To find out what happens to the efficiency of a motor as I change the mass it lifts Essay Example

To find out what happens to the efficiency of a motor as I change the mass it lifts Essay When devices transfer energy, only part of it is USEFULLY TRANSFERRED to where it is wanted and in the form that it is wanted. The rest is transferred in some non-useful way and therefore it is wasted. The wasted energy and the useful energy are both eventually transferred to the surroundings. The greater the proportion of energy supplied to a device, THAT IS USEFULLY TRANSFERRED, the more efficient we say the device is.A motor is a device that transfers electrical energy into rotational kinetic energy, which can be used to lift a load. We are going to try and find out how the efficiency of a motor differs as we change the mass that it is required to lift. To do this we will let a small electric motor lift a small load 0.5m off the ground and work out its efficiency, increasing the weight of the load it has to lift by 0.1N each time we run it. Below is a diagram showing how the circuit for this experiment will be set up:As you can see, the motor has to be connected to the ammeter, vo ltmeter and the power supply. The ammeter is placed in series and the voltmeter is placed in parallel. The motor should be clamped tightly onto a stand over one metre off the ground. A piece of string capable of reaching to the floor should be attached to the spindle of the motor, whilst the other end should be attached to the mass hook.When the experiment is run, a stopwatch should begin timing as the power supply is switched on. Whilst the load is being lifted the amps should be read from the ammeter, and the volts from the voltmeter, at the same time. Once the load has been lifted 0.5 metres the timing should be stopped and the data recorded: weight (N), volts (V), amps (A), time (s). The basic raw data from the experiment has now been obtained. This process is repeated twice for each different weight that is lifted, amounting to a total of three runs per change in weight.The purpose of the volts, amps and time readings is to calculate the electrical energy supplied to the motor as it runs, or the total energy input, required later for calculating the efficiency. To calculate the total electrical energy supplied to any device we need to use to use the following formula:ELECTRICAL ENERGY (J) = VOLTS (V) ? AMPS (A) ? TIME (s)The volts, amps and time values were multiplied together to calculate the total electrical energy supplied to the motor in our experiment, as you can see in Table #1 in the Tables of Data section in the column headed Electrical Energy.PredictionThere has to be a weight that a motor is incapable of lifting. So although the motor can do more work by drawing more current, it must become less efficient.I predict that the line of best fit showing the trend on my results graph will look like:In other words, as the mass of its load increases, the efficiency of the motor will decrease by a uniform rate.I predict this because the heavier the weight, the more rotational kinetic energy will be required to turn the motors spindle to lift the weight. An increase in the amount of rotational kinetic energy being transferred must also result in:* An increase in friction affecting the motors moving parts, causing energy to be wasted in the forms of heat and sound.* An increase in the current drawn by the motor. This causes an increase in the resistance of the wires connecting the motor to the power supply, which in turn causes electrical energy to be wasted in the form of heat, lowering the amount of useful energy output, and therefore lowering the motors efficiency.Calculating EfficiencyIn order to find the motors efficiency each time we shall have to calculate several values. Firstly we need the raw data obtained from the experiment:* Weight Lifted (N): the weight the motor is lifting in Newtons.* Height (m): the height in meters that the load is lifted always 0.5m.* Volts (V): the voltage taken from the voltmeter in the circuit.* Amps (A): the number of amps read from the ammeter in the circuit.* Time (t): the time in seconds th at it takes the motor to lift its load 0.5m (50cm).We then need:* Average Electrical Energy (J): the average electrical energy supplied to the motor in Joules.* G.P.E. (= Movement energy) transferred (J): this is the useful energy output we get from the motor in Joules.Which allows us to calculate:* Efficiency (as a value between 0 and 1): the efficiency of the motor based on all the other values.On to a graph I can then plot:* Weight/Newtons LiftedAgainst* EfficiencyRESULTSTables of DataBelow is the data that I used to calculate the motors efficiency, set out in three tables of values, though the calculations used to convert the values are explained later. All of the numbers are given to two decimal places.Note: The calculations for these values will be explained later.Table #1: This table displays the three measurements of electrical energy taken each time the motor was run, and the weights it was required to lift.* = counted as an anomalous result not included when averaging dat aElectrical Energy (J)Weight (N)0.330.310.270.100.75*0.300.360.200.600.590.530.300.490.790.590.400.710.660.910.501.20*0.790.830.601.001.311.240.700.971.32*0.870.801.781.861.44*0.902.532.703.47*1.00Table #2: This table displays the average electrical energy supplied to the motor, the change in G.P.E. of the motor (the useful output) and the efficiency of the motor worked out from the other values.Average Electrical Energy (J)G.P.E.=Movement Energy (J)Efficiency0.300.050.170.480.100.210.570.150.260.620.200.320.760.250.330.810.300.371.180.350.300.920.400.431.820.450.252.620.500.19Table #3: This table displays the values to be plotted onto my results graph: Newtons lifted (weight of load) against efficiency.Newtons Lifted (N)Efficiency0.100.170.200.210.300.260.400.320.500.330.600.370.700.300.800.430.900.251.000.19ANALYSING AND CONCLUDINGBelow is a diagram of a running motor. An explanation of what is happening is given below.1. Electrical energy is supplied to the motor.a. Some of this electrical energy is transferred into the desired movement (rotational kinetic) energy in the motor this is useful energy.b. Some of the electrical energy is transferred into non-useful thermal (heat) and sound energy this is waste energy.2. The waste energy is lost to the surroundings.3. In this case the movement energy is now transferred into gravitational potential energy when the load is lifted.Energy has to be transferred from one form to another, e.g. a hairdryer turns electrical energy from a mains supply into movement energy (the fan), heat energy (to heat the air as it passes through) and sound energy (waste energy). You cannot create it or destroy it. Energy efficiency is how much of the energy you put into an appliance or machine is transferred into the useful energy that you are trying to get out. All machines in the real world have an efficiency that is less than 1 (or 100%). In the case of the motor above, part of the electrical energy put in is transferred into the useful movement energy, however, the machine also transfers its energy into two other waste forms: it creates a little heat and a little sound, caused by the force of friction on its moving parts, as in all machines. The greater the proportion of energy supplied to a device, that is usefully transferred, the more efficient the device.To calculate the efficiency of any device we need to use to the following formula:EFFICIENCY = USEFUL ENERGY TRANSFERRED BY DEVICETOTAL ENERGY SUPPLIED TO DEVICE So in the case of an appliance that coverts 200 joules of electrical energy per second into 150 joules/sec of waste heat energy, 20 joules/sec of useful light energy and 30 joules/sec useful sound energy EFFICIENCY = 50 ? 200 [? 100] = 25%We are trying to find out how the efficiency of a motor changes as we increase the mass it has to lift, so we need to remember that the efficiency of a motor is determined by how much of the electrical energy put in is transferred into useful energy output. Th e useful energy output is gravitational potential energy (GPE). Gravitational potential energy is the ENERGY STORED in an object because of the HEIGHT that the WEIGHT (due to the force of gravity on the object) of the object has been lifted against the force of gravity. If an object can fall, its got gravitational potential energy. The motor we used for our experiment was set up to lift a load 0.5 metres off the ground, in other words, the rotational kinetic energy of the motors spindle is transferred into movement energy (the same type really) as the load lifts, and by the time the weight has been lifted to its full height, all the movement energy will have been converted into gravitational potential energy, as the load can now fall. Because calculating efficiency requires that we know the useful energy output, we shall need a way of calculating the change in GPE of the load once it has been lifted (how far the weight has moved). To calculate the change in gravitational potential e nergy we use the following formula:CHANGE IN GRAVITATIONAL = WEIGHT (N) ? CHANGE IN VERTICAL HEIGHT (m)POTENTIAL ENERGY (J) So in the case of an object weighing 800N undergoing a change in height from 1000m to 3000m above ground, the GPE of the object can be worked out using the formula:CHANGE IN GRAV. POT. ENERGY = WEIGHT ? CHANGE IN VERTICAL HEIGHT= 800N ? (3000m 1000m)= 800N ? 2000m= 1600000JIn our experiment we calculated the GPE (useful energy output) like this:GPE = Weight of motors load in Newtons ? The height it was liftedThe height that the load was lifted remained the same throughout the whole experiment. The weight lifted was incremented by 0.1N to find how this affected the efficiency. The values for gravitational potential energy are displayed in Table #2 in the Tables of Data section, along with the averaged values for the total electrical energy supplied to the motor for each weight change.With these two values: Electrical Energy and Change in GPE, we have the necess ary data needed to calculate the efficiency of the motor. To calculate efficiency, we are required to use the formula:EFFICIENCY = USEFUL ENERGY TRANSFERRED BY DEVICETOTAL ENERGY SUPPLIED TO DEVICEWe can now substitute the two values needed to find the efficiency of our motor with our own data from the experiment, where GPE is the useful energy transferred and Average Electrical Energy is the total energy supplied:EFFICIENCY = GPE (J) ? Average Electrical Energy (J) Giving us the values shown in the column headed Efficiency in Table #2.Graph and Line of Best FitI have drawn a graph showing the results that I have collected. The correlation of the points made it possible to draw a line of best fit onto my graph. By looking at the graph it is possible to determine a clear trend, to find the optimum weight for the motors efficiency, and to spot any anomalous results.What I have found outBy looking at the graph you can see that the line of best fit shows a clear relationship between the weight of the load and the efficiency of the motor: at first, an increase in the weight of the load causes an increase in the motors efficiency. This is only true up until the weight reaches 0.6N, at which point the efficiency peaks, and the efficiency decreases as the weight continues to increase.I now know that the efficiency of a device does not remain constant, it is affected in some way by the work that it has to do.The gravitational potential energy is affected only by the change in mass (or the affects of a change in mass), as both the electrical energy supplied to the motor and the height the load had to be lifted were unaltered by us.In summary, I have found the efficiency of the motor increases whilst lifting relatively light weights, until the highest efficiency value is reached, at which point it begins to decrease.How close is this to my prediction?I predicted that the efficiency of the motor would decrease by a uniform rate as the weight of its load was increased. I p redicted this because I already knew that there must be a weight a motor is incapable of lifting, so its efficiency must be affected by the weight of its load. I also drew a sample of what I thought my line of best fit would look like. This turned out to be partially correct: the real line of best fit clearly shows the efficiency decreasing, but only after an initial increase before reaching 0.6N.My graph backs up these comments. As you can see, the weights tested that were higher than 0.6N produce a clear downwards trend, showing that the efficiency of the motor decreases as the weight of its load is increased.Explaining what I have found outThe first trend why does the efficiency increase?My results graph tells me that an increase in the weight of our motors load results in an increase in efficiency. In other words, the lighter the load, the lower the efficiency (up until 0.6N) why is this? I believe it is due to the fact that a light load does not produce enough tension in the string attaching it to the motor to prevent the string from slipping on the spindle. This would have made it appear on my graph that the motor itself was inefficient, when in fact it was due to the string gripping the spindle improperly. The string slipping was caused by a lack of friction between the string and spindle, resulting in less rotational kinetic energy in the spindle being converted into gravitational potential energy the efficiency of the motor appeared to be lower for lower weights, though in actual fact the energy output was altered by the string slipping, rather than by the efficiency of the motor. The reason for the initial rise in efficiency was that the greater the weight between string and spindle, the more friction, therefore the less slipping occurred, causing the gravitational potential energy (useful energy output) to be higher, regardless of the motors efficiency.The second trend why does the efficiency decrease?My line of best fit shows that increasing th e weight of the motors load beyond 0.6N causes a decrease in efficiency. There are several reasons explaining why an increase in weight causes efficiency to begin decreasing.FrictionFriction is a force that is created whenever two surfaces move or try to move against/across each other, i.e. the moving parts inside an electric motor. Friction always opposes the motion or attempted motion of one surface across another surface.1. Friction between the string and motor spindle: Our motor lifts its load by transferring the electrical energy supplied to it into rotational kinetic energy in the spindle. This winds the string causing the load to move, until all the movement energy has been transferred into gravitational potential energy. If we increase the weight of the load, there is increased tension in the string. This means that there is increased friction where the string is attached to the spindle, in other words, as the spindle turns, there will be more resistance between it and the s tring. The friction between these two surfaces results in heat and a little sound being produced. Because we know that energy can be changed from one form to another but cannot be created or destroyed, we know that the heat and sound energy produced as a result of friction between the string and spindle must therefore have been transferred from the electrical energy inputted. Both heat and sound energy are non-useful to us in this case, therefore the more electrical energy transferred into these waste forms, the greater the apparent reduction in the motors efficiency. It is important to note that it is friction between the spindle and the string, not the efficiency of the motor that is responsible for a decrease in useful energy output in this instance. Though the graph makes it appear that the motors efficiency is decreased, the actual rotational kinetic energy transferred is not affected by this friction (unlike point 2 below), since it is during the intermediate stage, when the e nergy in the spindle is transferred to the load, that the GPE (the useful energy output that we measured) is decreased.2. Friction affecting the moving parts inside our motor: The heavier the weight, the more movement energy the motors spindle will need to have in order to lift the weight. The motor is able to draw more current allowing it to transfer a greater amount of rotational kinetic energy. An increase in the amount of rotational kinetic energy being transferred to the spindle (it has more spin) must also result in an increase in friction affecting the motors moving parts. This friction creates heat and a little sound, which can only have come from the electrical energy supplied to the motor, meaning that energy is wasted, lowering the motors efficiency. Essentially, increasing the weight of the load causes an increase in friction therefore decreasing the efficiency. This explains the decreasing trend we see on my results graph.ResistanceComponents resist the flow of current through them. They have resistance. Electric current is the movement of electrons through a conductor. Metals (e.g. wires) conduct electricity because the atoms do not hold on to their electrons well FREE ELECTRONS are present. The number of mobile electrons that are in a length of wire will produce a certain amount of resistance. This is because when current is passed through the metal the electrons of the particles are given energy allowing them to move. As they travel through the wire, they come in to contact with impurities and other particles, which they bump into. This collision releases some of the electrical energy as heat energy, which is lost to the surroundings. The greater the current, the more electrons flow. The more electrons flow, the more collisions occur, causing a greater amount of the electrical energy to be wasted as heat.In the case of our motor:* When we increase the weight of its load, we increase the amount of work the motor must do, or how much rotational k inetic energy must be transferred.