Eco-Fone Report: Smartphone Market Analysis and Business Strategy

This report analyzes the UK smartphone market, focusing on Eco-Fone, a startup smartphone manufacturer. The analysis is based on data from journal articles, internet sources, and a Deloitte report. The report examines market trends, competitive advantages and disadvantages, and revenue trends for Eco-Fone. Statistical testing is performed to compare revenue generation between Eco-Fone's two shops. The report covers the overview of the mobile phone market in the UK, forecasting smartphone usage, the potential market for older customers, the feasibility of expanding business to Kingston, and the costs of a new building. It includes an analysis of customer satisfaction, quality procedures, and financial aspects like mortgage costs. The report concludes with key findings and recommendations for Eco-Fone's business strategy, emphasizing the competitive landscape, the importance of new technologies, and the potential for expansion. The report utilizes data analysis, statistical testing, and market research to provide a comprehensive overview of the UK smartphone market and its implications for Eco-Fone's success.

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T F C FREPOR OR E O- ONE
ate rilD : Ap ??, 2019

e ort for o FoneR p Ec - 2019
Introduction
The assignment mainly deals with the popularity of various smartphones in the UK
which is analysed using the data in journal articles and internet. Mostly the assignment aims to
find the competitive advantage or disadvantage of Eco Fone Company which is a start-up
Smartphone manufacturer company in the market and its current revenue trend. The tables and
charts are obtained from the provided Deloitte report as published in UK and various other
articles (Deloitte 2019). Further, statistical testing is performed to see whether the two shops of
Eco Fone generates the same amount of revenue. In brief the provided data and data obtained
from different articles are used to analyse, predict the current Smartphone market situation
based on popularity, effects and the features on the population of UK.
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1. Analysis of Issues for Eco-Fone Smartphones
1.1 An Overview of the Mobile phone market in the UK
There are total of 33.5 million number of people in the UK and 95% of those are people
approximately 32 million are currently working. From the Deloitte research it can be seen that
50% of the people from the sample regularly use smartphones for at least one business related
activity. The statistical test shows that more than 50% of the people use smartphones for daily
business related activities. The mobile phone usage till middle of 2017 can be segregated in
three broadly classified activities which are 44% emails, 23% calendar management and 34%
voice calls respectively. New smartphones usage is expected because of ease of usage to
compose mails, setting remainders in calendar and one click voice call (Chung and Park 2017).
The reporting systems and legacy information activities are complex to do in smartphones and
rarely used by people for these purposes. Photo editing, Mobile browsing, instant messaging
applications are the other common activities which are done by people frequently by
smartphones. Whatsapp is the most popular application on the smartphone as by Deloitte and
which is used by nearly 43% of the workers in a full day (Giachetti, Lampel and Pira 2017).
Other smartphone usage types are of moderate level especially for those who are focused
towards the work flow activities. From the Deloitte study it can be observed that for workflow
activities like time sheet submission, expense sheet submission and internet access the
percentage of usage by people is typically 5%, 4% and 6% respectively. The variation of
smartphone usage over different activities in 2016 and 2017 are shown in figure 1 in appendix.
1.2 Forecasting the UK Adult Smartphone use
The usage of smartphone in percentage from year 2012 to 2017 as evident from figure 3 of the
Deloitte report and the information is displayed using a line chart as given in figure 2 in the
appendix. A second order polynomial equation is found as the best fit to the given data with a
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coefficient of determination value of 99.95%. The linear regression line is not a best suited
prediction equation as it can be seen that from the line chart that the graph is a curve.
Index of 2018 = 7
Index of 2019 = 8
Thus the predicted percentage of smartphone usage in the year 2018 = -0.75*(7^2) + 11.764*7
+ 41.2 = 86.798% and similarly in 2019 usage = -0.75*(8^2) + 11.764*8 + 41.2 = 87.312%
1.3 Smartphones - A potential market for older customers
The different features that makes the smartphones attractive varies by age group as found by
BBC which is descried in the given article. According to the article the almost 71% of the old
age persons use smartphone for entertainment purpose. The old people are generally richer than
the average young age people as they have done enough savings in their lifetime and thus they
can be buy smartphones which are expensive in the market. However, as described in the
article the real cause of buying smartphone is its features. The useful features are ordering a
cab within very short duration in busy area and also opting for pick up from home facility,
wide screen display and extended sound quality of new smartphones are particularly suited for
older people as their hearing ability is generally reduced and as well as strength of eyes
(Mugge, Jockin and Bocken 2017). Further the features are food ordering, bill payment in
parking lot saves significant amount of time anyone. The OS in the smartphone is very easy to
operate and thus it is easier to grasp for the older people. The password entry locking system
like old phones are not convenient for older people and thus many modern smartphones have
face reckon unlocking system which are very much convenient for people in old age and thus
hey buy these expensive smartphones (Zimmermann, Auinger and Riedl 2019).
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1.4 Feasibility of Expanding business to Kingston using Pros and Cons table
