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Achieving high performance in the emerging integrated high tech ecosystem—from chipsets to end-user services.
The global high tech industry is moving into a new phase of competition: one in which tightly integrated technology and business ecosystems — which we have termed “superstacks” — will play a pivotal role in future growth and innovation.
This shift in the industry’s dynamics is already evident in the competitive battleground around mobile platforms. As this battle intensifies, operating systems have become the key differentiator, triggering groundbreaking moves in 2011.
This survey highlights a number of key findings to achieve high performance in the emerging high tech integrated ecosystems.
View the Superstack Infographic (PDF, 242KB)Learn more about Accenture’s research for the Electronics and High Tech Industry
Mobile platforms are only the first step in the industry dynamic shift. A wider and potentially even more heated competitive struggle is looming in two other major high tech worlds: enterprise, such as PC, server, storage, networking, applications and services; and consumer/home, including PC, TV, media player, and digital content and services. As competition escalates, powerful trends like cloud/virtualization, consumerization and security will disrupt the industry's integrated ecosystems.
When we asked executives in the high tech industry to rank the driving forces that will have the greatest impact on their industry in the next three years, it’s hardly surprising that they put mobility top of the list, with cloud and consumerization second and third.
Looking at these drivers, we have already examined trends in mobility. In terms of cloud, the emergence of services based on cloud in all its forms — software, platforms, infrastructure — is driving innovation in organizing data and content remotely. Consumerization reflects individuals’ increasing influence and control over devices and applications used within the enterprise. For example; by bringing their own devices into the enterprise IT environment, accessing consumer applications from enterprise networks, and longer term making enterprise apps share the same look and feel as the apps we love as consumers replacing the stiffness of current legacy apps.
With the superstack wars in mobile now spreading to the enterprise and consumer segments, the implications are profound for all players in every segment of the high tech industry. As they place their strategic bets on the right positioning in the right integrated ecosystems and integrated technology, companies need to take several steps. These include focusing, refining and accelerating their external M&A and collaboration activities, while simultaneously addressing performance gaps in three main capability areas.
In each of these areas, they must overcome specific key challenges to position themselves for high performance in the superstack-driven world of the future:
The future winners in the high tech industry are those companies that, at the minimum, identify and execute the right superstack strategy, while also successfully addressing the challenges in these three capability areas.
January 16, 2012