* The motor is able to draw more current to allow it to do more work.* An increase in the current flowing through the motors wires* Causes an increase in waste heat energy* Which can only have come from the electrical energy supplied to the motor in the first place, therefore lowering the efficiency.Vibrating motorWhen motors work hard they have a tendency to vibrate or shake slightly. I believe this is due to conflicting forces inside the motor. When we increased the weight our motor had to lift, we caused these forces to become stronger, therefore the motor would have vibrated or shook more violently. This kinetic energy has to come from somewhere we know it must have been transferred from some other form, as energy cannot just be created It must have come from the electrical energy inputted. I now know that the motor vibrating contributed lowering the efficiency of our motor because an increase in the weight of its load causes more energy to b e transferred resulting in greater conflicting forces, making the motor vibrate, or lose energy as non-useful (waste) kinetic, decreasing the efficiency of the motor.0.6N why does it peak here?My line of best fit peaks at 0.6N, showing this to be the optimum weight for maximum efficiency for this particular motor. This must be the point at which the efficiency stops increasing, and begins to decrease. In other words, the amount of non-useful waste energy stops decreasing, and begins to increase instead. So why does the first trend cease? I believe that a load weighing 0.6N must have produced enough tension in the string, and therefore enough friction to grip the spindle of the motor effectively, allowing the motor to appear at its most efficient. Weights exceeding 0.6N however, caused increased friction affecting all of the motors moving parts, producing two waste forms of energy: heat and a little sound, enough to start lowering the motors efficiency. A large enough increase in re sistance and vibration of the motor were also factors that contributed to a decrease in efficiency.EvaluatingAnomalous ResultsIn my results table containing raw data from our experiment (table #1) I have marked any results that I considered to be anomalous with an asterix (*). These anomalous results were not averaged along with the others.On my graph I have circled what I consider to be a single anomalous result.I consider these results to be reliable because they do not fit in with the rest. Values marked with an * are not the values you would expect to come alongside the other two results from that particular weight tested. For example, take the three original values for electrical energy supplied to the motor when lifting 0.20 Newtons:0.75*0.300.36You can clearly see that 0.75 does not match with the other two results, nor does it fit in with what you might expect it to be, considering the results for other weights it is not part of the trend. It has therefore been marked as an omalous and not including when averaging.Are my results reliable?Indications of a reliable experiment are:1. Results that, when plotted on a graph, form a very clear trend. That is, a line of best fit can easily be determined, and many points fall on it.2. Results that, when plotted on a graph, do not present [many] anomalous results results that do not obey the general trend, which must be discarded/ignored when drawing a line of best fit.3. Results which, when an experiment is repeated, are close together for repeats. E.g. 0.32, 0.33, and 0.34 would be considered reliable in our experiment, as these could be averaged confidently.Bearing these points in mind, it is possible to judge the reliability of my results.When I plotted my final results onto a graph, I had to draw a line of best fit a line that best took account of the trend of all the valid results plotted. My line of best fit was difficult, but by no means impossible to draw. The points did demonstrate a trend, which cou ld easily be determined, but it was not possible to know exactly where to draw the line. The points are far too loosely arranged, and there are to few of them, to provide a strong enough trend to indicate an unarguable line of best fit. An unquestionably reliable set of results could look like this:However, my points merely suggested the shape of a line of best fit. Also, the sketch above shows many points falling directly on the line of best fit. My line of best fit has no points exactly on it, which shows how difficult it was to draw I was required to guess how the line would pass through the gap between two points, etc.The number of anomalous results in the data and on the graph can also show how reliable the results are. My original data for electrical energy in Table #1 contains quite a few anomalous outcomes, indicating that the results of my experiment are dubious. Things that are reliable tend to happen the same way time and time again, so a completely reliable experiment w ould produce very similar results for any repeats. Although my results contain several severely anomalous results, there not a great cause for concern, as the repeats that are not anomalous definitely have relationship to each other. They are close enough to be averaged reliably when the anomalous results have been omitted.As for anomalous results on the graph, there is only one clearly anomalous outcome in my opinion, which is the efficiency for the load weighing 0.8N. If all the results were this scattered, the results would be completely unreliable, but it is easy to recognise as anomalous, and the rest of the points still provide a strong enough pattern as to imply a trend and line of best fit.In summary, my results are quite unreliable, but are still useful and form a good trend. The graph agreed in part with my prediction, and can be explained using science. This shows that the results were fairly accurate and reliable, and although results were present that were obviously inc orrect, they were easy to spot and eliminate. However, the points on my graph were quite scattered and loose showing that my results could have been more accurate.Do I have enough evidence to support a conclusion?In my conclusion I tried to explain the results that I obtained. I believe that I do have enough evidence to support my conclusion, though I would have preferred much more data, and if possible collected in a more accurate way, as this would have made my conclusion far easier to back up the more evidence I have the more sure I can be about the statements I have made, and the larger the amount of data I have to draw upon and use to suggest a trend. This would have made the experiment more worthwhile, and the results far more reliable.I know I have enough results because it was possible to draw a line of best fit, and guess at how the trend would have continued. However, a good example of how I would have liked more evidence is at the very top of my line of best fit, where I have suggested the optimum weight for maximum efficiency of the motor to be. With our current set of results, we can not really be sure where the layout of further points would be around that area, and exactly how the line of best fit should be shaped. For instance, the optimum temperature could have been at a slightly different point, because I was unable to tell exactly when the line of best fit should begin to slope downwards when I drew it.Using science it is also possible for me to suggest what further results would be without doing further experiments. For example, I can predict how the line of best fit would be shaped for lighter weights.How well did I carry out the investigation? -Problems we had that affected the resultsDuring the course of the experiment, we encountered several problems that may well have affected my results.1. The ammeter and voltmeter readings: The ammeter and voltmeter readings were both taken at a given time whilst the motors load was being lifted. Th e displays were fluctuating, showing the readings to be inaccurate. Also, the two people taking the readings found it difficult to judge an accurate value, because of the changeability of the readings.2. Timing for lighter loads: Whilst testing lighter weights, the load was lifted too fast for an accurate measurement of time to be taken, using a simple stopwatch. Therefore the timing would have been inaccurate for some of the lighter weights tested.How fair was our test?I think that our experiment was very close to being as fair as possible, considering the time and equipment possible, because we considered all the things that might have made the results unreliable, even if we could not control them. We made sure to keep all of the runs the same by conducting them under exactly the same conditions, so we can be relatively confident about the accuracy of our results. However, the results are definitely unreliable, though this is mostly due factors beyond our control which shall be lo oked at later. Below are the ways in which we attempted to keep our experiment a fair test, thus increasing the accuracy and usefulness of our results.What we did to make it a fair:Using the same people to take time the experiment and say Now: We made sure to only the same two people for the following two jobs:1. Starting and stopping the stopwatch at the beginning and end of each run so that the time taken for the load to be lifted could be measured.2. Saying Now to indicate to the two other people reading the ammeter and voltmeter when the values should be taken.We made sure not to swap these people around because maintaining the accuracy of our results relied upon both the reaction time and hand-to-eye coordination of these two people. Changing them around would have meant using people with different reaction times, so the test would have been unfair.Conducting the experiment on just one occasion and not repeating on a different day: The whole experiment was conducted on a single occasion. We did not allow the experiment to take place over several days, because the equipment we would have used would have been different, causing unfairness in the results. For example, we almost certainly have used a different motor, which, although it might look similar, would have been slightly different than the first, as they are not precision made. The efficiency for this motor would have different and therefore the data as a whole would have been unreliable.When we first looked at our results graphs, a clearly anomalous result was apparent (this point has been ringed on my graph). Although it was tempting to go back to the experiment, set everything up as close as possible to before and test that weight again, we did not do this. If we had, different equipment would have made our results inaccurate. The resistance of the wires used and of the motor would have been different, as length and amount of rust or damage can alter this. Also, we had no guarantee of using the sa me motor again, which is vital when testing efficiency.Calculating averages and omitting anomalous results: When carrying out the experiment, we made sure to test each weight of load three times, recording the electrical energy input for each repeat. The experiment threw up several anomalous results that can be seen in the raw data. When we calculated an average electrical energy value for every three repeats we omitted any anomalous results. These were results that were unexpected, and gave clear signs that something went wrong during that run, e.g. a hiccup in the motors efficiency, or a misread ammeter value. By omitting these results, I was able to give a fairer set of results, consequently increasing the reliability and ease with which my results could be analysed.Keeping the height from which the load started from the same each time: To keep the amount of electrical energy needing it be transferred into gravitational potential energy the same for every lift, we made sure that the motors load was place at exactly ground level, with the string taut every time the experiment was run. If the load was above ground level, it would have taken less energy to be transferred to lift it 0.5m, giving an unfair picture of the efficiency. We made sure that the sting was taut each time, because if it had been slack, the motor spindle would have had to complete more rotations in order to wind the string and lift the weight.What may have caused anomalous results?When we conducted the experiment everything went relatively well and according to plan. We did everything we could to keep it a fair test and tried to control all the factors that might have made the results inaccurate. However, there were many things that could have caused inaccuracy that were beyond our control, some of which were:1. Reaction time/human error: The accuracy of the results relied heavily on the consistency of the timings, carried out by someone stopping and starting a stopwatch when the power was turned on and when the load had been lifted 0.5m. However, it is impossible to time an experiment completely accurately using such basic equipment, and without letting human error affect the results. Slight (but nonetheless important) imprecisions will have occurred when timing how long it took the motor to lift its load, causing the results to be inaccurate and unreliable.2. The way in which the string wrapped around the spindle: The string could be seen winding round the motors spindle in different ways. This would have affected the amount of friction between string and spindle, which could have both lowered the efficiency or increased it.3. Motor efficiency being altered of its own accord: The motor itself may have caused anomalous results. Sometimes it seemed to run very slow, at other times very fast, regardless of what weight it was lifting. This could have been due to the motor drawing too much current, or internal parts functioning irregularly or not as they should.4. Ammet er and voltmeter readings: The ammeter and voltmeter readings were fluctuating, so it is doubtful if they are accurate. This could also mean that the motor alters the amount of current it draws as it lifts its load. This means that a reading taken at one given point will not give an exactly fair representation of the electrical energy being inputted. In an attempt to combat this problem, we read the ammeter and voltmeter when the load had been lifted exactly half way. This however, could have caused the results to be inaccurate for a different reason, as it relied upon someone saying Now when the load had been lifted 0.25m off the ground. This means the results will have been affected by human error and reaction time how soon after

