaker than expected iPhonesales in the final quarter of 2012, with Exxon taking its crown as the world’s most v
aluablecompany. (Waters, 2013)Despite selling 47.8m iPhones
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29 per cent more than in its previous record quarter a year before
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Apple failed to
live up to Wall Street’s high hopes
,leading some analysts to predict theyears of super-charged growth that began with the iPod were behind it. (Waters, 2013