اثر رقابت تکنولوژی جدید تلفن همراه بر روی تکنولوژی فعلی: یک مطالعه موردی هند  Competition effect of a new mobile technology on an incumbent technology: An Indian case study

1. Introduction Advancements in mobile technology have radically changed people’s lives. Each new generation of mobile technology is characterized by improvements such as enhanced voice capability, high-speed data service, better spectrum management, and wider coverage (Table 1). These technological enhancements have not only widened the mobile market but also contributed to making newer mobile applications feasible and affordable, thus enabling faster diffusion of mobile telephony. A significant development in the evolution of mobile technology is the change in the mode of signal transmission (analog vs. digital) from the first generation to the next. Another equally important change pertains to the access mechanism used. The spectrum is divided into frequency bands, referred to as channels, which are allocated to different users. On the basis of allocation, three different access mechanisms can be identified: frequency division multiple access (FDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), and code division multiple access (CDMA) (Gruber, 2005). Digital (i.e. 2G) mobile technology has been introduced globally under different technological variants that can be divided into two major standards: GSM and CDMA. Of the two, GSM is more popular and still enjoys more than 80% of the market share worldwide. Most of the European Union countries have adopted GSM, while other countries including India, US, Canada, Japan and China have a competitive environment, where more than one standard vie for consumer attention (Gandal, Salant & Waverman, 2003; Casey & Töyli, 2012). Some of the countries such as Japan and Korea have not adopted GSM as a national standard. The Korean government pushed the decision to adopt CDMA standard in Korea whereas Japan had its own Personal Digital Cellular (PDC) standard (based on TDMA) and CDMA (Jho, 2007; Funk, 2009). Telecommunication is one of the fastest growing sectors in India. While various factors are responsible for this growth (Gupta & Jain, 2012), competitive technologies have significantly contributed to expanding the market. Since the launch of CDMA in 2002, the Indian mobile market has witnessed stiff competition between GSM, which continues to enjoy popularity among the users, and CDMA, which is fast gaining ground owing to the collaborative efforts of CDMA operators, device manufacturers, and technology facilitators. Although the competition between GSM and CDMA has resulted in benefits for end users, its effects on the overall diffusion of mobile telephony in India have not been closely examined.