Combining scenario analysis with the diffusion model and the competitive model for analyzing the development of the Smartphone operating system

The sales volume of Smartphones has grown rapidly, and software and service have become more critical for the growth of the industry. There are five major platforms in the market, Android, iOS, Symbian, Blackberry, and Windows. The competition among them is severe, and it has become critical to understand the key factors that lead to the successful development of a Smartphone operating system (OS). However, few studies have considered how to estimate the sales volume among competitive innovation products/technologies when available data are limited. Therefore, to more accurately estimate future demand and competition among Smartphone OSs in our empirical study, we used scenario analysis and the Delphi method to predict possible scenarios for the future development of four OSs (Android, iOS, Symbian, and Blackberry). Then we used the competitive model and innovation diffusion model to forecast the adoption volume of each OS over the next 5 years. The results showed that the top three key decision factors for OS development were “demand and preference of customers,” “degree of development with application stores,” and “variation in global market growth.” There were no significant substitution effects among the OSs. On the contrary, the Android and Blackberry platforms had a symbiotic relationship. In the adoption volume forecasts, three scenarios (the most optimistic, the most pessimistic, and the most likely) were considered. The adoption volumes of the four OSs (ranked as Android > iOS> Symbian > Blackberry) were the same for all three scenarios over the next 5 years.