Motorola Case Analysis Name ID

Ran T. 5026811 Thein H. 5055120 Zhao J. 5055230 Danai P. 5113103 Motorola, Inc. 1. What salient opportunities and threats exist in Motorola's external environment? Opportunities Motorola can cater the needs of the diverse customer markets by offering entirely individual business segment in the markets. This particular segment will only be dealing in the development of latest technology gadgets and mobile phones by proper research and development. In addition, the firm has highly chance in WiMax technology to develop better smart phones or provide its service to attract customers and increase sales. Moreover, they also have several large customers such as Sprint Nextel, Verizon, China Mobile, AT&T, and America Movil. Threats Motorola Inc. faces certain level of external threats that can impose serious impact on the business operations of the company. The telecom markets in United States are highly competitive in nature with a large number of market players offering wide range of products by many giant competitors: Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Apple, etc. Another level of threat to the company is the economic recession in the United States. The downfall in the US economy has touched all the levels of business and lives of people. It has severely affected the companies operating in the domestic markets and the demand of the customers. Financing crisis might cause the defer purchases from customers, unable to obtain financing. Another possible threat faced by Motorola Inc. is the marketing and promotional activities undertaken by the competitors of the company. Most of these companies are engaged in the aggressive promotional activities that have increased the customer attraction in these market players. The firm also lack of sufficient suppliers and they have limited supplier for some inputs are only provided by single supplier and caused supply shortages.

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Motorola Case Analysis 2. What are the company's most prominent strengths and weaknesses? Strengths Motorola has strong brand name in the telecommunication market. It has well known in developed countries and being established in developing countries as well. It is considered as leader of innovations as it keeps introducing innovative products. It has wide range of products in the market. It is currently operating in three business segments including the mobile device segments, the network mobility segment and the enterprise wise solutions segment respectively. The wireless handset division is said to be the pioneer in the market of cellular phones. The company also was the pioneer in the flip phones with the latest technology until mid-2000s before the launch of android mobile technology system. The Motorola Solutions Inc. offers services related to the wireless handsets, accessories, entertainment services, digital radios, two way radios, and other related services etc. The firm also developed Six Sigma quality improvement process which shows that they are making fewer defects.

Weaknesses Motorola Inc. after incurring heavy losses this declining market trends shows that the customers have now changed preferences towards the mobile technologies like smart phones. This customer shift has impacted the global markets of handsets and the markets Motorola currently caters. Its supply chain management is not very impressive. It is less penetrated it has not introduced a breakthrough product yet. In some of the Motorola products found faults, which made people unhappy from Motorolas products and affects its image as well. Motorolas cellular products are going toward declining in sales and it is suffering as well. In Motorola company there is low employee training and low education about its business. Brand awareness of Motorola is very low which also a reason of its low sales.

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Motorola Case Analysis 3. What are the advantages and disadvantages associated with each of Motorolas strategic options? Strategy 1: Motorola company considers to spin off the mobile devices segment as an independent company.

Advantages : this strategy can provide improved flexibility, more tailored capital structures and increased management focus, as well as more targeted investment opportunities for the shareholders.

Disadvantages : cost more money to set up another independent company. Its not easy to manage and control the new company.

Strategy 2 : To pursue a product upgrade cycle and initiate operational changes, in addition, Motorola is considering reducing its emphasis on the European market,

Advantages : saving a lot cost by the strategy from cutting jobs and reducing the investment in the uncompetitive market.

Disadvantages : losing the opportunities and market shares in the European market. Strategy 3 : Limited the number of operating systems which it supports in the mobile devices segment.

Advantages : the company can focus on the main OS which it supports, not only save cost but also get a good expectation of this action in the future.

Disadvantages : limit the company itself. The company will be exposed to additional risks in terms of no diversification of risk.

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Motorola Case Analysis 4. How can the corporations strategy be designed to solve the companys strategic issues?

First of all, a strategic issue is an unresolved question needing a decision or waiting for some clarifying future event and it is strategic and has major impact on the course and direction of the business. Motorola has several serious strategic issues which should be taken attention by the top management. The major ones are losing market share and declining financial performance. To start with the declining market share, even though Motorolas efforts of restructuring the organization into three operating segments which are Home and Networks Mobility, Enterprise Mobility Solutions, and Mobile Devices in hoping to bring some new perspective of business opportunities and maintain the market share, but they still couldnt get the optimistic result. In concern of this issue, there might be many alternative solutions applicable. Some to be suggested are that, Motorola should firstly try to improve its product. They should come up with various models of smart phones as Motorolas phones are not highly differentiated as Apples iPhone and so its product cycle might be short. It should try to innovate its product and introduce new and improved products to stay competitive and attract the buying interest of customers. Controlling the price is also a key success factor in trying to increase sales, maintain the market share or increasing financial performance. Motorola has too limited suppliers for supporting its mobile components and it could end up the suppliers has more bargaining power on them and thus relatively has higher price for resources they supply than its competitors. This not only has impact on the price of the product but will finally impact on the total sales of the company. So it would be more advantage if Motorola could find more sufficient suppliers and supply cheaper resources and thus can help to contribute better pricing strategy, increasing sales and hopefully improve the companys financial problem. Moreover, to achieve higher sales to help maintain market share, using effective advertising and promotion is also very important. Using word of mouth advertising and social networking have become very effective in increasing the awareness of the product. Motorola can employ the two methods for its advertising. Lastly, improving customer loyalty by knowing their preferences where Motorola can conduct customer surveys frequently and working toward total customer satisfaction as it could help to maintain the old customers and acquire more new customers at the same time.

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Motorola Case Analysis 5. How should Motorola proceed? Recommendations: 1. Motorola has been facing hard times in the global markets due to the changes of customer preferences. Therefore, it should engage in the effective research and development to conduct proper research about the customer preferences in the markets to develop what consumers exactly wants. 2. Keep focusing on smart phones market segments since the analysts believe that social networking phones are expected to be a hit with the 19 to 34 year old age segment and expected to comprise 23 percent of cell phone users by the end of 2012. Moreover, the company has already invested heavily in the WiMax technology. 3. It can outsource its business units. To reduce and help lowering the companys cost. The company can outsource its production where cost reduction and economies of scale can be achieved efficiently. 4. Diversify their business segment. Motorola can do better the current scarcity and can be successful in their business of mobile handsets. If it continues to improve and develop exceptional innovation and technology from now, Motorola can gain its position back. Technology and competitors are the two main factors that have concern with performance of business. Other factor like suppliers too affects it. As a consequence, the company should have wide alternative plan concerning suppliers matter. As it is mention before that the mobile phone industry is one of the stakes contributing substantial economic of world businesses. Mobile industries will reveal a new invention of mobile phones with superior features that has never seen before. With respect to this Motorola needs to has strategy of internet marketing via websites in order to gain significant increase in revenue. Motorola needs to draw attention of the customers by emphasizing and informing about their assorted products and services and rose significantly use of internet as. In addition to this Motorola marketers should pay prior attention towards designing strategy for globalization calls which ensures that comprehensive and prime market area gets covered has been taken hold of. As a result of wide variety of alternative available, consumers gets motivated to swap mobile phones, this makes it dominant to use Internet as a vital advertising device for endorsement is an exceptional marketing strategy. Using Internet presence to trigger interest for the product and/or the service, serves as a true marketing channel, whose function was to make potential users aware and interested in a new mobile application or product brand. Its importance as possibly a brand interface could also be exploited by the industry. As suggested, the wise use of a website could either attract or lose existing and potential.

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