Relationship between the evolution of an old and a new technological innovation

Nowadays many innovative technologies are emerging in the different markets. The relationship between an innovation which is already established in the market and a new budding innovation is not well known in every kind of market, especially when two innovative technologies are competing in different markets. This is the case of the PMP (Portable Media Player) and the smart phones market. For this thesis we are interested in the study of how earlier technological innovations are related to new technological innovations. Currently, there are already a lot of researches on specific innovations, but not on the relationship between these particular innovations. For this reason, it would be interested for practice and science to explore it, in order to extend the knowledge in this field. Therefore, analyzing the relationship between an old and already established technological innovation and a new technological innovation in the last phases of its diffusion process will be the objective of this thesis. In order to reach this objective, a pair of technologies has been chosen and will be analyzed. The old technology is the MP3 and the new technological innovation is the smart mobile phone. To reach the mentioned objective, the main research question that will be answered is: What is the relationship between market stabilization phase of an old technological innovation and market adaptation and stabilization phases of a new technological innovation (in different markets)? To answer the research question and other sub research questions, a review of the relevant literature was conducted. Thus, based on this literature, the main elements which may have an influence within the relationship between technologies were selected, consequently analyzed and then applied to our case analysis: MP3, iPod and iPhone. Then, the necessary data was collected in order to look for relationships between the two technological innovations. Gathered data was mainly based on: the internet, Apple annual reports, analysis reports and company press releases. The main result showed us that, some of the major elements which are related to the two technologies are kind of innovation, prices, organizational issues, product cycle life, market actors and strategies. Other important findings which were not expected are that other important aspects such as technological changes are also influencing the relationship between technologies in their specific phases. These changes within technologies let the new technology learn from the old one. Furthermore, limitations on this research were also found. This research has been carried out from the productive and development perspective. However, regarding the iPod and iPhone cases, platform perspective and its implications are an extensive approach which could be considered for further investigations. Among others, it is also important to mention the explorative and qualitative character of the research as limitations of this study. Although this research has its limitations, and has left many issues to investigate, this study has achieved its aim of examining the relationships between technological innovations. It also made a contribution for filling the gap in existing literature on the relation between patterns of diffusion within the innovation field.

Subject

innovation
diffusion model

To reference this document use:

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:639a8830-eec9-48d1-9cad-265fc5ad2824

Access restriction

Campus only

Part of collection

Student theses

Document type

master thesis

Rights

Files

PDF

Thesis_FinalVersion.pdf

1.99 MB

Close viewer