Epstein, Zach. “Canalys: Android Dominance Grows as Q1 Market Share Climbs to 35%.”

BGR. May 4th, 2011.

I. Introduction 1. Summary

Market positioning is a crucial ingredient in an organization’s success. In the smartphone market, Android dominates the worldwide smartphone market, having increased its share of the market by 35% in the first quarter of 2011. The article by Epstein (2011) highlights the global comparisons between Android and several other of the smartphone giants in the industry, and breaks down the comparisons by region. 2. Relevant Vocabulary
Year-over-year—results compared year by year for a specific part of the year, as, for example, directly comparing the first quarter of 2010 with the first quarter of 2011. There are no difficult terms to identify. 3. Key Concepts Tactical Planning – Process of defining implementation activities that the firm must carry out to achieve its objectives (Ch. 6, p. 185). Android uses two primary methods for tactical planning. One is the use of applications, which number in the thousands, and are important for consumers to use to “personalize” their phones. The second key planning strategy is to use key vendors such as HTC, Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, which are themselves global leaders. Channel captain – Dominant and controlling member of a marketing channel (Ch. 13, p. 401). Smartphone manufacturers such as Nokia and Andoid are channel captains in that they control a global marketing channel, such as the Asian Pacific channel and the North American channel. But they are in horizontal conflict because they are competitors for the same markets in the same places, and there is not enough disctinction between them to makes their marketing niches different. Psychographic segmentation – Dividing a population into homogeneous groups on the