Question

Read the case study "Google, Apple, and Facebook Struggle for Your Internet Experience" on page 255. Then discuss the advantages and disadvantages for each company.

BUSINESS PROBLEM-SOLVING CASE Google, Apple, and Facebook Battle for Your Internet Experience Apple has a legacy of innovation on its side. In Three Internet titans Google, Apple, and 2011, it unveiled the potentially market disrupting Facebook are in an epic struggle to dominate your Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Internet experience, and caught in the crossfire Interface), a combination search/navigation tool are search, music, video, and other media, along and personal assistant. Siri promises personalized with the devices you use for all these things, cloud recommendations that improve as it gains user computing, and a host of other issues that are likely familiarity all from a verbal command. Customer central to your life. The prize is a projected $400 billion retail e-commerce marketplace in which the response has been mixed. Google countered by major access device will be a smartphone or tablet quickly releasing its own Al tool, Google Now. computer. Google quickly attracted attention also for its Mobile devices with advanced functionality and unrivaled ability to return relevant search results. ubiquitous Internet access are rapidly overtaking It continues to be the world's leading search engine, traditional desktop machines as the most popular accounting for three-quarters of the world's web form of computing. Today, people spend more than searches. About 90 percent of Google's revenue half their time online using mobile devices that take comes from ads, most of that on its search engine advantage of a growing cloud of computing capacity. Google dominates online advertising It's no surprise, then, that today's tech titans are so In 2005, Google had purchased the Android aggressively battling for control of this brave new open source mobile operating system and founded mobile world. the Open Handset Alliance to compete in mobile Apple, which started as a personal computer com computing. Google provides Android at no cost pany, quickly expanded into software and consumer to smartphone manufacturers, and many manu. electronics. Since upending the music industry with facturers have adopted Android as a standard. In its MP3 player, the iPod, and the iTunes digital music contrast, Apple only allows its own devices to use service longer than a decade ago, Apple took mobile its proprietary operating system, and the millions computing by storm with the iPhone, iPod Touch, of apps it sells can only run on Apple products. and iPad. Apple wants to be the computing platform Since the first Android phone hit the market in of choice for the Internet. Apple is the leader in mobile software applications, thanks to the popular October 2008, free, publicly available source code and permissive licensing have propelled Android to ity of the App Store, with more than 1.2 million apps for mobile and tablet devices. Applications greatly the top place in mobile operating systems. Android enrich the experience of using a mobile device, and is deployed on 81 percent of smartphones worldwide whoever creates the most appealing set of devices and is the most common operating system for and applications will derive a significant competitive tablets. advantage over rival companies. Apps are the new The purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings for equivalent of the traditional browser. Apple still S12.5 billion in August 2011 provided Google with leads in this area and as a major provider of mobile 17,000 patents, with another 7,000 in the pipeline to computing devices that access the Internet help defend Android from the smartphone patent Although Apple has a number of advantages in the platforms with its Nexus 7 tablet, an Android mobile wars. Google is also innovating in mobile hardware car dashboard system, and plans for an inexpensive mobile phone that uses both existing cellular and battle for mobile supremacy, it faces strong competi tion in both the United States and in developing markets such as China from inexpensive Chinese smartphones and from Samsung Android phones that have larger screens and lower prices. The iPhone 6 comes in a large screen version to compete directly with Samsung. Apple has on its side a history of market-moving innovations and a loyal user base that has steadily grown and is very likely to buy future products and offerings Wi-Fi networks. Google is always looking for new ways to con- nect more people to the Internet, including fleets of little satellites, solar powered drones that would fly around the world, and balloons that float high into the stratosphere, beaning the Internet to those below. Such devices in the sky will help Google spread the Internet to the roughly 4 billion people

Answer 1

Lets understand the context of the question. Given the era of retail e-commerce, the case study is trying to identify the edge each of the 3 companies have versus another considering that majority users would be mobile/tablet based. Hence, we need to look at which of the three companies is likely to have the highest user base for its mobile/tablet devices in addition to a solid platform for ecommerce players to sell and market their products and services Apple Advantages 1. Leader in mobile software applications which gives its devices and users an edge over competitors. So far the app store has more than 1.2 million apps which is a huge number to keep customers engaged with mobile devices 2. Loyal user base. You may have heard or seen people who continue to upgrade to a new I-phone model as it comes to the market without consideration of price 3. Market moving innovations: SIRI(its virtual assistant is one example) Disadvantages 1. Cheaper alternatives from China and low cost, large screen smart phones from Samsung 2. Proprietary OS- Apple's Operating software is proprietary to its own devices only. The market share of the OS is fairly low at less than 20% as compared to android Google Advantages 1. Highly efficient search engine - Google's search engine is currently used for 75% of the World's web searches. With Yahoo's downfall, Google rose to further prominence and became by and large a market leader for its search engine 2. Dominant player for advertising: Google stays a strongly preferred platform for sellers to advertise their products and services 3. Most used operating system: Google's Android system is deployed on 81% smartphones worldwide 4. Huge investment to connect people with internet: Google is investing significantly and connecting more people to internet. This will strengthen its P&L and increase its ad revenues Disadvantages 1. Legal issues: Google is currently facing charges from European Union Commission against unfair competition practices. The suit would cost monetary as well as reduced ease of Operations in EU. This will also impact Google's business performance Facebook Advantages 1. Largest Social networking site: Current user base of 1.4 billion monthly active users. Almost 265 million people log into Facebook using mobile devices every day and about 1.2 billion people access the service on mobile devices 2. Growing use of Facebook ads: As compared to other competitors, Facebook ads are targetted and filtered basis age, gender and geography etc. 3. New Age features: Facebook has introduced features such as larger size of pictures on homepage and create topical streams. Such features are very lucrative for advertisers and e-commerce sellers