Abstract:
The mobile phone is considered one of the fastest growing technology of our times and the mobile industry has scaled dramatically over the last decades. Traditionally, technological knowledge, know-how and market leadership have always been in the hands of few firms coming from developed countries. During the last years, the industry is living a phase of deep transformations: the introduction of the smartphone has opened a window of opportunity that permitted the rise of many Chinese mobile phone vendors, that are successfully catching-up with the incumbent leaders in China. Through a sectoral system of innovation analysis of the Chinese mobile phone market, the aim of this work is to identify what are the drivers, the window of opportunities and the catch-up pattern followed by these firms that are leading them to fill the technological and market gap and position themselves at the top of market share in China.
