The breakthrough innovation of Samsung’s Tablet

Abstract

The innovation is a tricky business. The public response to the innovation may be very unexpectedly. The tablet PC is a revolutionary innovation that reduced the size of the laptop. The integrated features of the tablet are very attractive. It is smart device that is very much wanted solution to the customers. The project is about the source of innovation and the types and patterns of innovation for the newly designed device named Galaxy tab PC. The importance of its innovation is to upgrade the technology one step ahead. The upgrading of the cell phones plus the computer features and incorporating them all in one device called tablet was a hell of an innovation. The information about the tablet is gathered through the literature reviews of the articles present in the journals. The surveys are read and the secondary data about the Samsung tablet helped us through the research. The public responded unexpectedly in different areas of the world when it was launched. The business professionals did not get along with the size of the galaxy tablet. The youngsters and the frequently travelling people liked it. but still the innovation was not as big as ipod was. It couldn’t replace the ipod. So the public acceptance for the tablet turned out to be like people were not expecting a thing as minor as the size to be the problem. I learnt that creating something new is a very risky business. People may or may not want to change their ways of seeing technology so when it comes to a technology then it should be friendly enough to meet all the requirements that the previous technology was unable to meet. We were motivated to find a good interest of people for the tablet technology. The type of innovation was a revolutionary innovation just like the computers came around as a breakthrough but the tablet PCs couldn’t reach that level.

Introduction

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Overview: This project entails detailed information about the innovation embedding in the Samsung. Samsung is a South Korean company that started in 1938 as the trade export company of perishable things. But later Samsung started manufacturing the electronic devices. The breakthrough in the innovation interested the government and many investors to put in more efforts in the research and development. This project tracks the overall details on the sources of innovation and its journey through the development of the new product of Samsung named Tablet PC Galaxy tab. This is a new launch is a lot of expectations are there from the customers because it has been installed with the best applications demanded by the customers.

Group information:

Group members names

This project is basically about the topics of “sources of innovation” and “types and patterns of innovation” in the product Galaxy Tablet of Samsung. We chose these topics because the electronics devices are nowadays the most prevailing and demanded by customers. The increase in the versatile use of technology like mobile phones and laptops is like a necessity to everyone, ranging from student to highly skilled professionals. The innovation in the technology is so interesting that we decided to choose our favorite and also most famous electronics company nowadays. It’s not only famous in South Korea but it has grabbed a large share in the global market. The reliability and demand of its products are a source of quality life and symbol for good tastes. The tablet took a huge investment in its new product development life cycle.

Industrial / company setting:

The project is done through the industrial setting because there are a lot of interesting researches done on the Samsung progress that caught our attention and interest. It is interesting to know how the innovation management became the crucial part for the success of the digital equipment manufactured by Samsung as compared to its competitors. This innovation boost made its way to the global market and South Korea stamped its quality by doing exports to the rest of the world in its leading technology.

The reason to choose the industrial setting is that there were a lot of other companies already present in 1969 when Samsung started manufacturing but Samsung competed with all of those companies. No wonder this aggressively competing trend and unique way of improving Its technology was the reason it grabbed a quick place in the world of technology. The progress has been improving ever since and quality is remarkable.

Geographical setting:

The country chosen is South Korea. The reason to choose South Korea is that USA has already made its name in the field of technology and development but South Korea started its technology improvement in the 1960’s and soon it was able to compete with the USA’s top most high tech innovation industry. Samsung competed not only in the innovation of its technology but also through its strategies to market its electronic devises and gained success in just a couple of decades.

Aims and Objectives:

The aims of this project is to learn about the implementation of the theories of the innovation management and apply this knowledge at the new innovation named tablet of Samsung in the real business world.

The objectives of this project are:

To learn the ways of the development of new technology of tablet in a unique way.
To learn about the sources of innovation that triggered the development of tablet.
To understand the pattern and types of innovation in Samsung.
To learn how the industry accepted and supported the new technology.
How Samsung made its way to create its place in the world of technology smart companies

The problem:

Our motivation to work on this topic is that innovation is a tricky procedure. The public may or may not accept the up coming product. There has to be an extensive research to make the new product a success. What are the concerns of the new product development or innovation for its success?

The problem under focus is “Is innovation of Tablet going to be easily accepted by the public?”

Methodology

The research methodology for this project involves extensive research and analysis of using qualitative research methods including journal articles, periodicals, newspaper articles, international journal articles, and online publications. Our group efforts have been made to make this project a complete and as transparent as possible to achieve the highest levels of precision and accuracy. The work is done with proper justification of each point described. The secondary data is being reviewed to conduct the research.

