Authors
Yunju Chen, Yousin Park, Iori Nakaoka
Corresponding Author
Yunju Chen
Available Online 31 March 2018.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.2991/jrnal.2018.4.4.13How to use a DOI?
Keywords
patent analysis, social network analysis, Chinese ICT companies, the boundary of the firm, vertical integration, horizontal specialization
Abstract
It is said that the decision of vertical integration or horizontal specialization (the boundary of the firm) affects a firm’s profit and competitive advantage, especially in the ICT industry. This paper focused on top market share Chinese ICT companies in global smartphone industry, Xiaomi and Huawei, to examine how they design their boundary of operation systems in R&D. Patent data analysis is used to investigate Xiaomi’s and Huawei's technology strategies and technical networks, also to compare their systems with each other. According to the results of analysis, we suppose that Xiaomi has rough R&D organization structures and hence has low level of integration, which close to horizontal specialization. On the other hand, Huawei has high weight on internal R&D, and explores technologies related to core technologies. Its R&D structures are more highly integrated than Xiaomi.

Copyright
© 2018, the Authors. Published by ALife Robotics Corp. Ltd.
Open Access
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).