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The establishment of an IC fabless company begins by evaluating the design and business development ability. Strategic analyses determine how a product enters the market. Furthermore, one needs to develop a competitive strategy and business model. The company A was spinned-off from Winbond in 2002. After evaluating the resource requirement and the economic magnitude of multi-media IC industry. with SWOT analyses, company A found STB /DVB-S product line ideal for entering the market. Three KSF at the beginning stage included IC’s feature differentiation copied from DVD, good technical service for China customers, and attractive pricing strategy. The great market response made a huge succcess to company A in the DVB-S product.. However, the company A was facing a totally different market and competition during the later scale-up period of DVB-S product. The failure of fulfilling the demand of non-China market, inadequate product plan at the beginning stage, and a lack of strong RD resource support led to the loss of many key opportunities and ultimate failure of the company. Overall, the successes of 1st and 2nd generation DVB-S products for the company A were based on its converting the DVD technology to develop a product, which completely met China farmer’s requirement and the lack of competition from other Taiwan IC design house. The failure of the STB happened during scale-up. As the economic scale, operation management, RD management, product position and product plan of the cpmpany A all did not achieve the world-class level which were necessary to be a winner in the multi-media industry in 21st century. After all, a company’s execution ability is one of the most important KSF (key success factor). The ability to surpass all competitors in executing the right straties would determine a firm’s ultimate desting. During the past three decades of IC industry, there were many stories about the boxing champion with a single generation product. Regardless of the reasons for failure which may include leader’s characters, wrong decision, over-estimating oneself, or underestimating competitors, the prevention of success inertia on leaders is crucial to an enterprise’s long term survival and development.
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