Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image?
In 2016, Chinese telecommunications equipment firm Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (Huawei) aspired to be the world's top smartphone manufacturer. The company had identified German camera company Leica Camera AG (Leica) as a long-term partner to reinvent Huawei's smartphone photography to beat an influx of domestic rivals and the market leaders, Apple and Samsung. The flagship dual camera smartphone that was co-engineered by Huawei and Leica, the P9, contained a camera module that was actually made by a Chinese manufacturer, Sunny Optical Technology Co., under Leica's authorization. As a result, Huawei's motives for the partnership with Leica were criticized as a quick fix to beat Apple in the dual camera market and repair negative publicity the company had suffered earlier. Was the long-term alliance really the best solution for both Huawei and Leica? Was it the right alliance in an emerging market? Wiboon Kittilaksanawong is affiliated with Saitama University. Freddy Rocky Mason is affiliated with Nagoya University of Commerce & Business.
Swot Analysis of "Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image?" written by Wiboon Kittilaksanawong, Freddy Rocky Mason includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Leica Huawei facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Joint ventures and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? casestudy better are - – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is backlash against globalization, increasing energy prices,
geopolitical disruptions, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Leica Huawei, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Leica Huawei operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Leica Huawei
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Leica Huawei
Strengths Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Leica Huawei in Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? Harvard Business Review case study are -
High brand equity
– Leica Huawei has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Leica Huawei to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Leica Huawei is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Wiboon Kittilaksanawong, Freddy Rocky Mason can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Learning organization
- Leica Huawei is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Leica Huawei is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Leica Huawei is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Leica Huawei has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Leica Huawei is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Leica Huawei has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Leica Huawei has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Leica Huawei are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Leica Huawei has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Leica Huawei has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– Leica Huawei is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Weaknesses Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image?, it seems that the employees of Leica Huawei don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Leica Huawei has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Leica Huawei has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Need for greater diversity
– Leica Huawei has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Leica Huawei needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Leica Huawei 's lucrative customers.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Leica Huawei is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Leica Huawei products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Leica Huawei needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Leica Huawei is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Leica Huawei, firm in the HBR case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Leica Huawei has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Opportunities Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Leica Huawei can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Leadership & Managing People segment.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Leica Huawei to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Leica Huawei to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Leica Huawei to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Leica Huawei to increase its market reach. Leica Huawei will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Leica Huawei can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Leica Huawei has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Leica Huawei in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Leica Huawei can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Leica Huawei operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Leica Huawei can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Leica Huawei to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Leica Huawei can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Leica Huawei can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Leica Huawei can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Developing new processes and practices
– Leica Huawei can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Threats Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? are -
Environmental challenges
– Leica Huawei needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Leica Huawei can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Increasing wage structure of Leica Huawei
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Leica Huawei.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Leica Huawei in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Leica Huawei will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image?, Leica Huawei may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Leica Huawei in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Leica Huawei can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Leica Huawei with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Leica Huawei business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Leica Huawei demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Leica Huawei has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Leica Huawei needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Leica Huawei is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Leica Huawei high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image? is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Leica Huawei needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
Feel free to connect with us if you need business research.
You can download Excel Template of Case Study Solution & Analysis of Huawei-Leica Alliance: Reinventing Smartphone Photography or Building Brand Image?