The Walt Disney Company Research Paper Example

The Walt Disney Company Research Paper Example The Walt Disney Company Paper The Walt Disney Company Paper Disney is one of the most famous names in the animation industry, known for providing entertainment directed to adults and children alike; with international theme parks and a world-class animation studio and business franchise, the company nearly dominates the industry. Famous names such as Mickey Mouse began with Disney, and were the foundation of a company that has now branched out into several entertainment studios, theme parks, products and other media productions. E-commerce has changed the world we live in today. No longer does he or she have to get the car and drive to the store, now the store comes to him or her. From and organizations view-point, development of and e-commerce site can be very difficult to effectively execute. Hours of careful planning and research is needed, because without planning he or she could potentially launch a site which could ruin his or hers chances of ever having a successful e-commerce site. If the site is not successful on the first go, customers probably will not be returning for future purchases. Disney has one of the most successful e-commerce sites out there, and this did not happen without careful planning. With the click of a button Disney can be brought to his or her doorstep. Things like, advance tickets, clothing, interactive games and videos, toys, books and everything else Disney has to offer. How does Disney get he or she to purchase these items? By focusing on customers needs. The first step in developing an effective e-commerce site is by listening to the customer, which for Disney has never been a problem since they have always been devoted to making people happy. Questions like, how can Disney save the customer time and money? What are the customers biggest frustrations with e-commerce sites? These, along with many others, are questions, which need answers before building an e-commerce site. Disneys e-commerce developers also needed to do lots of research on how e-commerce sites function. Things like shopping carts, shipping, payment options, security, search engines, and managing the content. Knowing how these things function and ways to improve upon them will reduce later frustrations. Disney must also stay update on the latest technology, and what their competitors are offering. E-commerce and the Internet have changed the way people do business, and with Disneys careful planning they have evolved successfully with this change. Technology is also a factor in how successful a company will be, and Disney must sure to stay up-to-date with technological advances. The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to be one of the worlds leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world.(disney.com) The Walt Disney Company is an Internet pioneer. The planning stage that Disney uses is very well organized in a way that allowed them to launch two of the worlds first major, branded consumer Web sites, ESPN.com and Disney.com, in 1995. Some of the many technology firsts Walt Disney Incorporated Group (WDIG) has achieved include: First Web property to serve over one million pages in its first year (1995) First Internet publishing system (1995) First Internet authentication/registration system (1996) First dynamic content architecture system (1996) First Internet infrastructure management systems (1997) Â  First massively multiplayer online game for kids and families (2002) First cached video delivery system (2003) Each year Disney continues to lead the industry in technology by acquiring companies and being creative with their ideas for the future. Disneys Internet technology places importance on there continuing ability to grow and improve their technology leadership position. The most popular Web properties experience very high volumes of traffic and the technology infrastructure. Disney is the owner and operator of one of the worlds largest Internet infrastructures, with data centers in Seattle and Orlando: More than 2,000 servers handling nearly three billion page views per month Available peak bandwidth of more than eight gigabits per second and well over three gigabits per second sustained Disney Connection is a rich collection of Disney broadband entertainment for families. It includes a regularly updated slate of games, activities and videos, as well as selects access to premium offerings such as Disneys Blast, an ad-free online entertainment service for kids, and Disneys Toontown Online. In addition, the new Digital Showcase provides videos from Disney each week, including cartoon shorts, music videos and movie trailers. (http://disney.com) Disney is focused on its technological objectives of operating better, faster and more efficiently. Disney also provides centralized strategic leadership and operational management and a world-class technology platform for all of The Walt Disney Companies Internet properties. Disney also directly operates Disney.com worldwide, FamilyFun.com, Movies.com, Disney Auctions and the wireless businesses for all. Cultural diversity is becoming the norm in many workplaces, with one out of every four Americans now identifying themselves as a minority, according to the 2000 census-up from one in five in 1990. This shifting cultural landscape requires both managers and their employees to rethink how they work with others. (Drumrie, 2005). Founded in 1923 as a cartoon studio, The Walt Disney Company has grown to become a diversified, international family entertainment and media company.(www.corporate.disney.go.com/careers). A culturally diverse staff is something that the Disney Corporation takes seriously. Starting at the top of the company with the board of directors and the management team, the company has incorporated men, women, and a diverse group of other talented individuals. The company believes in order to foster a culture of creativity; a diverse and innovative team must be in place in every area. Tina Kashlak is the Senior Diversity Representative in Orlando, Florida. She is responsible to provide support in the strategic planning of the professional recruitment team and to help increase the diversity candidate pool.(www.monsterhr.com/qanda/kashlak). The Disney Corporation created a Disney Institute to teach and inspire other business. This is based on their great management style and success. The four functions of management in a diverse group foster a team environment. Instead of the top executives coming up with the planning, Disney uses its young imaginations. For example: Disney uses its Imagineering department to host an imaginations competition to promote diversity for university students to create, design and develop Disney products and earn scholarship money. Students are encouraged to show their creativity by using their technical, artistic, or writing skills to design a ride, attraction, hotel or land within an existing Disney theme park or resort. Or create an entirely new experience; a theme park, resort, themed restaurant, or something completely brand new. (http://disney.go.com/disneycareers/imaginations/home/html). The students do the planning for project and then move into how they will organize the project or ideas. The finalists in both the individual and team categories are brought to the Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale, California, where they formally present their idea to a panel of Walt Disney Imagineering judges. (http://disney.go.com/disneycareers/imaginations/home.html). The third part of the management process, which is leading is what the actual management team of the Disney Corporation achieves by empowering their employees. Disney accomplishes this by job rotation every three months, cross utilization during peak seasons where salaried and office personnel from behind the scenes work shifts in areas with increased attendance, and lastly through task forces. This is where teams responsible for implementing a project or idea, such as a new attraction may spend up to 100% of their time. Lastly, the controlling stage is where Disney monitors its progress thru increased sales and makes adjustments to products etc. as necessary. In conclusion there are many internal and external factors that contribute to an organizations success. To assure the success he or she must know how the four functions of management affect these factors. The Walt Disney Corporation has obviously used these functions of management to become one of the most successful corporations today and is used a model for other organizations.

Homeostasis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Homeostasis - Essay Example The excretion of these hormones from the kidneys stops when intake is enough and diluted urine is excreted. The homeostatic mechanism at times acts as the sole surviving mechanism of the body. The presence of homeostasis in our body gives us the freedom to work in any weather, day or night, hot or cold, dry or stormy. If there was no homeostasis, we could not have been able to regulate our body temperature. That would have resulted in the hibernation of our species during winters like many other living things. The regulation and adoption of our body's internal environment according to the external environment has provided us with the freedom to work in summers when we could preserve water by excreting concentrated urine, work in winters by preserving heat by peripheral vasoconstriction and erection of skin hair which trap a layer of air preserving body heat. When the body is pushed beyond the limits of homeostatic control, cellular death occurs such as frost bite that occurs in extre me cold or stroke that could occur in extreme dehydration when homeostasis fails due to the extremes of temperature. Maintenance of homeostasis is especially important in a developing embryo since the developing organs require a perfect internal environment to grow in. also, the metabolic enzymes require specific conditions to function and produce the energy required by the embryo. Absence or failure of homeostatic mechanism in developing embryo could lead to in-vitro death or abnormal development and the new born may not be liable to life.

Management of risk falls among the elderly Essay

Management of risk falls among the elderly - Essay Example The need to address the issue of falls among the elderly is therefore an important consideration. This paper shall discuss the management of risk falls among the elderly, specifically carrying out a critical analysis of the main theoretical and clinical concepts/principles and relevance to clinical care. Following a balanced and evidenced critique, this paper will develop recommendations for clinical practice and/or educational development of nursing practitioners in relation to the topic. Search strategy An initial internet search was carried out via Google Scholar using the following search words and specific combinations: falls elderly; fall risk elderly; management falls elderly; impact falls elderly. Literature dated from 2001 onwards was further evaluated for inclusion into this study. A search of the following databases was also carried out: Cochrane, Medline, and PubMed using the same search words specified above. The inclusion criteria covered elderly patients 65 years and a bove, with or without history of falls, with or without history of mental health illness including dementia, with or without history of osteoarthritis or other diseases affecting mobility, gait, or balance, with or without history of stroke rendering paralysis, and those undertaking any form or medication which may cause dizziness or disorientation. The following inclusion criteria are possible contributory elements to falls among the elderly and any of these elements present may also pose equal risk to the elderly patient. The credibility of the authors, including publication, and peer-review of the chosen literature was evaluated. Chosen studies were then specifically assessed in terms of relevance. Contextual information Falls as incidents caused by the aging process are often associated with diseases like Parkinson’s disease, musculoskeletal issues, cognitive degradation, and impairment of sensory systems (Carter, et.al., 2002). Incidents of falls often increase as people get older and as the elderly continue to advance in age. It is also one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality among the elderly (Rubenstein and Josephson, 2006). Morbidity from falls includes major injuries and fractures, limited mobility, as well as functional health decline and permanent disability (Wolf, et.al., 2003). A common effect of falls is hip fracture and some of these falls often lead to fractures, especially among the older adults (Moreland, et.al., 2004). These falls are considered preventable and much interest has been directed to these methods of prevention, especially in relation to the risk factors which exacerbate these risks (Barnett, et.al., 2003). Various studies have been carried out evaluating these fall risks and preventive measures for these falls. Most of these studies indicate that the risk for falls increase with the advancing age of individuals, with higher risks seen among those in the over 60 age range (Li, et.al., 2005). Studies also reveal that fall risks are often associated with different factors including history of past falls, cognitive impairment, impairment in the performance of activities of daily living, weakness of muscles or bones in the lower extremities due to disability, impaired gait or balance, dizziness, arthritis, history of stroke, poor eyesight, low body mass index, use of psychotropic medications causing dizziness or disorientation (American Geriatrics Society, et.al., 2001). A

Rewrite lecture review Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Rewrite lecture review - Assignment Example The suggestion that were made to contact people and groups were really amazing because they would rarely cross one’s mind. The suggestions included the social media group page for Star Trek fan conference or rare car owners club. Twitter is the main social media site that is being used by the police to instantly communicate with the public. However, a few of police officers make use of other social media platforms such as Google+ to ensure efficient and service to the neighbourhoods they are offering security. Other than using social media as a tool for communication, police are also monitoring it for criminal of offensive activity. In my view, social media can be a very effective tool in law enforcement if not misused by the police workers. The administrators of law enforcement must establish proper controls over the use of social media to increase the benefits and reduce incidents of misuse by their staff. In doing so, the potential of social media in police force may fully be realized. Toin Pijnenburg works as a manager for change also coaches a number social media sites such as Prezi. Mr. Pijnenburg is the owner of Toin XXL. He is always startled by change and constantly seeks it mainly through putting himself in situations that are inconvenient and assisting others in overcoming change. He made an introduction on the media in the past few decades and its shift to the internet in class. According to him, the present day objectives are changing in their aims. In the past they had to be relevant and achievable, but today, these qualities have been taken for granted. While lecturing, he suggested that the pace of modern society can be reflected better by ambitious and revolutionary. He used Wikipedia as an example on how the audience can assist in creating and developing a web site. Wikipedia unlike other mediums or emails that may require extra services