Literature Review:

The literature review has been done through the electronic libraries of LSE and MiddleSex Universities. The secondary data had been the part of the literature resources available on the internet. The review of these articles and journals broadened our knowledge of innovation sources and the patterns and types. The surveys had been done to observe the innovation.

Samsung started in 1938. It was not an electronics company in the beginning as mentioned above. In 1969, the revolutionary innovation boosted the company to manufacture the electronic devices. South Korea, started its innovation revolution journey in 1960s when the government invested in science research and development to make South Korea a major innovator of scientific technologies. This was a turning point for Samsung in 1969 when it started manufacturing the electronic devices. These devices are now prevalent all over the world. The digital products of Samsung are worldly recognized and reputed for their quality.

The breakthrough triggered in 1980’s when the private companies invested more in the technology development. The government slowed down its investment but for sure there was a sudden demand of techno-smart machinery. The advancement occurred when during 1990’s the innovation phase started and the exploring of emerging technologies started. In 1998 the government doubled its investment in the research and development of the technology and the workforce was increased. (Temporal 2006)

The constant innovation and competitive experts in technology raised the quality of the products and entered in the digital age with revolutionary change and opportunity. Going to the official webpage of the Samsung its clear how many awards have been won by Samsung electronics. (Samsung 2010)

In 1993, the Chairman of Samsung stressed on the increased branding and advertising of the innovative development of the Samsung digital devices. The completely bureaucratic and centralized organization of Samsung has developed in its research and development capabilities to compete with the next century demands.

Samsung is famous with its LCD and plasma flat screens. The quality of the vacuum cleaner and the rest of its electronics products is remarkable. This characteristic paved the way of many developing technology organizations to partner with Samsung and help innovating the technology in the new and interesting ways. The mobile phones of Samsung are famous with their sound quality and camera resolution. This is due to the constant and consistent efforts of the research and development department of the Samsung. The awards winnings for its technology is written all over the profile of the Samsung website. All of the technology journals are full of the remarkable intelligence of the engineers of Samsung electronics.

The innovation cycle of Samsung continues in the 2000’s and on 11August 2010, Samsung is going to launch a new breakthrough technology named Samsung Tablet Pc. The model of tablet is Galaxy Tab GT-P1000. The tablet is the excellent innovation that combines the features of a laptop and those of the cell phone. Just like the iphone it has got the operating system and the RAM of as much as 512MB. There is 15GB internal memory and the 32 GB micro SD card. It displays the 16millions color capacity and is 7 inches TFT screen with the resolution of 1024 X 600 pixels. It has the feature of the internet and wireless synchronization. The video call facility that makes one feel like you are talking to a person like if s/he is standing right in front of you. The wonder battery life of 12 hours and the voice quality is sheer. The network coverage is remarkable. It is quite compact weighing only 380gm. There are other applications in the tablet like the alarm clock, messaging service, movies, weather, news, mobile games and applications. The soft wares like the MS office suite to make it suitable for the professionals use. The office soft wares are making it very demanding for the business class. (Samsung 2010)

Sources of Innovation:

Samsung has been working with multiple sources of innovation. The first source of innovation is the government interest and investment in the innovation in the technology especially the mobile phones and accessories. The second sources of innovation are the users as they are the key users of the technology. The mobile users are coming up with a new demand everyday. Samsung gets the feedback of its customers and innovates the accessories and embed them in different new mobile phones providing diversified mobile phone set to the demanding users. (Hippel 1988)

Another source of innovation in Samsung is through the joint venture with other partnership organizations. The university of Cape town has recently done partnership with Samsung mobiles to innovate the new mobile phones applications. These are in response to the African needs. The UCT Samsung Mobile Innovation Laboratory (SMILe) is the Samsung’s first manufacturing unit in Africa. This lab had been made to operate for three years. The partners in this project are the Information Systems and Computer science departments, also the Cape IT Incubator and Bandwidth Barn. This laboratory is the effort of the UCT professor named Jean Paul Ven Belle who is the head of Information Systems. The GM of Bandwidth Barn is confident that the new prototypes have been developed by the senior students of the Computer Science department under the guidance of the staff. This source of innovation is users plus manufacturers combined effort that will open new ideas to the world.(sinha 2011)

One big source of innovation is the competitor’s latest products. The increasing demands of the customers are diversified and combining them all in one set is a difficult task. Vodafone, T-Mobiles, O2, Motorolla are the key competitors that are competing with the mobile phones of Samsung. One big competitor is Nokia. These companies are all struggling to manufacture the newest and updated versions of the previous devices.(Gossling 2011)

The research and development department of Samsung has been working hard. The continuous feedback obtained through the online surveys give new ideas. The focus groups always come up with the new demands. All of new ideas are incorporated in the new technology.

