Interpreting Market Trends In The Smartphone Industry

Task 1: Interpreting market trend or developments by analysing data

The interpretation of market trends involves analyzing of the current and the past market behaviour and the consumer patterns. According to (Watson IV, Weaven, Perkins, Sardana, and Palmatier 2018, pp.30-60), the trend analysis is a strategic approach to gauge the future market potential and the overall business position in the market. It involves key areas that should be examined which include, shifts in consumer perception of value, change and the evolution of the industry, the cost drivers in the industry, and the trends in the consumer needs and behaviour. This task will focus on the smartphone market industry where by the market trend of Samsung mobile Australia will be interpreted and analyzed against the overall market trends of the industry. The following quantitative data for the analysis was collected from the smartphones’ websites of Samsung Australia and summarized in the tables below.

Table 1: Trends based on the market shares

The figures in the table are the percentages of the total sales made by each mobile vendor companies. (Bauman, McFadden, and Jablonski, 2018, pp.1-28) ascertains that the sales reports are the key factors to be examined in the analysis of the market trend. He further narrates that higher figures in the overall sales are a reflection of the good performance of a business in the market. However, this set of data can be quantitatively analyzed using the measures of central tendencies, dispersion and correlation analyses as shown below. The analysis is based on the comparison in the market trends of Samsung against Apple mobile, the leading company.

Measures of central tendencies and dispersion

The measures of central tendencies include the evaluation of the mean, the mode, and the median of the scores in a given set of data while measures of dispersion analyses the standard deviation (Ismail, Mir, and Nazir, 2018, pp.267-276). These are also known as descriptive statistics, which will be analyzed for Samsung mobile Australia in relation to Apple mobile company.

Table 2: The Apple and Samsung market shares

Mean

The mean is the average value in a given set of data. From our data, the mean value of the percentage market share for Samsung Australia is calculated below using the MS Excel software.

Samsung,   18.30%

Apple,        64.46%

Mode

The mode provides the most common value among the scores. Using the MS Excel, it is given by;

“=MODE ()” and select the range of values then “Enter.”

Task 2: Conducting further analysis of data and making appropriate business decisions

However, from the obtained set of data, there are no repetitions in the entry scores thus the program returns #N/A error as an output.

Median

This is the value obtained by arranging the scores in a descending or ascending order.

From the MS Excel, it is given by

“=MEDIAN (B1: Bn)” then “Enter” where n is the last entry of the scores.

   Samsung

   Apple

Standard deviation

To obtain the standard deviation of the Samsung market share over the given range of years using the MS Excel software, input the following formula into any of the cells.

“=STDEV ()” and select the range of the scores then “Enter” = 10.62991

Samsung

Apple

Correlation analysis

In this technique, the correlation coefficient is usually is used to determine how strongly the two variables are related. This was done in Excel where the scores for Samsung and Apple were used as the variables. The results are shown below.

Table 3: Correlation test results

The correlation coefficient -0.76867 is obtained by using the formula “=CORREL (Array 1, Array 2)” where an array is a range of the company’s scores.

Analysis outcomes

From the statistical analyses performed, it can be deduced that Samsung mobile Australia is over shadowed by its main competitor, Apple, in all aspects of the market shares. Comparing all the aspects of the scores, the Apple Company has a greater marketing trend thus making it lead in the market above Samsung, which is the second largest mobile vendor company.

PART B

Market Forecasting

Forecasting is the attempt to predict the future outcomes of a business performance from the trends of the previously collected and analyzed data. From the analyses carried out in the previous section, it is possible to determine the future of the market trends for the Samsung mobile company by using pattern-forecasting techniques. The collected data was used to draw the trends of the market shares for the two selected companies for the purposes of comparison and identifying the patterns in the market performance indices of the companies. The results of the analyses conducted can be presented using the line graph below.

