Every business is in competition. Even if the competition is apathy or the preservation of the status quo. Your positioning is the simplest statement of how you can add value to your customer, so it is the simplest statement of how you stand in comparison with your competition.
It’s tempting to believe that your business is [...]
The nature of the electronics food chain means that long-term differentiation is difficult. Some companies have it easier: specialized analog, a worldwide franchise in processor design, specialized memory architectures for example. But the bulk of semiconductor companies, while they may start with a strongly differentiated product, quickly find themselves operating in a standards-based, commodity-ridden business [...]
Increasingly, the big winners in electronics are the systems companies that can claim consumer-level differentiation. Apple, for example, has been able to preserve margins and to maintain a powerful corporate brand and consumer loyalty even in the current difficult economic times. At the same time, many of their semiconductor suppliers have struggled to differentiate and [...]