Qualitative Analysis and Comparison of Firm and System Incumbents in the New ICT Global Innovation Network

Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the changing fortunes of firms and territorial innovation systems in the emergent handheld devices segment of the global innovation network (GIN) in information and communication technology (ICT). The conceptual approach draws fairly lightly upon evolutionary complexity theory from which important concepts such as “path interdependence” “strange attractors” and system “self-organization” derive. In this version of a suite of papers on the GINs topic, particular emphasis is placed upon supply chain displacements of western chipmakers by Asian chipmakers from the first and second versions of the Apple “smartphone”, forerunner of its equally successful “tablet” technology. These are the apotheosis of innovative “convergence” in which knowledge recombination produces unanticipated novelty in products and services. It is shown how Apple, like earlier transitioning ICT firms such as IBM, Microsoft and, more recently, Hewlett Packard, engaged in “modularization” largely by acquisition in order to re-position themselves in new global markets. Spatial proximities and policies are seen as crucial to many of the processes described.

Notes

This is clearly demonstrated in Apple's iPhone 5 (2012) the majority of components for which are sourced from firms like Texas Instruments, absent from iPhone 4. This suggests a modularization model favouring Western innovation followed sequentially by Asian imitation with limited incremental innovation.

While Foxconn was dogged by 18 suicides of young workers at its giant Shenzhen plant, Wintek has seen scores of young workers in the city of Suzhou poisoned by the chemical n-hexane, used to clean Apple components including iPhone touchscreens.

For example, iPhones 3 and 4 had no Singapore suppliers. However iPhone 5 has three, each of which is FDI of modest value, namely Sony for the battery, with Triquint (HQ Oregon) and Avago (HQ California) for amplifiers.