Figure 1: Trends in market shares for apple and Samsung (2010-2017)

From the analysis results, it can be observed that there has been a consistent score in the percentage of the market trend exhibited by the two companies from 2014. This indicates the existence of a stiff competition among the mobile vending industry in relation to performance in the market. However, this consistent performance enables us to forecast the market performance by use of extrapolation to determine the figures/ scores for the next three years. The results of pattern-forecasting technique can be presented in the graph below.

Part A Checklist

Figure 2: Forecasting outcomes

From the graph, the results from for two venders indicate an overwhelming level of saturation in the market. This forecast depicts that the consumer behaviour has changed and eventually they will be waiting for new and more superior smartphone features from the venders (Kilkki et al., 2018, pp.275-284).

PART C

The descriptive and statistical analysis are visually represented with the help of MS Excel software as shown in this section. This represents a comparison in the mean, median, and the standard deviation of the two competing companies. The bars enable a quick judgment of the results unlike when they are numerically presented.

Figure 3: Visual representation of the measures of central tendency and dispersion

The market shares between the two venders can also be displayed in the bar graph as shown.

Figure 4: Visual presentation of a comparison in market shares between Apple and Samsung

The use of visualization enables the report recipients to distinguish the trends in the market shares at a glance. Moreover, the information given can be used to display the dominance of the Apple over the Samsung Company using the pie chart shown below.

Figure 5: Pie chart comparing Apple vs. Samsung percentages in market shares

Final report

The two mobile vendors being the leading in the smartphone industry were selected in this assignment to give insightful trends observed in the market. From the analyses and presentations, the trends of Samsung mobile indicated an increase in the market shares from 2010 to a constant value of 25% in 2014, which was observed to run through to 2017. Contrary, the trends reveal a gradual drop in the market shares of Apple mobile from 2010 where it attained a constant market share of 57% in 2014 to 2017. It is observed in the line graphs that an increase in the market shares of one company results in the decrease of the other from which proved in the correlation analysis since the negative correlation coefficient (-0.76867) obtained implies that the variables are negatively related (Croissant, 2018). However, the companies maintain a constant value from 2014 indicating the level of saturation in the acquisition and incrementing of the shares.

The forecasted level of saturation in the market implies that the consumer behaviour has changed and the only way to increase the shares is through implementing superior features to the existing ones to win more customers as well as conducting intensive advertisements (Maheshwari, Seth, and Gupta, 2018, pp.190-210). Additionally, the companies being the major players in the industry, they can both grow their shares through the formation of partnerships, which will ensure that the prosperity of one company will not lead to the failure of the other. Furthermore, partnerships will help to integrate some features that lead to more advanced devices that would attract the consumers’ attention.

References

Bauman, A., McFadden, D. T., & Jablonski, B. B. (2018). The financial performance implications of differential marketing strategies: exploring farms that pursue local markets as a core competitive advantage. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, 1-28.

Croissant, Y., & Millo, G. (2018). Panel Data Econometrics with R. New Jersey. John Wiley & Sons.

Ismail, Y., Mir, S. A., & Nazir, N. (2018). Utilization of Parametric and Nonparametric Regression Models for Production, Productivity and Area Trends of Apple (Malus domestica) in Jammu and Kashmir, India. Int. J. Curr. Microbiol. App. Sci, 7(4), 267-276.

Kilkki, K., Mäntylä, M., Karhu, K., Hämmäinen, H., & Ailisto, H. (2018). A disruption framework. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 129, 275-284.

Maheshwari, P., Seth, N., & Gupta, A. K. (2018). An interpretive structural modeling approach to advertisement effectiveness in the Indian mobile phone industry. Journal of Modelling in Management, 13(1), 190-210.

Watson IV, G. F., Weaven, S., Perkins, H., Sardana, D., & Palmatier, R. W. (2018). International market entry strategies: Relational, digital, and hybrid approaches. Journal of International Marketing, 26(1), 30-60.

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order