ould e e and our business to ingstonSh w xp K ?
rosP oreSc /10 Cons oreSc /10
er fe nu ber of brands ofV y w m
s art ones are do inating inm ph m
a sung and le are t eUK, S m App h
na es T us t e ar et ism . h h m k
o etiti ec mp v .
5.5
arge ar et is old bL m k h y
a sung and le i areS m App wh ch
and res e ti el48% 35% p c v y.
4
T e nu ber of users ofh m
s art ones are redi ted tom ph p c
in rease in futurec .
8
T e ne usto ers refersh w c m p
bu ing s art ones fro elly m ph m w
re uted brands le andp . App
a sung are so e re utedS m m p
brands.
5
t is e e ted t at an eo leI xp c h m y p p
ill subs ribed to differentw c
net or ro iders in t e futurew k p v h .
7.5
a as ou go trend is gettingP y- -y -
ada ted in t e future earsp h y .
et or ro iders don t getN w k p v ’
u rofit fro t is featurem ch p m h .
4.5
ignifi ant nu ber of old andS c m
ne usto ers are o ting forw c m p
ne te nologies ofw ch
s art onesm ph .
8
o e ne te nologies are tooS m w ch
o li ated to understand bc mp c y
t e eo leh p p .
5
Total rosP 29 Total Cons 18.5
erage rosAv P 7.25 erage ConsAv 4.625
As the average pros score is more than the average cons score for expanding smartphone
business and hence if the smartphone business of Eco Fone is expanded in Kingston then the
company will be benefitted.
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1.5 Costs of a New Building
a)
Given, loan amount = £350,000
Mortgage rate = 7% per annum
Monthly 15 year repayment mortgage cost is calculated in excel as given below (Donald 2016).
Loan Amount £
3,50,000.00
Interest rate 7%
Years 15
Monthly
Payments
£
3,145.90
Hence, the month cost of £ 3,145.90.
b) The eight different commercial lenders who are current at top are given with their
corresponding symbols in the given table.
Lender name Logo
RBS
(Rbs.com 2019)
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NatWest
(Personal.natwest.com 2019)
HSBC
(Hsbc.co.uk 2019)
Barclays
(Barclays.co.uk 2019)
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Lloyds bank
(Lloydsbank.com 2019)
TSB
(Tsb.co.uk 2019)
Bank of Scotland
(Bankofscotland.co.uk 2019)
Clydesdale Bank
(Secure.cbonline.co.uk 2019)
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1.6 Testing the Possible Difference in Net Takings in the Two Shops
Mean and standard deviation of 1st shop are £100 and £20 respectively.
Mean and standard deviation of 2nd shop are £90 and £40 respectively.
Now, it is required to find if the population means of daily takings for the two shops are
significantly different or same (Park and Wang 2018).
The population standard deviation is not known and the sample size is over 30 and thus t test
can be applied assuming the populations are approximately normally distributed. The
significance level of the test is 0.05 (Tarinc et al. 2019).
Null hypothesis (H0): The population averages of net daily takings from two shops are equal
(μ1 = μ2).
Alternative hypothesis (H1): The population averages of net daily takings from two shops are
not equal (μ1 ≠ μ2).
T-test table:
T Test
sample mean shop
1(m1)
100
sample mean shop
2(m2)
90
sample sd shop 1(s1) 20
sample sd shop 2(s2) 40
sample size shop 1(n1) 40
sample size shop 2(n2) 40
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hypthesized mean
difference
0
Assuming Equal
variance
pooled variance(sp) 1000 ((n1-1)*s1^2 + (n2-1)*s2^2)/(n1+n2-2)
t score 0.044721 (m1-m2)/(sp*(1/n1 + 1/n2))
Df 78 n1+n2-2
Two tailed t test
p value 0.964444
Significance level 0.05
Decision There is not sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis as p
value more than 0.05.
Thus from the t test it is found that there is not enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis
and thus it can be concluded that the population means of net daily takings from two shops are
equal.
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1.7 Customer Satisfaction
The average responses as provided by different customers of Eco-Fone are calculated in excel
and the result is shown below. The average is rounded to nearest integer from a scale of 1 to 5
where 1 corresponds to worst response and 5 is the best response.
IDS Q1 Q2 Q3a Q3b Q3c Q3d Q4 Q5 Q6
Averag
e
3 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 4
Thus the interpretation of the averages are given below.
Average duration of by products or services: 3 to 6 months
Average usage of smartphones: 1 to 3 years
Average customers reviews to Eco Fone service or product: fair
Average customer’s reviews to Quality of services of Eco-Fone: good
Overall satisfaction of customers: neutral
On average expectation of doing business with Eco Fone: expected
Average Customers’ recommendation about products and services of Eco Fone: recommended
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1.8 Quality Procedures
Given, total invoices sent in a month = 10000.
Average invoices returned (λ) = 2.
Now, let assume X = expected number of returned invoices in a month.
Now, as sample size 10000 is large enough, hence Poisson distribution can be used as an
approximation of binomial distribution which is followed by X (Lawrence 2019).
Poisson distribution p.m.f:
P(X=x) = e−λ∗λx
x !
Hence,
P(X>3) = 1- (P(X=0) + P(X=1) + P(X=2) + P(X=3)) = 1 – ( e−2∗20
0 ! + e−2∗21
1! + e−2∗22
2 ! + e−2∗23
3 ! )
= 0.1428 = 14.28%.
Hence, the probability of returning more than 3 invoices in a month is less than 50% and hence
Eco-Fone has successfully met it quality procedure (Lizama, C., 2017).
1.9 Conclusions & Important Findings
Now, in the conclusion part all the researches and calculations which are done in earlier parts
are combined and the summary is written in a short paragraph. The smartphone market is
increasing exponentially with new technological developments in the UK. Old generation is
trying as fast as younger generation to quickly grab the cutting edge technologies. The
smartphone market is very competitive and even though some customers choose specific
reputed brands like Apple and Samsung, the market can shift any brand providing new
attractive features. Thus the expansion of business in all over UK is smart move by Eco phone
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