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The purpose of this paper is to explain the miraculous rise of the mobile phone industry in China in particular and China’s impressive industrial growth in recent decades in general.

This paper uses qualitative or story-telling approach for empirical analysis. Specifically, it uses case studies to illustrate the authors’ arguments.

Utilizing the theory of imitative strategies of latecomer firms and I.M. Kirzner’s concept of entrepreneurial alertness, this paper argues that adaptive entrepreneurs in China’s phone industry survive by being alert to profit opportunities, flexible and adaptable to the changing environments. With limited resources and low technological capabilities at the beginning, Chinese phone makers conduct replication via reverse engineering. Through entrepreneurial learning and imitation, they are able to make indigenous or incremental innovation. The modified models with functions compatible to different groups of consumers and sold at low prices are able to penetrate the low-end markets in the Third World nations.

The authors’ explanation on the success of China’s mobile phone industry sheds light on broader China’s industrial growth as a result of economic reform.

Most studies on China’s mobile phone industry focus on technological analysis, without acknowledging the role of entrepreneurship. This study fills the gap.

This paper aims to study the evolution of innovation-based dynamic capabilities in informal copycat-style firms. As a kind of informal economical organizations, copycat-style firms in many emerging economies play an important role in their development of the economics. The development of Shanzhai firms, Chinese-style copycat firms, from imitation to innovation has become an important micro-foundation of China’s economic growth and the manufacturing development. With the cluster development of the Chinese mobile phone industry as the macro and industrial environment background, this paper chose Beijing Tianyu Communication Equipment Co. Ltd as the typical example of innovation in Shanzhai firms and studied the evolution of innovation-based dynamic capabilities in this company.

This paper chose Beijing Tianyu Communication Equipment Co. Ltd as the typical example of innovation in Shanzhai firms and studied the evolution of innovation-based dynamic capabilities in this company by adopting the leading-edge dynamic capability theory, innovation theory and industrial cluster theory. The authors further discussed how to improve the dynamic capabilities in Shanzhai firms in China.

It is finally suggested that Shanzhai firms should reduce innovation failures and lower damage degree of dynamic capabilities through consistent innovation and paying attention to their innovation improvement.

It will be very significant to research the survival or diminishing of Shanzhai firms from a theoretical perspective, which will eventually enhance property right protection and innovation development in China.

The purpose of this paper is to propose some competitive strategies as a reference for domestic mobile phone corporations (DMCs) so that dominant mobile phone corporations can develop advantageous business strategies to effectively compete with international corporations within the China market.

The study utilizes case studies and the analysis hierarchical process to analyze the competitiveness of the domestic mobile phone industry (DMI) within the China market from a value chain perspective.

The study finds that the competitive strengths of the domestic mobile phone players lie in manufacturing and customer service, while the weaknesses are in research and development (R&D), distribution (DIST) and marketing and sales (MS) in terms of competing with international brands already within the Chinese market.

The paper samples experts familiar with the mobile phone market in the Shanghai area, and therefore may not be applicable to the entire Chinese market. A wider study is suggested, with samples sourced from the entire market, to fill in the remaining gaps.

The surveyed experts emphasize that R&D, DIST and MS capabilities need to be addressed immediately. In turn, some competitive strategies are proposed for the DMI to employ, taking into account their individual features and strengths.

The study assists the dominant corporations in the DMI to better understand their competitive weaknesses through the comments provided by the surveyed experts. Some competitive strategies are proposed as a reference for DMCs.

The purpose of this study is to attempt to address the effect of country of origin (COO) from three different dimensions, namely, country image (CI) effect, COO image effect and awareness level about the COO of the brand and its resultant effect on product evaluation (PrEva). Further, the brand awareness, level of involvement and the COO interaction effect on consumer PrEva has also been studied to indicate the intensity of COO impact. Due to rapid globalization and reduction in trade barriers, major emerging economics from Asia witnessed entry of cross-border brands into their markets. India, as an emerging economy, has also followed the trend. In this backdrop, the present study is proposed for a better understanding of the effect of COO on PrEva.