Effect of Dispossession on Aboriginal Spirituality

Effect of Dispossession on Aboriginal Spirituality There remains a continuing effect of dispossession on Aboriginal spirituality in relation to the stolen generations. Aboriginal spirituality is based on the encompassment of the Dreaming, the inextricable link with the land, totems and sacred sites and involves ceremonies, story-telling, kinship roles and responsibilities and a strong sense of cultural identity. The stolen generations involved children being forcibly removed from their families and communities and put into institutionalised missions and camps run by both the state government and the Christian Church. It was the cause of dispossession that involved colonisation, missionisation, segregation, assimilation and self-determination policies which significantly impacted Aboriginal spirituality; past, present and future. These were deliberate, calculated policies of the state and are evident in the first YouTube video, Rabbit Proof Fence Stolen Generations (March 24, 2009), where the white official points to the authorisatio n paper, this is the law, and physically removes the three native Aboriginal girls from their mother showing signs of inhumane brutality. Through these policies, Aboriginal land, spirituality, culture and Dreaming were lost never mention Aboriginality. This, along with the crying scenes in video two, Rabbit Proof Fence Documentary forced removal scene, shows the emotional impact that it had on the actors as well as on all the victims of the Stolen Generation. This video depicts the traumatic psychological effects the stolen generation era had on the actors themselves, who emotionally broke down into tears having to act in these roles. This illustrates how the loss of family and spiritual ties caused such devastation. This disconnection from the families, communities and thus, from the elders resulted in the inability to pass down necessary knowledge to the next generation that is needed to keep Aboriginal spirituality holistic, living and dynamic as there is a strong need for oral teaching and learning. The prohibition of practicing Aboriginal spirituality led to the loss of religious traditions, culture, language, ceremonies and identity, was also evident in video three, History in the making: Pain of Stolen Generation lives on, at the age of three, Helen Moran was given a new identity and a new family. Since these children were physically separated from their elders who held their spiritual knowledge along with being physically separated from the land and their sacred sites, there was a loss of identity, from their Aboriginal gender and kinship roles and responsibilities, totemic connection to sacred sites and the inability to perform ceremonies. Helen Moran states, we lost everybody, we lost each other, we lost our grandparents, we lost our whole family, they changed our names, they changed our whole heritage, our identity. This had a continuing effect on Aboriginal spirituality as it broke up families, communities and led to many social and emotional problems. As a result of the continuing effect of dispossession, Aboriginal spirituality has been destroyed overtime, driving them to negative, on-going, long-term problems such as alcoholism, drug abuse, lack of educational achievement, economic opportunity, lowered living standards,; lowered life expectancy, and higher infant mortality rate. Helen Morans personal experience epitomises her emotional trauma the worst thing for me is the idea that this man (Helen Morans biological father) died with his children hating him and blaming him, you lose your children, you struggle through life, mental illness, addiction and you die a lonely sad death with nobody around you. Helen concluded, I wish I had the chance to learn the truth which exhibits how the loss of truth and Aboriginal spirituality had a continuous, effect as Aboriginal family members, victims of the Stolen Generation, still search for their true cultural identity and heritage in the quest to find their spirituality. In summation, such dispossession, violent and physical removal of native Aboriginal children from their parents demolished Aboriginal spirituality since the Dreaming, kinship roles and responsibilities, cultural identity, heritage, language and traditions were lost with disconnection from their elder generations. This drove modern Aboriginals to overwhelming social and emotional problems. The relationship between Aboriginal spirituality and religious traditions require the process of reconciliation. There is a strong need for reconciliation between Aboriginal spirituality and Christians due to the initial contact between the two; full of racism, classism, oppression, inequality, injustice, hate, fear and division. Aboriginal people initially beared the brunt of violence, where they were forced and threatened violently to forget their aboriginal culture, traditions and language. Instead they forcibly were made to integrate into nominal Christianity attending Church services, Sunday school and singing hymns. Western Christianity had a negative impact where falsehoods and heresies were taught to Aboriginal people, for example, The Hamitic Curse, condemning all dark-skinned humans to eternal inferiority. These falsehoods had such an immense impact that most Aboriginals voluntarily denied their Aboriginal heritage, identity, culture, traditions and language because they we re forced to believe in the falsehoods and were concerned with their personal sins rather than the institutionalised sin conducted against them. The awareness that these negative experiences were immoral was the catalyst for the process of reconciliation. A step towards hope for Aboriginal victims to restore their spirituality can be seen in the source, taken from the Lutheran Church of Australia. Aboriginal artwork in the form of a circle is positioned in the centre of the cross to illustrate the continuous existence of Aboriginal spirituality in the heart of those who converted to Lutheranism. If reconciliation is achieved, the future encompasses more hope for these victims. The source is an expression of Aboriginal theology which is the reconciled relationship between Aboriginal spirituality and modern Christianity. The sun rays in the image symbolises the cross significance and how it permeates throughout Aboriginal spirituality and emphasises the need of reconciliation. The symbol of symmetry epitomises the reconciled coexistence of the two religions and the hope for continuous reconciliation. There are some Aboriginal theologians that are part of the liberal tradition. Rev. Dijimiyini Gordarra and Pastor Cecil Grant from Churches of Christ individually helped reconcile Aboriginal spirituality with the Uniting Church in 1970 by contextualising the gospel for Aboriginal people. In 1985, Rev. Arthur Malcolm, the first Aboriginal Anglican Assistant Bishop in Australia was deeply committed to reconciliation and thus, counselled and nurtured Aboriginal people throughout their painful experiences, hopes and visions. The Catholic Church attempted acts of rec onciliation when Pope John Paul II visited Alice Springs in 1986 and stated There is the need for just and proper settlement that lies unachieved in Australia. Aboriginal story-telling theology is another pathway to allow Aboriginal victims to remember their Aboriginal spirituality as well as embrace their Christianity. In this way, Aboriginal people reconcile their heritage with their Christianity as they are taught Biblical scriptures through Dreaming Stories which makes the gospels more meaningful and relevant to the Aboriginal way of life. The reconciliation and unity between Christianity and Aboriginal spirituality can be seen in the source where the cross is made using traditional Aboriginal witchetty grubs. There have been many other movements towards reconciliation. The Uniting Church and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christian Congress organised an exchange program called About Face, where 150 non-Indigenous people aged from 18 to 30 lived in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. As a sign of reconciliation, a friendship was built when Aboriginal Pastor Ricky Manton and his wife Kayleen were invited to St. Augustines Anglican Church to perform a service. Leaders from many religious traditions gathered in order to fight against Howard Governments attack on the Wik legislation. Other religious traditions, like Judaism and Islam, have assisted in the reconciliation process. A Jewish couple, Tom and Eva Rona, funded the Rona-Tranby project that recorded oral history with the help of Aboriginal Elder Eliza Kennedy. The Muslim community in Australia is most supportive of Aboriginal reconciliation on spiritual, moral, humanitarian and prudential pragmatic ground  [ 1]  is a claim of Islamic assistance in the process of reconciliation. Many faiths like Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism have also assisted in the process of reconciliation. This is evident in The Week Of Prayer For Reconciliation that began in 1993 where they shared the same goal of reconciliation exhibited through dedication to prayer, thought and reflection on acts of unity. In conclusion, there have been many efforts to encourage the process of reconciliation between Aboriginal spirituality and religious traditions and there needs to be continuous support in this subject. The symmetrical elements in the source, taken from the Lutheran Church of Australia, are powerful examples of how artwork has symbolised the co-existence of both traditions. Steps towards reconciliation in the form of proactive movements also provide hope for the victims who had suffered the horrendous effects of spiritual deprivation. Ecumenical developments and interfaith dialogue are of immense significance in Australia. Ecumenical developments are movements that promote cooperation, discussion and unity between different Christian denominations, focusing on what brings sects together, rather than what pulls them apart. Such movements are important to Australia as different Christian denominations unite to solve Australian youth, spiritual, environmental, social and justice issues, spreading peace and harmony. Interfaith dialogue is the cooperative communication between different religious traditions and their adherents. These promoted understanding, peace and a strong sense of belonging between many religious traditions. Non-denominational approach is a method of ecumenical development where it focuses on ignoring differences between different Christian denominations. Such movements can be of great importance to Australia. For example, the Australian college of Theology (ACT) strengthens Australias education system. ACT began in 1898 when Anglicans within Australia gathered resources to produce tertiary courses and exams at every Anglican college. It was linked to universities across Australia and was credited by the NSW Higher Education Board. It became non-denominational when there was more non-Anglican than Anglican students. It was a strong organisation due to the ecumenical movement which increased its efficiency and offered a common program amongst people. Other examples of a non-denominational approach towards ecumenical developments include youth associations such as Girls Brigade and Young Mens Christian Association. Such organisations builds trust between the different denominations involve d. This trust would result in a community that is based on trust, kindness and friendship, creating a stronger witness to the community. Ecumenical developments, in the form of interdenominational approaches, are increasingly evident and significant in Australian culture. Such approaches are those that are collaborative and the goal is to provide opportunities for negotiation between different Christian denominations. This is important to Australia as it creates a sense of unity, belonging, commonality and acceptance on many levels. It begins when Christians from different denominations interact with each other and, hence, leading to communal discussion. An example of this is the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and Reconciliation. This is conducted with a united goal to reach a state of complete reconciliation, relieving many denominations from tension, violence and unnecessary conflict. Many denominations hope for denominational dialogue to act as a facilitator to develop new relationships by exchanging ministers to perform services. Such exchanges are known as pulpit exchanges. Christmas Bowl Appeal, Force TEN and the House Of Welcome are other instances of ecumenical movements where many denominations unite to build fundraising programs. These assist Australia by providing it with a positive reputation in charitable work, These projects show how the kindness of Australians can make a practical difference in the lives of people very far from our shores  [2]  Some of these projects, like House of Welcome, are vital in Australia as they support refugees that have been newly released in Australia by providing them with accommodation and employment. Through these charitable organisations, different denominations bond together and form strong relationships. Ecumenism is important in Australia at a family level. It promotes family through interchurch marriages. This is seen when both the Catholic and Uniting Church composed an agreement on interchurch marriages as a gift to the church. Ecumenism is also helpful in reducing duplication of material, which in turn increases efficiency. This is seen in The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), where the Catholic and Anglicans prepared doctrine works on common beliefs of the faith. In 2001, the Catholic and Protestant churches united in Australia for the National Church Life Survey where 500,000 adherents from 20 different denominations actively participated in. Such union encourages tolerance and reduces aggression and violence. It in the larger scheme of things reduces racial and spiritual discrimination and attack. Australia is a multicultural and multifaith country and, hence, would benefit from embracing unity of different denominations within Christianity. Deeper ecumenical developments are those that embrace differences. With these movements, comes appreciation and recognition of uniqueness in order to enrich the relationship and focus on commonalities, like the common belief in one supreme God. The deepest level of ecumenism involves overcoming differences and primarily aiming for unity between different denominations. These achievements ultimately bring social justice, peace, harmony and understanding in Australia. The common need and view of religion around the world has resulted to an increase in the search for cooperation and unity since 1945 in Australia. Interfaith dialogue is even more important than ecumenism since the people uniting are separated by greater differences. Since WWII, interfaith dialogue has allowed Australia as a whole to change its attitude towards other religious traditions other than Christianity. It has allowed Christianity and its adherents to recognise their faults and mistreatment against other religious traditions errors at best and works of devils at worst. Interfaith dialogue assists in opening interaction between different people and maintains a multicultural Australian society. It also builds harmony in Australian context as it aims to achieve common goals between religious groups. Interfaith dialogue also addresses division, concern and any ongoing religious conflict such as the Cronulla Riots. It supports and embraces differences. Interfaith dialogue depicts the desire of Australias religious traditions to engage with each other and with the world as it is extremely important to do so in the 21st century. There is strong evidence of interfaith dialogue in Australia and this has been depicted in acts of cooperation between religious traditions in Australia. In 2001, Anzac Day, Christian ministers and Buddhist monks both took part in the services at St. Marys Cathedral. This encouraged unity among Australians as they honoured soldiers in the heart of Sydneys CBD. The Victorian Jewish-Christian Dialogue Committee, The Muslim-Christian Council which together prayed for peace in Ambon, Indonesia and the Multifaith Religious Services Centre which ran at the Sydney Olympics are other examples of interfaith dialogue. Leaders of Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and other communities together assisted with the $2 million Grifith University Multi-faith Centre showing how unity expresses great strengths and benefits to the Australian community. It brought peace in Sydney 2001, after the terrorist attack, where Muslim, Hindu, Buddhists and many denominations of Christians united at a multifaith prayer vigil.

Abortion Pill Essay -- essays papers

Abortion Pill 1.Problem Statement Approval of the abortion pill RU-486, also recognized as mifepristone, has put abortion back into the spotlight. This has stirred up controversial issues of reproductive rights in America, and a growing concern for the potential impact of RU-486 on the well being of our society's morals and values. 2.Facts and Analysis A Brief History Mifepristone, formerly known as RU-486, provides women with a medical alternative to surgical abortion. Mifepristone is an antiprogesterone drug that blocks receptors of progesterone, a key hormone in the establishment and maintenance of human pregnancy. Mifepristone induces spontaneous abortion when administered in early pregnancy and followed by a dose of misoprostol, a prostaglandin. Researchers have discovered many potential uses for mifepristone beyond pregnancy termination. Uses include treatment of breast cancer, Cushing's syndrome, endometriosis, glaucoma, meningioma, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, uterine fibroids, and the induction of labor. In very low doses, mifepristone may even be used to prevent pregnancy as a method of emergency contraception within. In higher doses, of course, it can be used to terminate pregnancy. Other existing emergency contraception cannot be used to terminate pregnancy because they are not abortifacients. Mifepristone offers women another choice for abortion. It causes a miscarriage and can be used earlier than surgical abortion. Medical abortion is totally non invasive, meaning there's no surgery, and no anesthesia is necessary. Like everything in life, there are some down sides to the use of RU-486. One can assume that it will make abortion easier and more available for a lot of women. However, mifepristone doesn't get rid of all of the discomfort that can go along with an abortion. Similar to a miscarriage, it can cause side effects including nausea, vomiting, bleeding, and heavy cramping. If the pills don't work, a surgical abortion will be necessary. Unintentional pregnancies statistically bring a host of economic, emotional, and physical ills to mother and baby. About half of the unintended pregnancies in Washington State are aborted, according to the state Department of Health. That rate is consistent with the rest of the US. Even though there is a demand for abortion providers, man... ...hese questions. The number of abortions that result in the approval of RU-486 shouldn't be our main concern. If there is a reason to be concerned, it should be on the ethical and moral issues that stem from the reproductive rights of women in America. Without question, abortion is an extremely controversial issue in today's society. However, the different attitudes of abortion activists are more important factors than that which involve the actual abortion procedure. The focal issue of this paper is not to evaluate whether or not abortion should be legal, but rather the question of RU-486 being legal - and readily available. If women have been granted the choice to terminate a pregnancy, then RU-486 simply provides them with a choice on the procedure they prefer to use. The approval of RU-486 will not vastly impact the landscape of abortion in America. Though nearly every individual in America has a personal opinion on abortion rights, abortion remains an issue between a woman, her creator and her physician. As long as abortion is legal, women will now have RU-486 as an option when making the choice that is best for them. Bibliography: www.findit.com

Formal Letter to a Producer Arguing About the Acceptance

Dear Producer, I address you on behalf of the committee on what should be done about the book ‘World Wonders’. The committee would like to revoke the book from stores, but as you can see the committee has perplexed feelings about the matter as when interviewing the editor, he supplied us with the intentions for creating the book. The following letter contains a dispute on which you, Sir, decide to put your faith in. The views of the interviewer are as follows; the educational message is misleading as well as feeding an un-presidential thrust for this kind of precarious information.Children and adults who are engorged in these books tend to do out of the ordinary stunts to get in the book and get famous. Often this leads to danger on one’s self and others which include animals and other personals. Sometimes these records lead to death, heart diseases, obesity, anorexia and other diseases that can inflict the body in some way. Most records that require skill and ris k are underestimated for those which have been won by no effort and have been treated equal. The editor stressed out his argument that his book is acceptable in society as an educational material.He defines that the book has an educational motive as there is not many resource materials of that sort. He also states that it recognizes the human endeavors and their limits. Records that inflict human life leading to an unhealthy or life threatening consequences are immediately stopped before any damage is done. As for the records that focus on human endeavors are recognized greater than others as a team of professional judges trial the records to see if they fit the criteria and if not they are not published in the book.In addition to his argument, the editor states that the book could serve as the perfect gift as it holds great educational references. In all I favor the option of keeping this humanitarian resource in the market as information will be taken as knowledge and without know ledge there will be no future. Human development should be remarked to state the limits of mankind and what are our weaknesses as well as our strengths. Please state your decision as soon as possible. Regards, Bob Hatfeild

