Disruptive innovation in China's BoP market

Disruptive innovation is considered appropriate for firms to serve the low-income groups, known as the Base of the Pyramid (BOP). By applying disruptive innovation into BOP markets, the poor people can benefit from the new technology, and the firms can get a huge market with potential to disrupt the whole industry. By studying the cases of Chinese local mobile phone manufacturers, the paper explores the pattern of the disruption process in BOP markets. This paper adopted an exploratory research strategy. The study shows that the partnership between the core technology provider (an integrated chip provider) and the local BOP-oriented product servers (many small- and medium-scaled mobile phone manufacturers) is a successful model in the context of China. Many local mobile firms grew up and disrupted the mobile industry from the ground up. As a result, the price of mobile phone decreased significantly, and many low-income people could afford a phone with which they enhanced their livelihood. The study suggests that disruptive technology provider can leverage the existing local BOP models to scale up the business.