Analysis On The Core Competence Of Chinese Mobile Communication Operators

The mobile communication market in China started to become a competition marketwith two operators from 1994, when China Unicom was founded. China Unicom hadmade many achievements since then, but it was still far from as powerful as themarket leader, China Mobile. Questions rose from the phenomenon,like where werethe deep-seated reasons why the operators' performance were so different and whatkept China Mobile's persistent dominant status for years. Many literatures focused oncore competence, but little of which paid attention to the operators' internal factors.This essay analyzed the micro operation data of China Mobile, tried to get someinspiration from it and thus give suggestions on core competence building for alloperators.This paper was composed of four parts. Firstly, mainstream core competence theorieswere reviewed and evaluated. It was found that the confusion of key conceptionrestricted the validity of core competence theories. However, the defect could notoverrule the theories' guidance value in strategic management of enterprises. Secondly,a simple method of identifying enterprises' core competence was presented, in whicha logic of final product, core product and core competence was applied. Then thismethod was validated by the positive analysis of China Mobile's case. Finally,inspirations about how to build core competence for all Chinese mobile operators wasget from the experiences of identifying China Mobile's core competence.