20 Email Marketing Best Practices That Will Improve Results

20 Email Marketing Best Practices That Will Improve Results Emails are incredibly powerful. A third of customers  have visited a website or purchased something just from seeing an email in their inbox without ever actually opening the email. That’s the power of email! Whether you’re running a blog, selling products online, or collecting sales leads, everybody wants a healthy email list. But how do you make that email list an engaged one? By following best practices. Consider the following 20 tips your complete guide to an excellent email marketing program that boosts open and click rates, reduces churn, and increases your subscriber lifetime value! Let’s get started. 20 Email Marketing Best Practices That Will Improve ResultsImplement Email Best Practices With Three Free Templates This post is packed with actionable advice. To help you execute your email marketing even better, weve included these three free templates: Email Marketing Calendar: Plan all your email content in advance and get more organized. Email Subject Line Template: Make writing subject lines easy with these simple fill-in-the-blank templates. Its a great complement to the Email Subject Line Tester. Email Subject Line A/B Test Template: Record results from A/B tests and refine your messaging over time.20 #email #marketing best practices + 3 free templates = success.Infographic: Best Practices, At a Glance. Email marketing is an art and science. Navigate its complexities successfully by following these 20 simple best practices. Check out this infographic rounding up 20 top #email #marketing best practices:1. Send to Yourself First. This one feels like a no-brainer, but when you reflect on how few people actually proofread their own emails, you quickly realize it isn't. Always send yourself a test email first to ensure that: There are no typos The images show up The format looks great on both your desktop and smartphone All the links work There is nothing glaringly wrong with the email Double-check both the HTML and plain-text versions. Always send email newsletters to yourself first.2. Do NOT Spam. This is another no-brainer, but it’s so important it bears repeating: do not spam. Spamminess can refer to poor judgment within the email itself - irrelevant content, all-uppercase subject lines, etc. - but it mainly refers to how you collect and engage with your email subscribers. Buying email lists or signing people up without them expressly opting in first is an absolute no no. Do not do this. If you think you can get away with this, know that you can’t. Purchased lists are associated with extremely high unsubscribe and spam rates. Get too many of those, and you could get banned from your email marketing provider. Other best practices include: adding your physical address somewhere in the email (the footer is a good option). giving people a way to unsubscribe (most reputable email marketing providers include this by default). Leave out either of these, and you are breaking anti-spam laws. Are you unknowingly breaking anti-spam email marketing laws? Find out (and read 19 more best...3. Make it Easy to Subscribe. Since you won’t be purchasing email lists, you want to make it as easy and as enticing as possible for people to subscribe to your email. Here are some ideas: Embed signup CTAs throughout your website or blog. Include a pre-checked checkbox besides any other form where people enter their email address (such as a member registration or checkout page). Add a signup form to your Facebook page. Regularly tweet out a link to your subscribe page. Send your first email within 24 hours of subscribing, if not immediately. With human attention spans officially  shorter than that of goldfish, you can’t risk people forgetting what they signed up for. Make it easy for subcribers to get on your #email list.4. Use a Double Opt-in. Because sharing your email address has become so commonplace these days, people don’t always realize they’re signing up to get overloaded with emails. This is why most experts recommend a double opt-in process. A double opt-in  involves sending a person a confirmation email after they sign up, letting them know that they signed up and requiring them to click a button to confirm they indeed want to stay signed up. Keep your double opt-in email short and sweet like Haute Hijab does below, emphasizing the confirmation button and placing it above-the-fold. Below that button, include validation of why signing up for your email is a good idea: it’s the best way to avoid FOMO on your best offers and freshest content. Here's the confirmation email button: Here's why email marketers should use a double opt-in.5. Schedule Smart. The best day and time to send your emails depends on your unique customer set. However, you can make some educated guesses using the research others have already done.   helpfully aggregated studies from the top email providers to conclude that the best day and time to send emails is Tuesdays around 10am. Start there, and then test and optimize based off your own data. Remember that these times are specific to your recipient’s time zones, which may or may not match yours. Depending on the size of your customer base, you may segment your list based on time zones (more on segmentation later). Recommended Reading: What 10 Studies Say About the Best Time to Send Email 6. Develop a Cadence. Speaking of timing, how frequently do you want to send your emails? Much of your email will be automated based on your user’s actions (e.g. double opt-in confirmations, order confirmation and shipping notifications), but you want to touch subscribers at least once a month. To support this goal, brainstorm an email calendar that corresponds to your content marketing, event marketing, and other promotional calendars. This helps keep you sane while ensuring you stay in touch. Plan sales emails and product launch announcements ahead of time. Help people prepare for the holidays by emailing gift guides and encouraging them to make reservations now vs. later. Not sure how much is too much? If you start sending more emails and witness a downward trend in your open and click rates but an uptick in your unsubscribes, that’s a telltale sign that you’re sending too much. Why is developing a consistent cadence important for #email #marketing?7. Give People Options. Of course, rather than guessing for them, you can always let people choose the frequency themselves. When Hubspot started offering separate newsletter subscriptions options for their blog, organized by frequency and topics, their subscriber churn rate went way down: Other ideas include: Letting people opt for â€Å"less† email Letting people â€Å"pause† their subscription for 30 or 90 days Sometimes people care about your brand but they’re simply overwhelmed or taking a healthy hiatus from email. Help them stay in touch by letting them choose the frequency of your emails. Recommended Reading: 21+ Easy Ways to Build an Email List That Will Skyrocket By 140% in 1 Year 8. Focus on Your Subject Line... Subject lines are critically important. These are the headline that convince a subscriber your email is worth opening. That means you should do everything within your power to set yourself up for success here. Research and tinker to find the two best options possible, then A/B test among those with a small subset of your subscribers. Then, repeat this process for every single email you send. Things that do well in subject lines include: The recipient’s name A tasteful emoji or two 30-50 characters tops Action verbs A clear and irresistible value proposition that matches the content of your email Consistency (Some emails, like blog newsletters, perform best with the same subject line everytime - it helps readers know what to expect so they keep an eye for it in their inbox) Things that don’t do so great are: Spammy keywords (urgent, buy now, win, free) All uppercase letters Typos Overuse of emojis Deceptive subject lines that don’t match the email content (these lead to unhappy subscribers who unsubscribe and grow to resent you as a brand) Remember: the goal of your subject line is to get the people who care about the content within your email to open it, not to get opens at any cost. Editor's Note: You can also use 's Email Subject Line Tester to optimize every one you send.https://.com/email-subject-line-tester 9. ...But Don’t Forget the Sender. Perhaps even more important the subject line, the â€Å"from† name  can literally make or break your email. Sender names tend to perform best when they’re personalized. Instead of just your company name, use a person’s name, like â€Å"Your Name from Your Company.† And never use the default â€Å"No-Reply @ Your Company† option - it’s impersonal, and frankly, frustrating. Use a real name and assign a team member to respond to emails. Don’t forget your pre-header either. This is the preview text that displays after the subject line in most email clients. If you don’t set it, the client will preview something from your email which can look messy and unprofessional. Test these just as vigorously as your subject lines and sender names. Recommended Reading: Everything You Need to Know About Writing Awesome Email Subject Lines 10. Keep It Simple, Stupid. On to the body of the email. The goal here is to grab your reader’s attention quickly and follow up with a strong CTA. Regardless of whether you want them to sign up, order a product, or read your blog post, organize your copy using the â€Å"power of three†: Here's another example from Dropbox: Where possible, limit your CTAs. Try to keep it to one main CTA and place it above-the fold. Also make your CTA a bright, beautiful button that’s easy to find and click - otherwise you’re making people search for it. Before you send, double-check your work by sharing the email with a colleague. Can they instantly (within a few seconds) relay back to you the CTA? If so, move forward with your email. If not, do not pass go. Your email needs work as the message is not clear. Recommended Reading: How to Write a Call to Action In a Template With 6 Examples 11. Add Alt Text to Images and Buttons. Alt text isn’t just for images on your website. Adding them to your emails helps users understand what they’re reading, in case the HTML doesn’t render properly or their email client blocks images by default. Without alt text, readers will simply see a blank space where a button or image used to be. With alt text, they’ll still be able to read the action you want to take and understand where to click. Add alt text to all of your images and CTA buttons, and hyperlink them to your landing pages while you’re at it. Don't forget to add alt-text to all your images (plus 19 more email marketing best practices12. Send the Right Emails. The longer a person has subscribed, the more personalized the emails they receive from you should be - because you’re collecting information from their purchases, their interactions with your support team, and the content they’re clicking on from your previous email sends†¦ right? Right. But at a minimum, most successful email marketing programs tend to include the following types of emails: Double opt-in for subscribing (see tip #4) Welcome/thank you for signing up Some form of blog newsletter Important brand announcements Request for feedback or online review Abandoned cart reminder, order confirmation, shipping confirmation (for e-commerce) What’s the one type of email you should never send? The kind you send, just to send it. Every single email you send should have a purpose that provides value to your customers. Their inbox is not the place to simply remind them of your existence. No one liked the poke button on Facebook, remember? Recommended Reading: How to Get Bigger Results From Email Marketing With Kim Courvoisier From Campaign Monitor 13. Create Drip Campaigns. Drip campaigns are another successful type of email companies send. Drip campaigns extend the water metaphor of the sales funnel. Here’s an example of what a drip campaign might look like for a new e-commerce blog subscriber: Welcome email: â€Å"Thanks for subscribing! Here’s a % off coupon.† A few days later: â€Å"Hope you’re enjoying our blog. Here are our top articles you may have missed.† One week after that: â€Å"If you like our blog, you’ll love our whitepaper about X! It goes into way more detail.† If the prospect downloads the whitepaper, you might then enter them into a new drip campaign. If you’re wondering how you can create drip campaigns, start by knowing your audience. Once you know your audience and define your user personas, you can segment your email list. Different personas get different campaigns with copy choices, send frequency, and content catered specifically to them. What's the benefit to creating email drip campaigns?14. Automate Your Outreach. Drip campaigns are just one type of automated email you can create. There are all sorts of behaviors that could trigger different marketing emails, such as: Someone who subscribes to your blog receives a welcome email sharing your most popular articles. Someone who buys an item gets notified of future sales in that item’s category, plus any new styles of that particular item. Someone who abandons their shopping cart  receives a reminder of the items in their cart, with a steep discount or an urgent call to buy while supplies still alst.Are you automating your #email outreach?15. Keep It True to You. Your emails should match your brand. The colors and font choices should be the same. The tone should read like the same voice of the person who wrote your web copy or your latest Facebook post. However, that’s not to say you can’t give your emails a special flair. Some brands have done this to great success, so they’re essentially known for an outstanding email marketing program. Warby Parker  is one such example: Recommended Reading: How to Define Your Brand Positioning and Brand Voice 16. Encourage Sharing. Want more subscribers? Ask people to share your email! Encourage recipients to forward your email to anyone else who might be interested. Link the CTA to prepopulate a new email message with the subject and body text already pre-filled. For example: Share this email with your friends! Incorporate social sharing, too, but do so with purpose: Want more eyes on your content? Add social buttons for people to share the newsletter link itself on social media. Want more followers? Add social buttons that link to your social media channels. Recommended Reading: Why People Share: The Psychology of Social Sharing 17. Optimize for Mobile. How many of us have spent time waiting in line at the coffee shop checking our emails? Over half of emails are now read on mobile devices, and that trend should only continue as people increasingly rely on mobile devices over desktop computers. That means your email needs to be easy to read, view, and click on mobile. It should load fast (aim for 300KB or less), and it shouldn't require too much scrolling. Keep your email as short as possible, and go heavy on the imagery (while compressing it to ensure optimal load times). Make CTA buttons and any links 45-57 pixels tall to match the size of adult fingertips. Limit the width of your email body to 650 pixels so it displays nicely on most phones. Recommended Reading: Mobile Marketing Strategy: How to Build One the Best Way 18. Test, Test, and Test Again. Nearly all email marketing providers have A/B testing functionality built-in. Many offer multivariate testing as part of an upgrade. Either way, there is absolutely no reason for you to not test your emails. Here are just a few examples of what you can test: Subject lines and preheader text Send times and days of the week Format and layout Featured image or copy CTA placements and types of buttons

