Assignment Mobile Computing

Google: Google’s business model is centered on Internet search engine and advertisement and they clearly dominate it. It provides values to the customers by providing the fastest, inexpensive search engine as well as web based services and software applications. They believe that in-app advertisements are the biggest source of revenue so they put all their emphasis on providing online advertising services to various businesses and not put much emphasis on hardware like Apple.

Apple: The basic foundation of Apple’s business model is that it keeps control of almost every part of its hardware and software. Apple’s iPhones and tablets are strictly regulated in the sense that it allows apps from App store only. Apple’s customer service is excellent and it has a huge loyal customer base.

Facebook: Just like Google, Facebook relies on advertisements in their business model. Facebook platform empowers developers to build applications and web sites that integrate with Facebook to reach its global network of users and to build personalized and social products.

Why is mobile computing so important to these three firms? Evaluate the mobile strategies of each firm. Ans: Mobile computing is extremely important to these firms because it’s the future of Internet technology, which allows you to connect to Internet without being fixed to one place like PC. In this era of fierce competition, all these giants companies must have to be very innovative and need to expand their horizons in the mobile computing to lead the market.

Google: It provides mobile platform ‘Android’ to various smartphone manufacturers free of charge, which is an open platform that allows users to use applications from any source. It allows multiple applications to run at the same time. Apple: Apple smartphones and tablets come with ‘iOS’, which is the closed mobile platform that works only on apple products and it allows only apple apps to work. Some other impressive features are like use of iPhone as a credit card, integration with Facebook allows sharing all iPhone activities over Facebook, iOS 7 provides you an option to reply call later when you can’t take calls immediately.

Facebook: It has introduced a mobile application that replaces smartphone home screen. Facebook home is an interface that runs over android operating system, making it a Facebook phone where you can get all the Facebook content on cover screen, though you can still access other apps on the phone.

What is the significance of search to the success or failure of mobile computing? How have Apple and Facebook attempted to compete with Google? Will their strategies succeed? Ans: I think search is one of the essential elements of the mobile computing. A nice search engine can make life so much easier as everything you need, you can find it in few seconds. Although Apple has introduced Siri and Facebook has Graph search to compete with Google, they are far away from the Google. Google clearly dominates with over 80% usage, among all search engines. Just to demonstrate its dominance, Google has become synonymous with word search.

Which company and business model do you think is most likely to dominate the Internet and why? Ans: I have always been a huge fan of Google, especially for it innovations and expansion into almost every field of Internet. The search giant would clearly dominate the Internet as it has well penetrated into all the three basic markets of mobile computing hardware, software and application stores. For the smartphones, they have tons of applications already in the market and hundreds more in R&D as it’s an open platform that attracts application developers, making it a winner in this battle.

What difference would it make to a business or to an individual consumer if Apple, Google, or Facebook dominated the Internet experience? Explain your answer Ans: From consumer’s point of view, I believe it is always better to have a good competition than having only one leader dominate the market because it gives you the freedom to choose from different products and services. In the absence of competition, monopolist can charge hefty prices as there is no one to control them. So, healthy competition is beneficial for consumers.