The source of innovation for the Samsung Tablet PC was the increased rate of the demands for the cell phones that contain the capabilities of the cell phone as well as the computer. The devices that is as small as a mobile phone and as big as to work comfortably like a laptop of small size. The size of the tablet is 7 inches which is appropriate for the frequent use like a computer. It is a mini computer that facilitates with all of the capabilities of the cell phone too. The consumers demand for the i-phones, and i-mates was increasing. The demand for the ipods to listen to music all the time anywhere also increased. This gave Samsung an idea that there should be a device with innovation in design that contains all of these features as one unit. This gave the idea of the tablet PC. The popularity of the tablet was worth watching when the competitors were unable to incorporate the camera and facilitates with the wireless coverage.

Patterns of innovation:

The patterns and types of the innovation depends upon the electronic devise under more demand. The type of innovation in cell phones is different for different customers likewise the other technology.

The pattern of the innovation ranges from the invention of the new technology and its total life cycle and then the marketing strategies to create the product demand in the market. Samsung has increased its demand by opening the sales and design centers in different countries that contribute greatly in the market share. The countries like USA, Germany, Middle East Countries and Brazil have been demanding the high quality products of Samsung.(Hussain 2006)

There are multiple patterns of innovation. One of these patterns is Technology Push or science push innovation. The new invention is push to the market with the help of the Research and development, productions and sales departments with little consideration as to if this invention is going to satisfy the consumer needs or not. This is called the science push model or the linear model of innovation. Another pattern of innovation is the market pull or market driven innovation. This is the type of innovation used by Samsung. Market creates the need for a unique feature in the product and then the research and development starts to work on it. Most of the products of Samsung are manufactured after knowing what the customer wants. A pattern often observed now which has been created by the government interest and investment in the technology is the Innovation double helix. This is like the DNA structure but one spiral of the structure shows the science and the engineering of the technology skills. The other spiral is the marketing, management and entrepreneurial skills. The joint ventures of the Samsung with other collaborating parties are working on this pattern. This depends on the type of the innovation. The mobile phones joint venture with the UCT is the example of innovation double helix. The industrial partners are also working on the same pattern. Another pattern is the integrative approach to Tech-push and market pull. This is the combination of the market push and market pull patterns. Samsung is working on this technique on the products like the LCD and plasma TV. The radical pattern is the new and different element which changes the whole technology. This is a technology that is working on the robots in Samsung or the highly specialized with custom details devices or machinery. The tablet is the example of radical pattern of innovation. The incremental pattern of innovation is very commonly observed in the mobile phones. This pattern deals with the improving versions of the Samsung mobile phones. Just like the memory cards are coming with higher capacity. And the cameras of the mobiles are coming with the better resolution. The revolutionary innovation is the breakthrough introducing a new industry. The evolutionary innovation pattern is like the incremental product or process improvement. All of these patterns of innovation are being used in one way or the other. (huang 2010)

The tablet PC, Galaxy Tab GT-P1000 had the innovation pattern of revolutionary innovation with the mix of the radical pattern of innovation. The invention of Tablet was a breakthrough as the design and shape of the touch screen almost as big as a cell phone was a new look. The incorporation of the cell phones features was like the incremental innovation pattern but this hybrid of innovation patterns for sure brought the technology of advance digital age that left a mark in the history of the technological developments. Galaxy tablets are claimed to the thinnest and lightest weight gadgets that are portable and customer friendly. The introduction to the customers was amazing as the response of the people was like booking of millions of tablets the day it was launched. Many people say that the size of the tablet is not palm friendly but still they use it because of its marvelous features. The patterns of innovation of tablet PC are highly thought and well tested during the manufacturing.

Types of innovation:

Samsung uses the multiple types of innovation. The type of innovation depends upon the type of product that requires the innovation techniques. The sector creating innovations are the specific kind of innovation e.g. the plasma TV. These TV’s are sector specific like the higher middle class or the elite class will want to purchase the flat screen plasma. The performance extending innovation is used in the mobile phones where the performance of the mobiles is extended with the incremental innovation of the product development. The technological reorganization is also the incremental innovation of the technology. The old cathode ray TV’s are now replaces with the flat screens. But this replacement is not completely done to make the cathode ray tv obsolete. The innovation of the plasma screens was the reorganization of the technology. Branding innovation is done with each version having the different brand name. likewise the mobile sets have different faces thus different model numbers. So the innovation is done with the brand names put ahead. Design innovation is the type where the design of the product is considered while manufacturing. E.g, the vacuum cleaners with the shapes of dogs or a robot is the design innovation. The design of the pre-existing thing is re-modeled and refigured to create the new look for the customers. The process innovation is the technology plus the management type innovation. Basically this revolves around the complete process of innovation, managing innovation, marketing and advertising the technology such that the strategy is formed. This is the way the product is engineered phase by phase. The management and monitoring for success is done throughout the process of product development life cycle. Along with this the strategies to offer the product and creating awareness amongst the customers is concerned this is all done through this type. This is an extensive process. Reformulation is the type of innovation where the technology item is recreated altogether. This is the reengineering of the existing product. The service innovation is the total managerial policy. The strategy to target which segment and then how to create the awareness of the need amongst the customers. The packaging innovation is the attractive new package to attract the customers to go for it. For example the new colors of the mobile phones and the versatile laptop flap covers that can be replaced very easily are the examples of the packaging innovation. Great deal of art work and redesigning and beautification of the technology products is involved. This is also an extensive procedure.(huang 2010)