Industry Life Cycle Essays

Industry Life Cycle Essays Industry Life Cycle Essay Industry Life Cycle Essay and China, such that in 2006 more than 1 billion new handsets were sold. At the same time, the industry has seen ongoing technological change, both in the mobile telephone system (through the adoption of new technologies such as SMS, WAP, 3G, camera phones and now mobile TV) and in key component technologies such as LCD screens and rechargeable batteries. At the same time, developed markets have approached saturation as per capita adoption rates have exceeded 75% in these major markets. In such markets, network operators face steadily falling unit prices and must offer new services in hopes of increasing (or maintaining) average revenue per user (ARPU). Handset makers face similar challenges - commoditization of voice handsets and an imperative to offer ever more-capable phones to maintain high average selling prices in developed markets. The few remaining growth markets (such as China and now India) offer little consolation, as they feature highly price sensitive buyers and strong local competition. Throughout, handset makers face a unique distribution system, where even the most strongly branded firm must sell its phones in a given national market through one of three or four local operators: by one estimate, only 0. 5% of the handsets sold in the U. S. are not sold directly an operator or its agents. 1 Manufacturers thus face both high bargaining power by their main distributors, and the requirement to introduce new technology to align to their distributors’ business models. -1- Despite such pressures, leadership in the mobile handset business has remained a remarkably stable oligopoly, with today’s market share leaders reflecting successful entry decisions made at the beginning of the cellular era. Motorola invented the portable cell phone in 1973, while both Nokia and Ericsson rode the rapid adoption of Nordic Mobile Telephones in the 1980s. Other European makers have come and gone, while Japanese makers have dominated their home markets but have enjoyed limited export success. The only new firm in the list of 2006 top three manufacturers is Samsung of Korea, which has been in 3rd place since 2001 (Table 1). In 2007, a new entrant unveiled its strategy for challenging this stable oligopoly. Unlike the three long-established handset makers - or challengers like Samsung, Matsushita and LG - this niche player has no manufacturing and has never been a high-volume phone producer. It has pre-announced its product more than a year before entry into the competitive European and Asian markets, giving competitors plenty of time to match its product features. Customers loyal to the incumbents and many analysts dismissed the entry strategy as doomed to fail. However, the new entrant is Apple Inc. ,2 and its unreleased iPhone is the industry’s most talked-about product of the year. Despite a lack of telecommunications experience, the company can draw upon core competencies in product innovation and marketing developed over its 30 year history. It also hopes to leverage the market-leading ecosystem it has built for online music distribution. Here we analyze Apple’s market entry strategy in the light of three key constraints: its own competencies, the existing industry value network, and the ongoing efforts to deliver a converged mobile device that equally provides voice, entertainment and the mobile Internet. From this, we offer observations about Apple’s strategies and the future of the convergence market. -2- Apple’s Differentiation Competencies Apple Computer has introduced a series of innovative products that changed the industry, of which the best known are the Apple II, Macintosh and iPod (Table 1). Over the past decade, the company has combined product innovation with industrial design and clever marketing to gain a reputation far out of proportion to its size or market share. Since its earliest days suing makers of unauthorized Apple II clones, Apple has had a reputation of aggressively protecting its trademark, copyrights and other intellectual property. Its IP strategy - particularly its decision (with a brief exception) to ban clones of its computers - has made it an exemplar for many of a â€Å"closed† business model. At the same time, the company has long sought to nurture a vibrant ecosystem. Software developers were crucial to its Macintosh adoption, while both content providers and third-party add-on suppliers helped drive success of its iPod/iTunes music business. Finally, no discussion of Apple’s strategy of the past decade would be complete without acknowledging the influence of company founder Steve Jobs, who returned to become interim CEO in 1997 and officially CEO in 2000. Both his perfectionism and his ability to enforce decisions solved the product execution difficulties that plagued the company during its previous decade (West, 2002). Historic Differentiation Strategy In its early years, the company’s initial success came from the technical innovation of cofounder Steven Wozniak, such as his ability to use software and clear hardware design to reduce chip counts and thus manufacturing parts costs. Apple’s personal computers increasingly reflected a systems approach, from the Apple III (1979), Lisa (1983) and then the Macintosh (1984). -3- Throughout its first decade, Apple demonstrated two key marketing-related competencies inextricably linked to co-founder Steve Jobs, culminating in the 1984 introduction of the Macintosh: Product design. Its Apple II is widely credited as the first personal computer designed as a consumer product, with a molded plastic case instead of a hobbyist-style metal case. Beginning with the Macintosh, Jobs pushed Apple engineers to produce â€Å"insanely great† products that differed substantially from anything marketed before (cf. Levy, 1994). Public relations. Apple was able to build excitement with product launch events that were unmatched in the industry until Microsoft’s launch of Windows 95. Under Jobs, such launches created suspense through pre-release secrecy and spectacular gestures. The marketing itself became a news story. This culminated in the â€Å"1984† advertisement for the Macintosh, which is widely remembered as one of the most successful Super Bowl commercials in history. Apple’s Partly Open Ecosystem Strategy One criticism of Apple has been that it pursued a â€Å"closed† strategy. But as West (2006) argues, the nature and value of openness differs between various stakeholders: suppliers, customers, end-users and complementors. With regards to systems vendors, Apple’s architecture was less open than the â€Å"IBM PC† (later â€Å"Wintel† platform) eventually led by Microsoft and Intel. Except for a brief period of authorized cloning (1994-1997), Apple operated as a vertically-integrated supplier of operating system software and hardware, exclusively available from Apple. Meanwhile Microsoft and Intel gladly sold their technology to systems vendors such as IBM and Dell - but vigorously fought rival attempts at competing implementations of their respective de facto standards. -4- However, with regards to third-party complements, as the leader of the Apple II (and later Macintosh) ecosystem, Apple worked nearly as vigorously to attract a supply of crucial software and hardware. For hardware, Apple helped create a market for third-party expansion cards with its Apple II, which was the largest market for such cards until the 1981 introduction of the IBM PC. Its 1984 Macintosh - sold as an information appliance - had no such internal expansion, but it promoted external expansion through such industry standard technologies as SCSI, Firewire and USB. Beginning in 1987, it allowed internal expansion of its desktop computers through the NuBus and later PCI standards. 4 Unlike Microsoft, Apple sold only a limited range of software applications and aggressively courted third party suppliers. For the Macintosh, it created a new job category - â€Å"software evangelist† - to attract 500 new titles from independent software vendors (ISVs) in the first year after the computers’ introduction (Levy 1994). Such complements are in the platform owner’s interest because they make it more valuable - the â€Å"hardware-software paradigm† identified by Katz and Shapiro (1985). In its strategy of controlling the entire platform but encouraging third party software, Apple was consistent with the longstanding strategy of computer platform developers such as IBM and Digital Equipment. The Microsoft and Intel role - unintended beneficiaries of IBM’s longstanding market power - marked an exception where proprietary platform leadership was divided between multiple firms. (Moschella, 1997; Bresnahan Greenstein, 1999). As with nearly all personal computer makers, Apple purchased its microprocessors from third parties who also supplied potential competitors. 5 -5- This computer-centric model of complements is not the only approach towards industry standardization. For decades, consumer electronics appliances - such as radios, televisions and CD players - were not user extensible, but ommunicated with external devices via well-defined standards. 6 Until they were cross-pollinated with handheld computers in 1996, cell phones more closely followed the appliance model than the computing one. And even today, there’s not a clear correlation between openness and sales in mobile phones. 1987-1997: The Lost Decade After the 1987 introduction of the Macintosh II , the first Macintosh with color graphics and internal expansion cards, Apple’s rate of innovation slowed to eventual stagnation. One key problem was losing the loyalty of an ecosystem that turned its attention to the fastergrowing IBM PC platform. Apple had helped launch the ComputerLand franchise chain in the U. S. with its Apple II product, but after 1981 the retailer increasingly used that nationwide network to sell IBM PCs (Moritz 1984). In 1985, Apple had used its advertising dollars to promote the new Aldus PageMaker software package, but in 1986 Aldus released a version for the IBM PC that bundled Microsoft’s fledgling Windows 1. 0 software (Woolf, 2002). To counter the threat of Windows, Apple in 1988 filed a lawsuit accusing Microsoft of copying the Macintosh user interface with Windows. Apple lost its lawsuit on the strength of a 1985 GUI license that (Apple partisans charge) was extorted by Microsoft under threat of Apple losing its right to ship the Microsoft-developed Basic interpreter for the Apple II, then Apple’s main revenue-generating product (Linzmayer 1999). Some (including even Bill Gates) once suggested that Microsoft should license its Macintosh technology to PC rivals (Carlton, 1997). However, such a shift could have reduced Apple’s margins and overall revenue stream to support its RD budget (which was larger than -6- Microsoft’s until 1994) (West, 2005). There have been no successful examples of a computer company shifting from a systems to licensing model (with NeXT, Apple and Palm being notable failures) and only one major example (Novell) of a hardware company shifting to software - very early in the product lifecycle. Whether or not Apple would have done better as a licensing company, from 1987-1997 it suffered major problems in terms of strategic leadership, implementation and operations. Mobilized to release the Macintosh in 1984, the company drifted after Jobs left in a 1985 power struggle with successor John Sculley. In the absence of the strong leader, the company’s freewheeling culture spiraled out of control. From 1987-1997, the company spent about $1. 5 billion in RD for cancelled or failed technologies, and lost another $1 billion in 1997 due to poor inventory management (Carlton, 1997; West, 2005). In particular, Apple failed with two attempts to update its aging operating system. In desperation, in December 1996 it purchased NeXT - where Jobs was chairman - and six months later Jobs became de facto CEO of Apple once more. Turnaround in the Jobs II Era In Steve Jobs’ second turn as CEO, the company moved dramatically both to fix operational problems and reassert its innovation leadership. Some of the changes were straightforward, such as outsourcing manufacturing and improving inventory turns to match Dell, the industry leader (West, 2002). In doing so, in the formulation of Moore (2005), Apple put its primary emphasis on marketing innovation but achieved strategic parity in process innovation. In minor ways, Apple’s product strategy became more open. Rather than various proprietary hardware interfaces that it had maintained for 15 years, it moved to embrace de facto or open -7- industry standards. These included the VGA video connector, the IEEE-1394 (â€Å"Firewire†) bus standard, and the Intel-created Universal Serial Bus (West, 2002). With its Mac OS X operating system (released in 2001), it sought to de-emphasize its own AppleTalk networking standard in favor of TCP/IP and other Internet standards. In 2006, it began shipping computers using the same Intel processors as the rest of the PC industry. However, in other ways, Apple became more vertically integrated and (at least as defined by Chesbrough 2003) less â€Å"open† in its innovation strategies: Distribution. From 1997-2000, Apple created its own online stores in the U. S. and 14 other countries, shifting distribution away from dealers that primarily sold Wintel machines. In May 2001, Apple opened its first retail stores in the US in May 2001, and six years later has some 170 stores in four countries. In Fiscal Year 2006, 16. 7% of its computer unit sales were through the Apple-owned stores - not counting online stores (Apple Computer, 2006). Applications. Jobs’s first major step as acting CEO in 1997 was to negotiate an agreement with Microsoft CEO Bill Gates to continue to provide Microsoft Office for the Macintosh. But since that time, Apple has bundled its own web browser, e-mail program, contact manager and music player with its OS, and developed separate software for page layout, presentations, photo layout, music editing and movie editing. Apple also pursued a vertically integrated strategy in its music business, as discussed below. Ironically, recent trends have seen increasing convergence in strategies between Apple and Microsoft. For its video game business, like its rivals Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft buys its microprocessors but designs its own software and hardware, and does not license them to others. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s â€Å"Zune† music players emulate Apple’s iPod vertically integrated product strategy ([emailprotected], 2006). -8- Successful Entry into Music Jobs’ largest strategic change was to engineer a successful related diversification into the music industry, beginning with a PC-based MP3 player application, then its iPod portable music player, and finally with its iTunes Music Store. The diversification has been crucial to Apple’s success, with music-related products accounting for 49. 5% of $19. 3 billion in 2006 revenues (Apple Computer, 2006). It has also had a major impact on the industry: It’s hard to overstate the impact of the iPod on the computer, consumer electronics and music industries since it was introduced in 2001. The iPod, arguably, is the first â€Å"crossover† product from a computer company that genuinely caught on with music and video buffs. It’s shown how a computer can be an integral part of a home entertainment system. Krazit 2006) One key to Apple’s success has been the iPod family of products - designed by Apple but assembled from third-party components by Chinese contract manufacturers (Cf. Sherman, 2002). 7 The iPods have won praise for elegance and ease of use, as have its iTunes software and music store download sites. As a result, in 2006 Apple held roughly 62% unit share in the US market for music players, and 29% of the global market, with a greater share of revenues (Wolverton, 2006; â€Å"A High Point for Apple†, 2007). The widespread adoption has brought a broad supply of complementary hardware and accessories, such as cases, home stereos and automobile adapters. Apple also successfully navigated the content landmines that plague any new entertainment media - in this case the â€Å"Big Six† (now â€Å"Big Four†) music labels. In the unfamiliar situation of high supplier power, Apple was still able to complete its catalog by attracting all the majors and -9- many independents, while capping the retail prices for individual songs at $0. 99 or â‚ ¬0. 