The study has been conducted in India, and the mobile phone market has been taken as the hub of the study because of the presence of maximum cross-border companies in India. The study is built on existing literature on influence of COO, brand image (BI), awareness about brands, CI and product image on consumer’s evaluation of mobile phones. Seven theoretical constructs have been used to test the relationship between the COO and consumer PrEva for the selected product with the help of structural equation modeling technique.

The study shows that brand awareness for the class of mobile phones selected does not affect PrEva whereas CI, which is a general perception about the country from where the product originates, significantly affects consumers’ PrEva. Results also show that COO does not act as a mediator between CI and PrEva even though COO has a significant negative direct effect on PrEva. Thus, from this study, the learning for marketers in this price segment for mobile phones in emerging markets is that consumers are more sensitive to features per price than any other influencers. So, BI and/or COO are not sufficient conditions for product success in emerging market like India.

The findings are outcomes of an empirical study conducted in mobile handset industry of India based on the sample set of urban consumers in the city of Kolkata, India. It is quite possible that there may be other issues relevant to other parts of the country. This may influence the degree of association studied herein. Hence, the results may be treated with caution in terms of the generalizations of the same to other regions and countries. The study may, in future, be done by including questions related to price sensitivity and perception about features of the mobile phone hand-sets. This may give a clearer picture about the influences of these factors on PrEva of mobile phones in emerging markets. Finally, this study should be repeated in other major emerging markets to test the general applicability of the theoretical model and the empirical results introduced in this paper.

For the low-end mobile handset market, general country characteristics from where the product originates reduce the importance of specific product attributes in evaluating the product. We may further conclude from the present study that the country’s overall image can be an effective tool to influence the consumer PrEva process. To be competitive in an emerging country like India, multinational firms should promote the overall country’s image to cement relationship with target consumers.

Moreover, Ahmed and d’Astous (1996) viewed that several empirical research have independently focused on the impact of COO on the country, product or brand level, but there is lack of an integrated approach in this regard to capture different propensity of effects of COO at different levels. To our knowledge, it is one of the first attempts to analyze consumers’ PrEva of mobile phones in an emerging market.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development of high‐tech industry and the dynamics of technological learning, innovation, entrepreneurship in China through the telecom‐equipment industry.

The paper derives a number of research propositions from the literature and then uses four case studies to show how domestic firms narrow their technological gap in different stages of catch‐up and how these firms have been influenced by their innovation capabilities to catch up to the multinationals.

The major findings of the paper may be summarized as follows. First, the innovation capability and self‐developed technologies have been the key to leading domestic firms in catching‐up with the MNCs. Second, leading domestic firms mainly depend on in‐house R&D development, supplemented with external alliance to build their innovation capability. Third, there are two different catching‐up patterns in China's telecom‐equipment industry. One is “path‐following” catching‐up in global system for mobile communication driven by using new technology in low‐end market. The other is “leapfrogging” catching‐up in the development of phone digital switches and China's own 3G standard (time division – synchronous code division multiple access). However, it seems that the leapfrogging strategy will meet more challenges and problems than the path‐following strategy.

Based on the previous researches about technological learning, innovation and catch‐up in the newly industrializing economies, the paper provides a comprehensive elaboration in Chinese telecommunication industry by using case study approach in an original way.

This paper aims to present an assessment framework which captures the essential characteristics and holistic success factors for disruptive innovation based on the original theory of Christensen, a number of clarifications as reported in the literature and a study of known, successful cases in the literature.

The framework was designed based on the improved understanding of disruptive innovation challenges and on the holistic consideration of innovation as a dynamic process. It consists of structured questions which could be used to guide detailed data collection and analysis needed to answer the key questions which constitute the assessment framework. They are grouped under market positioning, technology and other favourable drivers.

A simple yet comprehensive assessment framework for disruptive innovation has been developed. Two of the known successful cases, namely the steel minimill of Nucor and the 3.5 inch disk drive of Conner/Seagate, were presented in more detail to illustrate the use of this systematic framework in assessing the success potential of these cases of disruptive innovations in either the low‐end or new markets. A third and fairly new example, that of the limited mobile phone system/product of UTStarcom, was then presented to illustrate a case where the framework revealed reasons for potential failure. A fourth example of Google's web‐based office applications then illustrated how the framework might be used to study the disruptive potential of a new product.

