You are working for a small company that has developed an operating system for PCs that is faster and more stable than Microsoft’s Windows operating system. What strategies might the company pursue to unseat Windows and establish its new operating system as the dominant technical standard in the industry?
First and the foremost fact to consider while entering the industry is the scale of difficulty to unseat a pioneer and market leader like Microsoft. The industry is oligopolistic and has already been completely captured by the trailblazers like Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft’s OS i.e. Windows and Apple’s OS X and Mac OS have saturated the market in such a way that people hardly think of any other operating system. Although Apple has a substantial market share but Microsoft’s Windows operating system has become the definition of operating systems. This is due to the fact that it always successfully fulfills the demands and expectations of the users and therefore, users never feel the need to switch to any other OS.
However, considering the fact that an operating system i.e. better than Microsoft’s Windows OS has been successfully developed, then it should also be noted that there will be numerous outsized difficulties that the business would be required to overcome in order to unseat Microsoft. First of all, a detailed environmental and situational analysis is required to be performed by the company to find out the potential strategic options that could be undertaken with respect to the available resources and competencies.
Since Microsoft is the biggest market player, the company requires to make extraordinary endeavors for unseating it. The first strategic option is considering the aid of government or competitors like Apple to unseat Microsoft and by signing a business alliance with them. The second strategic option that is encouraged to be adopted is developing an alliance with computer manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Acer, Fujitsu or Lenovo etc. They can be convinced by offering lower prices, profit sharing percentage, monetary incentives, and other better business features for the new OS (Hill et.al, 2014).
The third strategic option is to get paid testimonial and usage requests from the software developers. This could be called a complementary approach in which the company can encourage software developers to write request application for using the new OS. In other words, the company is required to initially target the nearly and risk-taking adopters while convincing them that their new operating system is the forward-looking technology within the industry and the new big thing in the town.
The company should comprehend the reality that they cannot get into the competition directly as people heavily rely on the performance and credibility of Windows. This has somewhat also become the necessity of every individual and business because if one would not use Windows, it will bring about the inefficiency and lack of synchronization in activities and processes. The company can enter the market by exploiting the users who like to take up challenges and are least risk aversive in nature. The company should also initially endeavor to attract youth as they are potentially more easily attracted towards innovation. This can help them building up introductory market share while providing them a foundation to emerge further.
References
Hill, C., Jones, G. and Schilling, M., 2014. Strategic management: theory: an integrated approach. Cengage Learning. Retrieved From http://www55.zippyshare.com/v/rK8D5rJh/file.html on March 25, 2016