9 in the US and EU, respectively. However, Apple made three other key strategic decisions: Systems innovation. As with its computers, Apple designed an entire system to work well together, including the player and music store. This was a contrast to most other manufacturers, which concentrated on either the store or the player, and could not coordinate their interaction as closely as Apple could. Even when Apple’s music players d id not have the best price or features, the overall system capabilities and integration set it apart. Platform agnostic. Apple made its entire system work equally well on Windows as on the Mac - something that it did with its QuickTime media software of the 1990s but not with its LaserWriter laser printers of the 1980s. The latter was later cited by Sculley as one of his major strategic mistakes (Yoffie, 1992). Closed design. Apple used a proprietary encryption system for encoding its music downloads, which meant that songs purchased from Apple could only be used on Apple players. On the one hand, as Jobs argued in an open letter to record companies, the secrecy made it less likely that the encryption would be cracked by hackers (Jobs, 2007). On the other hand, the decision created switching costs and helped protect Apple’s market share lead. Desperately Seeking Convergence The original idea of digital convergence - specifically convergence of communications and computing - is credited to a 1977 speech by NEC chairman Koji Kobayashi (cf. Kobayashi, 1986). During the 1980s and early 1990s, key aspects of the convergence idea were developed 10 and popularized by futurist Nicholas Negroponte and Apple CEO John Sculley (Sculley, 1987; â€Å"From Idiot Box to Information Appliance,† 1994; Gordon, 2003). By the mid-1990s, convergence was a reality, and strategists like David Yoffie (1997) were offering broad strategies for firms to cope with these changes. A variety of different approaches towards convergence devices have been tried (Table 3). Over time, both the optimism and the technology of convergence devices have affected the product design strategies of mobile phone makers, particular for the more expensive (and more profitable) upper end of the market. Even before mobile phones, convergence has been a recurring theme in the technology industry for years, with decidedly mixed results. In the late 1980s, Canon offered a converged personal computer called the Navi which incorporated a PC, fax machine, phone, answering machine, and printer into a single case. It died quickly (Johnstone, 1994). Converged GPS PDA systems were popular in Europe for several years, but were supplanted by dedicated car navigation systems (Canalys, 2006). On the other hand, converged printer-scanner-fax devices have been quite successful in the computing peripherals market. Convergence Imperatives in Mobile Handsets The appeal of convergence to the mobile phone industry is grounded in economics. With Europe’s mobile markets saturated, and the US close behind, the operators’ best hope to increase billings in those countries is to drive more revenue per user. That means people must be convinced to do more than just talk and send text messages with their mobile phones. Handset vendors, too, feel substantial pressure to add more features to their phones. A company that gets an edge in a new feature can gain a substantial margin and share advantage. For example, the Razr slim phone helped rescue Motorola’s leadership in the US market, while 11 Nokia’s lead in cameraphones in Europe helped it solidify its position there. Meanwhile, Nokia’s failure to emphasize flip phones cost it significant momentum in the US market. Converging a personal computer and a mobile phone seems like a logical way to get a new feature advantage. It ought to create new (data transmission) revenue streams for the operators as users browse the web wirelessly. And presumably a well converged phone might give the handset vendor that made it a major advantage in the market. Market Experiments The first five years of convergence mobile phones brought a series of failures and no true marketplace successes. Some of the problems were - as with the Newton PDA - due to an incomplete understanding of the product category by both producers and users. The products were also limited by the available hardware, including LCD screens, computing-capable microprocessors, and the batteries that both power-hungry components required. What is widely considered to be the first convergence phone came in 1996, when Nokia introduced the Nokia 9000, a mobile phone with built-in QWERTY keyboard marked in Europe as a replacement for a small laptop. However, the computer weighed 397 grams (about 3. 5 iPhones), and was not a major sales success. For the US market, in 1998 Qualcomm shipped the pdQ, the first converged mobile phone based on Palm OS. Like the Nokia 9000 it was too large and heavy (285 grams) for a cellphone, and found only a small audience, as did Qualcomm’s 208 gram follow-on product, sold as the Kyocera 6035 two years later. In 1998, Nokia, Psion, Motorola, and Ericsson banded together to create Symbian, a joint venture to adapt Psion’s EPOC PDA operating system for use in mobile phones. The next year, Ericsson shipped the first mobile phone based on Symbian, the r380, which did not sell well. 12 However, by 2001, both the device size and the design choices began to more closely match what customers wanted. The first such product was the Handspring Treo 180, the best-integrated (and almost immediately the most popular) Palm OS-based smartphone. In 2002, two other important smartphones came to market. The RIM Blackberry 5810 was the first RIM e-mail device to include a built-in phone. And Ericsson released the p800, a touchscreen-based smartphone whose early sales in Europe were comparable to what the Treo was doing in the US. The year 2002 also saw the first shipments of smartphones based on Windows Mobile (called Pocket PC at the time). As with other device makers who witnessed the rents extracted by Microsoft from PC makers, the major mobile phone vendors were leery of partnering with Microsoft, so it focused on working with second-tier Asian manufacturers eager to gain market entry using Microsoft’s brand and access to key enterprise buyers. RIM smartphone sales quickly surpassed those of both Palm and Ericsson (later SonyEricsson), but its dominance in North America had little impact elsewhere in the world, garnering only 8% of overall 2006 smartphone shipments. The leading smartphone vendor in 2006 was Nokia, with 50. 2% of the world market, while Symbian OS is the leading smartphone OS, with 67% share (Canalys 2007). Since its initial Nokia 9000 smartphone, Nokia has developed 10 subsequent models in its Communicator family, cutting the weight nearly in half with the 9300/9500 and the planned E90. However, most of its smartphone sales come either from phones in more traditional form factors or those (such as the E61/E62) that resemble the RIM BlackBerry. Canalys (2007) estimates 2006 smartphone sales as 64 million units - less than 7% of the total market. Even that figure is misleading, because it includes all mobile phones that have a â€Å"smartphone† operating system in them, regardless of whether the customer uses its features. 13 Market research conducted by Palm in 2004 showed that the vast majority of Symbian customers were unaware that the OS was built into their phones and were not making substantial use of its data features. This is more than an academic distinction, since the motivation for the industrys investment in smartphones was to drive more use of mobile data. If the customers don’t use the data features, the investment in smartphone software and hardware was largely wasted. As of 2007, the most successful converged phones in terms of actual data usage in the US and Europe are the e-mail devices, led by the RIM Blackberry. The Blackberry’s basic screen and keyboard layout has been copied by a wide range of competitors, including the Palm Treo, Nokia E-series, Motorola Q, and Samsung Blackjack. Efforts to create a converged entertainment device have been much less successful. The Nokia N-Gage gaming phone, launched in 2003, was a spectacular failure,9 as was (on a much smaller scale) the TapWave Zodiac, a converged PDA and game device. The Danger Hiptop youth communicator has been a mild success in the US and several other countries, but is offered by only a single operator and shows no signs of rapid growth. In 2005, Motorola launched the Rokr, a merged iPod and a mobile phone. It could hold only about 100 songs, and disappeared from the market quickly. Steve Jobs said later that his experience with the Rokr made him realize that Apple needed to completely control the mobile phone’s design in order to be successful - although critics at the time argued that the phone’s music capabilities were deliberately crippled by Apple to avoid cannibalizing iPod sales. As of early 2007, the most successful entertainment phones are probably the SonyEricsson Walkman phones. They are not widely available in the US, but in Europe they have helped increase SonyEricsson’s share and improved its image as a design leader. 14 Apple’s iPhone Strategy Product Concept While the existence (and name) of the iPhone had been anticipated, Steve Jobs nonetheless enjoyed tremendous interest when he announced the iPhone at the annual Macworld trade show on January 9, 2007. If the goal was creating interest, Jobs was successful: less than two months later, the term â€Å"iPhone† could be found (by Google) on some 60 million page s on the World Wide Web. 10 Compared to earlier generations of convergence phones, the main difference in the iPhone’s features was the screen. The iPhone featured the largest screen (8. 9cm diagonal, 320480) of any standard-sized cellphone. 11 To make room for the larger screen, the phone deleted a dialing keypad, and instead uses a touchscreen for dialing and other input functions. Under this screen was a stripped-down version of Apple’s Unix-based OS X operating system, with an iPhonespecific user interface that’s claimed to match the ease of use of the Macintosh and iPod. Despite an overwhelming avalanche of free publicity, the phone was not without its detractors. As with the original iPod, many analysts proclaimed the product overpriced, too big, or a niche product. Others questioned the lack of tactile feedback from the touchscreen keyboard, lack of a user-replaceable battery, lack of support for 3G networks, absence of an expansion slot, or more than a dozen other possible features (e. g. , O’Grady, 2007). The greatest criticism about Apple’s strategy was that the phone was â€Å"closed†. The most user-visible way was that (the initial model of) the iPhone was restricted to a single carrier, Cingular (which was renamed AT in January 2007). While new phones in the U. S. are typically â€Å"locked† to a single carrier to assure payback of an initial handset subsidy by the carrier, Apple used its iPod success to demand unprecedented control of iPhone distribution. 15 Cingular, the largest US carrier (26. 6% market share), was more willing to agreed to Apple’s terms that Verizon (24. 4% market share)12 (Sharma et al, 2007). The other major criticism was that Apple’s phone - unlike its PCs and even its iPods - allowed almost no user-installable software. In this regard, Apple was following a platform strategy distinct from both its own PC and other convergence phones. Platform Strategy Most of the earlier attempts at making convergence phones- as well as other convergence devices such as PDAs and handheld game players - have utilized the general-purpose computing platform strategy, first developed by IBM and adapted for minicomputers, workstations and personal computers (Moschella, 1997). Successful platform strategies have been shown to have three key attributes. New platforms identify a need (i. . customer market segment) not met by prior platforms - and win adoption by serving that segment better than other existing alternatives (Bresnahan Greenstein, 1999). Over time, winning platforms have shifted from vertically integrated strategies (e. g. , the IBM S/360) in which a single firm controlled the entire platform, to divided technical leadership where different firms control different parts of the platform (Bresnahan Greenstei n, 1999). And controlling the value provided by the platform requires control of the complements (e. g. through application programming interfaces) that make the platform valuable (West and Dedrick, 2000). The leading cell phone vendors have adopted inconsistent and changing strategies in operating systems. At first they embraced a business model styled after the PC market. Several vendors - including Nokia and Motorola - banded together to create Symbian, a shared operating system that they were all to use. Palm licensed its operating system to a spinout 16 company, PalmSource, and it was adopted by several major vendors including Sony and Samsung. Microsoft focused on licensing its Windows CE operating system to as many companies as possible, with its biggest successes coming from HP, Dell, and a series of companies in Asia. But recently the handset vendors’ OS strategies have become more proprietary. Nokia runs a proprietary software layer, called S60, on top of its Symbian based phones. SonyEricsson runs an incompatible layer called UIQ on its Symbian devices. Palm now has regained rights to its OS, and can make proprietary changes to it. Motorola is a Microsoft and Symbian licensee, but is investing heavily in its own version of Linux. As of early 2007, the mobile phone market appears to be headed toward a situation where the leading vendors will each have their own incompatible operating software (Table 4). Apple’s strategy is even more proprietary. It adapted its desktop operating system - in this case an unspecified subset of its Mac OS X desktop operating system - to run the iPhone. This lets Apple leverage some of its desktop software, including TCP/IP, web browser, and its QuickTime media player. Apple claims this will let the iPhone display standard HTML and http websites that were created for personal computers. This could be a substantial advantage, as most mobile device browsers have trouble displaying some websites designed for PCs. Although mobile browsers have made substantial progress, differences between the mobile web and the PC web have been an ongoing source of confusion for users, dating back to the introduction of the Wireless Application Protocol, which (among other problems) promised a mobile internet experience that it could not deliver (cf. Sigurdson, 2001; Palomaki, 2004). 17 However, Apple’s overall platform strategy is more akin to a consumer electronics appliance than a general-purpose computer. Unlike Symbian, Palm, and Microsoft, Apple is not allowing open development of third party applications for the iPhone,13 which has generated considerable controversy (e. g. Claburn, 2007). The idea of providing new functionality through software has been a common thread for computers and video games, but not for televisions, radios or (pre-†smartphone†) mobile phones. The utility of the home consumer electronics device has been provided by the content - whether pre-recorded or broadcast - and thus such platforms have evolved only rarely due to the high switching costs for infrastructure (or consumer library) investments to support a fixed standard. The different pattern of technological change has meant a different strategy for the adoption of new platforms. As with computing platforms, one entry opportunity for appliances is the unmet need, as with video recorder or MP3 format. Another option is superior performance - which is less often used for computing platforms, because all competing platforms will incorporate incremental improvements on an ongoing basis. However, the fixed standards of consumer appliance make improvements episodic: to compete with vinyl records, the compact cassette offered portability while the CD offered sound quality (cf. Grindley, 1995). In parallel, to improve sound quality broadcast audio progressed from AM to FM to digital (via the Internet, satellite, or over-the-air). Segmentation Strategy Despite predictions of convergence devices taking over the entire electronics industry, many of the results thus far has been disappointing. The Apple strategy illustrates the controversy between two market conceptions. 