This paper enables a more accurate and systematic assessment of disruptive innovation. The framework also has the potential to be further developed into a systematic tool for answering the question of whether the disruptive innovation theory could indeed be used to provide ex ante prediction of the success of a new disruptive innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the changing nature of competition in China. China received over $60 billion in foreign direct investment in 2003, and its economy is already the world's second largest in PPP terms. Thus, there is a tremendous need for executives to understand the changing business environment in China.

The methodology is primarily theoretical complemented by applied cases of foreign companies and their experiences in the Chinese business environment.

Multinational companies face intense price pressure competition in China. The primary factor is due to the growing competitiveness of local Chinese competitors.

China is a complex market combining a transition economy, deflationary economic conditions and local competitors that learn about global products and services in the shortest possible time. Multinational companies are underestimating the speed at which Chinese companies are becoming globally competitive.

Existing business and management research on China has tended to focus either on the transitional nature of the Chinese economy, or on the nature of competition among multinational corporations. This paper illustrates the importance of emphasising China's local companies, that are rapidly becoming multinational corporations.

This paper aims to identify the sources of innovation in the current business environment of China. With the set target of transforming China into an innovative society by 2020, the Chinese government has taken dramatic measures to foster the nation’s innovation capability. Whether this Chinese model of promoting innovation has been successful and can be sustainable are controversial issues which need to be analyzed from an academic perspective. In recent years, there have been successful cases of innovation driven by grassroots entrepreneurs, especially in the information and communications technology (ICT) industry. Therefore, it is time to analyze their success factors from the perspectives of both corporate strategy and government policy.

The methodology used in this research is a comparative case analysis, and several high-profile cases in China’s ICT industry have been selected for this comparative study. Information used in the analysis comes from publicly available sources such as business school case studies and industry and news media reports. The authors have been following the evolution of China’s ICT industry for more than a decade; insights from their prior research and knowledge gained through industry contacts are also used in the analysis.

Generally speaking, the types of innovation in China’s ICT industry can be categorized into a top-down or a bottom-up approach. For the top-down approach of innovation driven by the government, the authors analyzed the case of the Chinese government’s effort to build an industry value chain through fostering the Chinese indigenous third-generation mobile communications standard time division–synchronous code division multiple access. In comparison, the authors use several success cases, including the ecosystem built around the highly successful XiaoMi mobile phone and Tencent’s mobile portal WeChat, as it showcases of the bottom-up approach of innovation driven by grassroots entrepreneurship. The comparison of these two approaches suggests that massive government-sponsored projects are unlikely to generate genuine innovation in the highly competitive and dynamic ICT sector. The government’s role should be to foster entrepreneurship and to create a fair business environment.

This research uses the method of comparative case studies to identify the source of innovation in a highly dynamic and uncertain business environment. Findings of this study shed light on the government policy toward innovation in the ICT industry and on the business firms’ strategy on innovation.

This paper documents and examines the course of the Little‐Smart deployment in China by looking closely at the technology comparison, demand pull and supply push, as well as government regulations.

It deploys an empirical approach and relies on second‐hand statistical data and some interviews.

Findings suggest that the competitive advantages, including the price difference between low mobility services and cellular phone services, are the most significant drivers for the fast deployment and growth of low mobility services including PHS and Little‐Smart service, with the aid of other non‐economic factors. The changing landscape in China's wireless market, including possible significant drop of cellular phone service prices as well as overall business and regulatory dynamics, will create an uncertain future for the Little‐Smart service to move through its product life cycle in the next few years.

Findings of this study could be significant both for China and for other countries to optimize their strategies for low mobility services.

Aims to provide the contextual framework for local and foreign manufacturers in assessing the market potential of China's telecommunications equipment market, including an analysis of contemporary economic, political and historical issues.

This is an inductive, interpretative case study.

History matters in the evolution of China's telecommunications market especially given its concern over maintaining control of a strategic interest, as well as the protection of vested interests within the state‐controlled economy.

To practitioners: the importance of research, vis‐a`‐vis interpretation and argument, in assessing market potential in a high‐technology market. To academics: the role of government in the value chain and network especially when they have controlling stakes, as is the case here with China's telecommunications equipment manufacturers and operators.