Samsung Tablet PC Galaxy tab GT-P1000 is the design innovation type of innovation. The design of the tablet was the breakthrough and unique of its kind. Its extensive product development life cycle managed to create the demand in the market. As it was a market wanted product as the pattern of innovation shows that it was a market pull product, so it was very much manufactured thinking about the needs of the customers. The customers pattern of use of cell phone plus the laptops was greatly researched. The launch of the tablet was very much appreciated by the customers. It was long advertised and marketed for the home customers and the business customers. The use of the tablet is like replace the blackberries. The total procedure of the innovation was made to be such that it is demanded by all types of customers. The ages of the customers and the usability of the devices was greatly researched to innovate the product that meets the demands of the maximum types of customers.(O’Connel 2005)

Data and Findings:

The innovation is a completely risky process. This may or may not get accepted by the people. In order to make it appropriate for the high levels of sales, it needs to be public/consumers interacted during the developmental process. The tablet market is increasingly exploding. According to an online research and the focus group discussions, 6% of the people want to purchase the tablet in the next six months time period. (Richard 2011) the likelihood of 6% to purchase the netbook, 14% to purchase the smart phone, 14% to purchase the windows based laptops or computers, shows that the tablet is not going to finish these categories. Using these statistics there is still expectation for the selling of 360,000 tablets at the end of the spring in UK. The rumors about the buying of the tablets shows that the apple ipod are not going make much sales next year. These next twelve months are going to change the purchase patterns of the customers. The innovation is highly appreciated and also considered as a style. The customer friendly feature of the tablets gave Samsung once again a bloom in the consumer market. There are quite a lot of complaints from the customers showing that the size of the device is not appropriate. The size is not palm friendly and at the same time its very interesting gadget. The popularity of the tablets is seems amongst the frequent travelers.

Conclusions:

The Samsung tablet Galaxy tab GT-P1000 shows that innovation is helping a great deal in changing the look of the technology. The launch of the tablet pc was a marvelous innovation that was a designed innovation to meet the increasing demands of the customers. The customers responded to Samsung as soon as the Tablet was launched. The popularity was gained all of a sudden but due to the unfriendly size of the gadget, it did not make a big success like the ipod had done.

Samsung has its quality and the customers trust that. The new development of the device was greatly accepted by the people who travel very often and commute long distances. It could not grab the market share of the blackberries or other professional devices available in the market offering business applications. The expectations were high of this device. The uniqueness was expected to prevail but couldn’t make it. The companies researching on how to make it customer friendly in terms of its size are working in the right direction. If the size of the tablet is reduced and the features are enhanced it will for sure be a highly demanded product like the laptops and the ipods were. The innovation should be appreciated but it should be worked well with all the risks. The continuous feedback from the customers for their needs is a good idea. So the companies much not invest too much in the products development and ignore the market aspects of the product that suffice.

References:

Gossling, R. (2011) “Samsun Phones.” EzineArticles, 1-2.

Hippel, E. V. (1988). Sources Of Innovation. New York Oxford University Press.

huang, D. J. (2010). “Management of Technology Innovation and patterns of innovation.” Linghan (University) press: 29-34.

Hussain, S. (2006). “Samsung Took Advantage of the Olympics.

O’Connel, P. (2005). Samsung’s Goal: Be like BMW. Bloomberg Business Week. Bloomberg, Bloomberg publishers: 1-5.

Richard (2011) “The “Tablet PC” market looks promising in 2011.” 1-3.

Samsung. (2010). “Samsung’s History.” from http://www.samsung.com/pk/aboutsamsung/corporateprofile/history.html.

Samsung (2010) “Samsung Tablet PC.” Samsung Tablet PC – Galaxy Tab GT-P1000 Review 1-2.

sinha (2011) “Samsung launch innovation partnership with UCT.

Temporal (2006). Asia’s Star Brands. Singapore, John WIleys & Sons(Asia) Pte Ltd.

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