Case1: Portable Fun Instruments
Portable Fun Instruments Yash Gupta is the founder and president of Portable Fun Instruments (PFI), a company that has had great success in the handheld game market. Its first products were dedicated handheld devices that each offered a specific game, such as backgammon, checkers, or chess. As the power of microprocessors for handheld devices grew, and the size and cost of those microprocessors shrank, PFI was able to build better and more complex games into its devices. Today, PFI offers a wide variety of dedicated handheld devices on which users can play card games, adventure games, and sports simulations, and solve various kinds of puzzles.
Most of the elements in the game displays are graphics, not words. This helps PFI sell the devices in many different markets around the world without having to build separate interfaces for each language. PFI%u2019s game devices have retail prices that range between $20 and $40, but the retailers and distributors buy them from PFI for prices that range between $4 and $18. PFI is profitable because Yash has worked hard to keep development and production costs low. Most of the programming is done in Bangalore, India, and the devices are built in production facilities located in Xixiang, China, and Penang, Malaysia.
Although Yash has been successful in controlling production costs, he worries about continuing to operate the company with a long-term strategy that requires PFI to build a new physical device for each sale. The large retail chains that have become PFI%u2019s main customers are always asking for discounts and reduced prices on new orders, and production costs are creeping upward even though the facilities are located in some of the lowest-cost areas in the world. Yash wants to explore the potential PFI has for moving its games to other platforms.
PFI has translated some of its games to run on smart phones, but the results have been disappointing. Until recently, most smart phone users have been businesspeople who use their smart phones for e-mail, appointments, address books, travel expenses, and other data-management functions. These users are not avid game players, and sales of PFI%u2019s games for these platforms have not been strong. Some of PFI%u2019s marketing team members have been telling Yash about the success of Apple%u2019s iPhone and the online store for software that runs on that phone (called Applications for iPhone).
Apple shares the revenue earned from software sales on its site with the developers of that software. Other team members have mentioned Google%u2019s Android operating system for smart phones built by a variety of manufacturers. Software for those phones sells in the Android Marketplace, which operates in much the same way as Apple%u2019s software store, sharing revenue with software providers. Yash has hired you as a consultant to investigate the Apple iPhone and Android Market- place as options for selling versions of PFI%u2019s games that will work on smart phones.
Requirement:
1. Use the links in the Web Links for this case, your favorite search engine, and resources in your library to learn more about Android and Apple as program delivery systems for smart phones. Prepare a 300-word executive summary for Yash that describes each delivery system you identify and outlines the current or likely near-term availability of each system for content providers such as PFI.
2 .Prepare a report for Yash and the PFI executive team in which you outline and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each content delivery system you have identified. Your report should conclude with a specific recommendation regarding the suitability of each content delivery system for PFI%u2019s games. This report should be about 300 words in length.