Google's competitive position in technology and consumer electronics

Industry and Competitive Analysis

Industry Analysis

Google offers services three industries. The first industry is the internet industry, through Goole search engine, Gmail and Google Adwords as product offerings. Secondly, there is the computer software industry through Chrome OS, Picasa, Google Earth and Picasa as product offerings. This service works in tandem with the mobile operating software industry as Google bought Android. Third, there is the consumer electronics industry with Google offering Chromebook, Google TV and Nexus as product offerings. One of the distinctive elements of these industries is the proliferation of technology in the market. With the increase in innovation, these industries face the trend of having new products offerings and services in the market, which prompts the need for more products and invention. In addition, there is a greater increase in consumer preference, which prompts the need to ensure that consumer needs are satisfied. This is why Google and its rivals constantly update their products, in order to suit the preferences of consumers (Buganza and Della Valle, 2010).

Competitive Analysis

Google faces intense competition from different companies and in different markets. The following is an analysis of different companies that substantially rival products and services offered by Google (Perreault et al., 2015).

1. Facebook Inc.

With respect to social networking, Facebook is deemed as the most preferred company to go to. In particular, the platform/site makes it possible for users to share information, post videos and photos as well as connect with other users through their social profiles. Facebook significantly rivals Google in the area of advertising, which is one of the main revenue sources of the firm. Presently, Facebook Inc. has more than 1.4 billion active users every month (Sun, 2015). Therefore, it offers Google a great deal of competition as it makes it the most prominent source of advertisement on social media for consumers. The efficient and modernized app for Facebook together with its capacity to quickly grow a hidden network of third-party apps and website by means of particular sign-ons goes on to offer intense competition to Google. More so, it is imperative to point out that social networks developed by Google such as Pyra Labs, Orkut social network and Google Wave service have all been unsuccessful in posing a challenge to Facebook (Market Line, 2015). Restricted accomplishment of Google's social networks is a competitive shortcoming particularly as the social platforms carry the advantage of attracting greater advertising and are projected to grow further. Directly contending with established players such as Facebook for social network user base continues to be a demanding undertaking for Google (Market Line, 2015).

1. Apple Inc.

Apple competes with Google on the mobile operating system market. Google entered into this particular market through the acquisition of Android. Android enjoys numerous distinctive advantages and is now a principal player in the operating systems' market. This mobile operating system is utilized by several mobile phones. Apple competes with Google on this front as it has its own operating system referred to as iOS. iPhone, through Apple, is accredited as the device that revolutionized the smartphone upheaval. The use of iOS is however, restricted as it is only accessible on one product range, the iPhone (Market Line, 2015). In addition, according to Sun (2015), Apple is slowly rivalling Google in its network. To begin with, it substituted Google by Bing, making it the default search engine for Spotlight and Siri. In addition, the company removed Google maps on its smartphones, which adversely rivals Google as it was dependent on iOS for three quarters of its mobile advertisement revenues (Sun, 2015).

Part 2

The product life cycle is made up of four stages, which include the market introduction, growth, maturity, and decline stages. Regardless of being on the retail market for a number of years, the Toyota Prius continues to be in the market growth stage. In particular, the company is constantly upgrading the motor vehicle in order to grow the consumer base for the product. Normally, Toyota uses the demographic marketing strategy to advertise and retail its product offerings, taking into account the gender, age and preferences of the consumers. However, the main kind of marketing strategy that Toyota used for this particular vehicle is the psychographic marketing strategy. This was owing to the fact that the company was largely inclined to attract tech savvy consumers and depended on them to disseminate the word about the new vehicle. This was to ensure that the consumers were in a thrill regarding the Prius. Should Toyota convert all of its automobiles to hybrids? I do not believe so. Despite the fact that Toyota has experienced a great deal of accomplishment with their Hybrid automobiles up until now, it is rational to increase its number of Hybrid vehicles. However, it has to consider the preference of other consumers, too. The next step that Toyota ought to take is to continue to innovate its automobiles. Times are changing and thus far, the company has been able to take advantage with the Prius. Therefore, it only makes sense to improve the automobile with new and better features (Stark, 2015).