Challenges and rewards of mechanical platforming strategy within wireless handset industry

Abstract

The internship project studied Motorola competitors' products and identified their mechanical platform strategy. Recommendations were developed for Motorola to improve product development and/or portfolio planning, in terms of hitting key performance parameters for design differentiation, field failure rates, supply chain scale and efficiencies, etc. Motorola is improving its product differentiation in the highly competitive and fast-clockspeed wireless handset industry. This project was primarily aimed at understanding competitors' approaches to mechanical platforming and the relationship to product differentiation and quality. This study can also help to clarify Motorola internal definition of platform and of innovation, and facilitate better communication within different groups. The competitive analysis focused on Samsung and Nokia. The study relied mostly on informal interviews with engineers and managers to gain understanding of Motorola internal process and practices. The majority of the competitive information came from internal benchmarking teardowns, 3rd-party teardown reports, and public information on FCC website. Recommendations include that Motorola should leverage on its own "winning design".

(cont.) For example, Razor's industrial design could be used as mechanical platform for future product development. Furthermore, with similar industrial design, incremental changes/innovation becomes important. Samsung proved that even with similar industrial design, product lines still can be perceived as innovative and fresh with just topological changes. The goal of this thesis was to analyze the benefits and challenges in wireless handset industry to plan and implement a platforming strategy. There are many elements in a wireless handset product that can be platformed, and this thesis is only focused on the mechanical aspect. Through the case study of Samsung and Nokia, numerous benefits such as cost savings, improved product reliability and aster time to market, are all illustrated. Various challenges and risks in planning and implementing such a strategy are also discussed.