18 On the one hand is the goal of producing the device that converges the maximum number of functions for a broad mass market. This has been fueled by both the Kobayashi and Sculley utopian visions, and the product strategies of many firms offering convergence devices - whether it is MP3 players in cell phones, DVD (or Blu-ray or HD DVD) players built into videogame consoles, or Sony’s UMD movie format for its PlayStation Portable. With this market conception, the ideal mobile device would span the various possible roles: computing, communications, entertainment content, information management and any other function that could be offered in a portable device. In this case, the device supplants the need for a phone, an MP3 or video player, a laptop computer, handheld game console, and any other similar function. Both the Microsoft Windows Mobile phones and many of the Symbian phones (particularly those from Nokia) have sought this goal. The Apple strategy of an appliance device allows for an Internet-enabled web appliance, but without user-installable applications, it is not a general purpose extensible computer. Some believe this has doomed the iPhone; as venture capitalist Paul Kedrosky wrote: Is Apple serious that it won’t let third-party developers build software for the thing? If so, and put simply, the device will fail. A closed-box consumer electronics mentality will work in music players, but the future of mobile devices is as a platform, and that requires developers. (Kedrosky, 2007). Others have argued that the design tradeoffs in making devices means that no one product can be optimal on all dimensions. Strategy consultant Michael Mace (2007) argues that there are three distinct drivers for mobile devices: communications (as with a mobile phone), entertainment (as with an MP3 player or handheld game console) and information access (such as provided by a PDA). Each driver serves a different, distinct group of customers who don’t 19 want the other drivers. Under this typology, the iPhone would be an entertainment device with some communication and information capabilities - as with some of the Sony Ericsson Walkman phones - while most smart phones are more focused on communication (Figure 1). If this latter view is correct, then the mobile device market - like many other product categories - would be segmented into different types of users and user needs. The iPhone might be a poor substitute for a Nokia E90 (which seeks to be a laptop replacement), but instead would be competing with the Walkman phones and other entertainment devices. Mace concluded: Rather than looking for the mobile market to â€Å"converge† the way that most PCs converged to Windows, I think we should expect mobile devices to diverge into different segments. The right analogy for the mobile market isn’t PCs, it’s cars. As the car market grew in the 1900s, it stratified into trucks and minivans and SUVs and sports cars and so on. Mace 2007) Conformance and Deviation from Earlier Strategies Research on strategic management has traditionally emphasized how managerial discretion allows the manager to choose strategies that maximize a firm’s success (e. g. , Finkelstein Hambrick, 1996). More recent research has emphasized the durable interfirm differences that drive both strategies and the success of these strategies - either from scarce, inimitable and valuable resources, or from a firm’s capabilities and competencies derived from those resources (Barney, 1991; Grant, 1991; Galunic Rodan, 1998). Here we suggest the complex inter-dependencies of Apple’s iPhone strategy with its existing resources and competencies, as illustrated by Figure 2. From top to bottom: iPod. If resources are valuable, rare and inimitable, then clearly Apple’s greatest asset in entering the convergence phone business relates to the iPod. That includes not only its 20 innovation competencies, but brand awareness, reputation and distribution. In particular, the market-leading iTunes Music Store is an asset that none of the competing hardware vendors (or their operator customers) have fully replicated. Existing business model. The leveraging of the iPod ecosystem (particularly music and video downloads) directed Apple towards an iPhone business model, as would concerns about cannibalizing the existing iPod and download sales that comprise half the company’s revenues. Entertainment segment. Leveraging the iPod and iPod ecosystem would mean that Apple’s best opportunity for market entry lay in addressing what Mace (2007) terms as the entertainment segment of the device market that most closely matched existing resources and capabilities. This segment also had a strong affinity with the Macintosh market, which has traditionally been focused on creative users as opposed to mainstream business professionals. Entertainment-centric phone. From its segmentation and capabilities - including the lack of phone competencies - the device would be more oriented towards entertainment than a phone. Appliance. As with the iPod or a CD player, the device would be more like an appliance than a computer. â€Å"Locked† or â€Å"closed† strategy. The company’s business model - particularly the switching costs created by the copy-protection of its music store - encouraged the choice of a closed business model. The company appears to believe that the choice of an entertainment segment and an appliance concept allows it to use a more closed model, and by doing so it can avoid the price wars and commodization facing other mobile phone makers, 21 Lack of a software ecosystem. The choice of a closed strategy (for applications) makes Apple independent of the need to build an ecosystem of third-party software developers, as have Symbian, Microsoft and Palm. Power of the network operators. The oligopoly power of the mobile phone operators both supports and allows Apple’s model. As Claburn (2007) wrote: â€Å"Only the phone and cable companies want to remain closed, which is why †¦ everyone hates them. † Need to acquire phone competencies. Although software is often a problem for electronics makers - as with the HP and IBM examples reported by Leonard-Barton (1992) - Apple has long been strong in software. With the iPod, it has developed capabilities for designing portable battery-powered devices. However, even with help from experienced manufacturers, Apple may need several years to develop and integrate the necessary competencies for selling world-class phones - including radio engineering, regulatory compliance and working with network operators. For example, in 2000 PDA maker Handspring sought to become a mobile phone company by releasing an expansion card for its PDA, but more than six years (and 10 Treo models) later, its phones have still have disadvantages compared to the top four phone makers (Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson). Discussion Openness in Mobile Devices Firms face an inherent trade-off in choosing the level of openness in their platform strategies. A completely open strategy will not capture value, while a completely closed one will not create value, so the optimal profit is obtain by an intermediate selection (Simcoe, 2006). While Apple’s strategy for the iPhone was criticized as being â€Å"closed,† the relevant questions are: Compared to what? And closed to whom? 22 The later computer industry was relatively open, particularly in the 1990s. With two major operating systems available for license - Windows and Unix - there were many entry opportunities for both systems vendors and markets of application software, increasing competition and presumably reducing buyer prices. However, such licensing did not facilitate entry by competing operating systems vendors (Bresnahan and Greenstein, 1999; West, 2006). At the other extreme, the most popular computerized entertainment device - videogame consoles - have a largely closed system. Since the 2001 exit by Sega, the home console market has been a cozy oligopoly with only three firms: Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo. Meanwhile, console makers use intellectual property law both to decide which complements will be provided, and to extract royalties from complement makers (Sheff, 1993; Gallagher and Park, 2002). Console makers today attract new adoption by setting a low initial hardware price, which is cross-subsidized by the subsequent revenue stream of videogame sales. But this â€Å"razor and razor blade† strategy was actually initiated by US cell phone carriers (and later imitated by their overseas counterparts), in which phones were â€Å"locked† to a specific network in order to recover the handset subsidy through subsequent monthly service revenues. Apple’s decision to lock the first model of a popular phone series to a single carrier is comparable to the rollout strategies of many earlier phone families. Its decision to block (or at least restrict) the addition of third party software is unusual for a convergence phone, but would not be considered unusual for an appliance phone or a home electronics product. This raises the question as to whether iPhone users will see the complement that adds the most value as being software (which is not allowed) or content (which is encouraged). Finally, its locking of its copyprotected music downloads to its own product is consistent with its current iPod strategy (later 23 imitated by Microsoft), and thus far consumers have favored Apple’s integrated (but highswitching-cost) ecosystem over more open alternatives. Apple’s Strategy It would be silly to judge a company on the success of a single product strategy - or, even more so, to judge the success of such a strategy before a single product had been shipped. However, Apple’s iPhone strategy is of huge importance to Apple, marking only its fourth industry entry after personal computers (1977), PDAs (1993) and portable music players (2001). 14 Many of the strategies are dictated by the core competencies that the company has acquired over its thirty year history - notably in product marketing and innovation. It also reflects the competencies not available to Apple - but to its competitors - such as the financial assets and market power of Microsoft and the mobile phone distribution channels of Nokia and Motorola. Still, there have been important changes in Apple’s strategies over the years. To use the typology developed by Leonard-Barton (1992) in her study of Hewlett-Packard and IBM, Apple had a consistently high level of technical skills, the effectiveness of the managerial systems varied dramatically between the two reigns of Steve Jobs as CEO and the intervening period of ineffective leadership. Absent strong leadership, the innovation empowerment culture became an dysfunctional entitlement, both as predicted by Leonard-Barton and recounted in various early and later histories of the company (Moritz, 1984; Carlon, 1997). Meanwhile, although Apple has sought to both nurture and control its ecosystem since the Apple II days, the iPhone reflects the least nurturing and most controlling strategy to date. Whether this is because of organizational learning (the use of Macintosh complements to support rival platforms) or the product model (a music appliance) is hard to determine from outside the 24 nusually secretive company. A third possible explanation is that the iPhone reflects the intersection of a platform with an increasing number of bundled applications (OS X) with a product category that has seen disappointing third-party software sales. Still, the decision to break from the PC-centric model of platform and application software - to an appliance-centric entertainment de vice - suggests that Apple is less constrained by the â€Å"dominant logic† (in the terms of Prahalad and Bettis, 1986) of PC platform competition than its non-PC rivals. The Apple strategy might appear to match the Bresnahan Greenstein (1999) typology of indirect entry of a new platform into a contested market, by using the iPod to first serve an untapped need and then extend to cover the convergence device market. The problem with such a characterization is that this assigns an intentionality (or strategic foresight) to the 2001 market entry strategy that appears to be absent from both accounts of the iPod’s development (Kahney, 2004) and accounts that the decision to enter the phone market dated only from 2005 (Sharma et al, 2007). Instead, the utilization of the iPod as a beachhead to convergence devices fits Mintzberg’s (1978: 946) classic definition of an emergent strategy, in which the absence of perfect a priori information, â€Å"Strategy formation then becomes a learning process, whereby socalled implementation feeds back to formulation and intentions get modified en route. † As with the Mintzberg critique, it would appear that the indirect entry can be subdivided into the a priori and ex post facto alignment of a new market as entry to an existing one. Dominant Design An extensive literature has postulated that new technologies converge onto a single â€Å"dominant design† (Anderson Tushman, 1990; Utterback, 1994). But even supporters have questioned whether some definitions of a dominant design are tautological - i. e. the design that dominates is the one that gets dominant market share (Suarez and Uttterback, 1995). 25 The current trajectory of the convergence device market raises a more fundamental question: is it reasonable to assume a priori the emergence of a single converged design? And, if the definition of a â€Å"dominant† design is the common subset across multiple successful product approaches, then is it possible for managers to anticipate which features will be common to the ultimate winner and which ones will allow for firm variation and market experimentation? As of today, neither the unified nor segmented model of convergence devices has been proven (or disproven). But there are more example of the latter - multiple winning designs - model than has been emphasized in the dominant design literature. Take the typewriter, a product ategory commoditized by the mid-20th century but still subject to product variation. Prior research posits the design was crystallized by the beginning of the 20th century, with the Underwood manual desk typewriter. But does this allow for the portable variant, or the electric typewriter? If the dominant design includes typebars, then how does that allow for the main office typewriters of the 1970s , the typeball (from IBM) and daisywheel (from Xerox)? Closer to the convergence example, broadcast radios tended to have a volume and tuning knob and some sort of dial - but these are merely examples of form following function. 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Yoffie, David B. in â€Å"CHESS and competing in the age of digital convergence,† in David B. Yoffie, ed. , Competing in the Age of Digital Convergence, Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press, 1997. 32 Figures and Tables Table 1: Durability of global market share by leading mobile phone makers Company 1994 2000 2006 Nokia 21. 0% 30. 6% 34. 1% Motorola 32. 5% 14. 6% 21. 3% Sony Ericsson § 10. 9% 10. 0% 7. 3% Samsung ; 5% 5. 0% 11. 6% LG ; 5% ; 5% 5. % NEC 8. 9% ; 5% ; 5% Matsushita 5. 4% 5. 2% ; 5% Source: Dataquest (1994, 2000) and IDC (2006)  § 1994, 2000: Combined share of Sony Ericsson joint venture partners. Table 2: Key milestones in Apple product strategies Date April 1976 April 1977 Jan. 1983 Jan. 1984 Sept. 1985 March 1987 Oct. 1991 1987 Aug. 1993 Dec. 1996 Sept. 1997 May 1998 Nov. 1997 May 1998 Jan. 1999 March 2001 May 2001 Oct. 2001 Apr. 2003 Oct. 2003 Jan. 2004 Sep. 2005 Oct. 2005 Jan. 2007 Segment corporate PC PC PC corporate PC PC PDA PDA corporate corporate PC distribution distribution distribution PC distribution music music music music music music music Milestone Steve Wozniak demonstrates Apple I circuit board Apple introduces Apple II Lisa introduced with $10,000 list price Macintosh introduced at $2,500 Co-founder Steve Jobs leaves Apple to found NeXT First Macintosh with color and built-in expansion slots First PowerBook laptop computer John Sculley touts â€Å"Knowledge Navigator† product concept Newton MessagePad introduced Apple purchases NeXT for NextStep operating system; Jobs returns to Apple Jobs named interim CEO Jobs introduces iMac Apple opens first online store, serving U. S. customers Apple U. K. pens first online store outside US Apple Store extended to France, Germany and five other countries Apple ships Mac OS X based on NextStep and BSD Unix, its first all-new PC operating system in 17 years First Apple-owned retail stores open near Los Angeles and D. C. First iPod models introduced at $400 and $500 iTunes Music Store opens in U. S iPod, iTunes Music Service add Windows support Apple, Motorola begin phone collaboration Motorola introduces ROKR mobile phone with iTunes Apple adds video to iPod, iTunes Music Store; featured on cover of Time magazine iPhone announced; company renamed from â€Å"Apple Computer† to â€Å"Apple† 33 Table 3: Evolution of convergence phones Date 1967 1972 1984 1987 April 1993 Aug. 1993 Sept. 1993 March 1996 1996 Nov. 1996 Sept. 1998 Feb. 1999 March 1999 Oct. 1999 2000 July 2001 Oct. 2001 2001 2001 May 2002 2003 June 2003 Sept. 2005 Jan. 2007 Company NEC Xerox Psion Apple AT Apple Sharp Palm Computing Nokia Microsoft Qualcomm Research in Motion Ericsson Samsung Nokia Psion Handspring Research in Motion Ericsson Audiovox Nokia Palm Motorola Apple Product Announcement Chairman/CEO touts CCC. Researcher Alan Kay publishes paper advocating handheld computer (â€Å"DynaBook†) Psion Organizer, keyboard-based database CEO John Sculley touts â€Å"Knowledge Navigator† product concept EO pen-based PDA Newton MessagePad pen-based PDA Sharp PI-3000 (â€Å"Zaurus†) pen-based PDA Palm 1000, 5000, pocket-sized pen-based PDAs Nokia Communicator 9000, keyboard-based cell phone Windows CE 1. shipped in H/PC (â€Å"Handheld PC†) devices from NEC and Casio pdQ, first Palm OS-based cell phone First BlackBerry keyboard-based e-mail appliance Pen-based Ericsson R380 is first smartphone with Symbian OS MP3 Phone supports eight downloadable songs Nokia Communicator 9210, keyboard-based smartphone with Symbian OS Exits PDA business Treo 180, phone with stylus and keyboard based on Palm OS First BlackBerry e-mail device with voice telephony built in p800 touchscreen-based smartphone with Symbian OS Thera is first US phone shipped with Microsoft Pocket PC operating sy stem N-Gage game/phone device Acquires Handspring and its Treo phone line ROKR phone with support for Apple’s iTunes Music Store iPhone touchscreen handset 34 Table 4: Comparison of mobile device platforms Vendor Model Intro date Weight Height Width Thickness Screen size Screen resolution Form factor Input mode Network WiFi OS Downloadable apps Memory capacity Memory card MP3 Java Camera Apple iPhone 7-Jan-2007 Samsung SGH-F700 12-Feb-2007 Sony Ericsson W950 13-Feb-2006 Nokia E90 7-Feb-2007 Nokia E61i 12-Feb-2007 Research in Motion 12-Feb-2007 Palm 15-May-2006 Motorola Q 16-May-2006 BlackBerry 8800 Treo 700p 134 g 114mm 66mm 14mm 2. 5† 320240 BlackBerry Thumb keyboard GSM+EDGE proprietary BlackBerry 64mb microSD X X 180 g 112mm 58mm 23mm 2. † 320320 BlackBerry Thumb keyboard CDMA; EvDO Palm OS 5. 4 Palm OS 128mb SD X X 1. 3 mp 135 g 114mm 61mm 11. 7mm 3. 5† 480320 Tablet Touchscreen GSM+GPRS X Modified Mac OS X 4GB,8GB X 2. 0 mp n. r. 104mm 50mm 16mm 2. 8à ¢â‚¬  440240 Slide-out Mini keyboard GSM; HSDPA proprietary n. r. n. r. microSD X X 5. 0 mp 112 g 106mm 54mm 15mm 2. 6† 240320 Candy bar 10 key GSM; WCDMA Symbian OS 9. 1 UIQ 4GB X 210 g 132mm 57mm 20mm 4. 0† 800352 Clamshell Mini keyboard GSM; HSDPA X Symbian OS 9. 2 S60 n. r. microSD X X 3. 2 mp 150 g 117mm 70mm 13. 9mm 2. 8† 320240 BlackBerry Thumb keyboard GSM; WCDMA X Symbian OS 9. 1a S60 n. r. microSD X X 115 g 116mm 64mm 11. 5mm 2. † 320240 BlackBerry Thumb