Tuesday 3 January 2012

The Harvard Business School (HBS) Discussion

Harvard Business School Case Study is one of our requirement as UTM student. In this 4 years, we have at least 8 case studies to go as Dr. Zaidi said, that means we have one study case in one semester. In this sem, we study about Symbian, Google & Apple in the mobile space and we need to present it. We have 5 groups and 7 people in a group and the presentation take 3 hours. Due to so many people and lack of time, each person just take a few minutes to present their ideas. During the presentation, we are given ten question but then is each group one question. And we are given 30 minutes to discuss about our question.

Here are the 10 questions during HBS.
1.Strategies taken by Symbian, Google, Apple in striving to lead the mobile industry.
2.Lessons learned from Harvard Business School Case Study
3.New entry company such as Google & Apple become threat to Symbian company. How?
4.Discuss the key players in mobile phone industries and how they influence each other.
5.As the future IT professional, how this case study change your view about your career?
6.What innovations can be introduce in improving mobile phone industries in terms of community uses and work?
7.Discuss the Symbian's situation based on Porter's 5 Forces model. What are your recommendation?
8.Analyse Symbian's situation using SWOT analysis technique. What is your opinion about company situation.
9.Discuss on key Symbian Executives(exhibit 3).What is your opinion about them? Give suggestions.
10.Discuss on the mobile market share based on the statistics given.

My group get the question 3. Here is some points that our group present. The threat are :

Microsoft
--Improved phone reliability and performance
-- Build alliances with wireless network operators and phone manufacturers
-- Large network of third party PC developers potential in building apps
-- Motorola left Symbian (2005) to work with Microsoft

Palm
-- Intuitive user interface, reliable synch with PC’s, long battery life, modest cost.

RIMM
-- Always-on mobile e-mail devices
-- Offered Blackberry e-mail services to non-Blackberry devices

Apple
-- Apple had substantial power over network operators
-- Each phone had to be registered with Apple
-- The iPhone support “multitouch” interactions and motion sensor
-- Offer third-party apps to iPhone users

Google
-- Offer a giving away software and services instead of charge the advertising fees
-- Encouraged development of third-party apps
-- Provide affordable wireless internet access


A photo when we studied and discussed the HBS before presentation day...^^