Oligopólio, fragmentação produtiva e destruição criativa no setor de telecomunicações: o caso dos smartphones

Abstract

This work addresses the smartphone market, exploring its rapid global rise and its centrality in the technology era. Over a decade of exponential growth, from 2007 to 2017, the market experienced disruptive innovations that shaped its structure and competitiveness. The main objective of the work is to analyze the three most relevant economic characteristics of the telecommunications sector: oligopoly, productive fragmentation, and creative destruction, with an emphasis on the smartphone product. The study highlights an understanding of the following theories: the oligopolistic structure, international productive fragmentation, and the importance of creative destruction. Two procedures were adopted for structuring the work: a review and bibliographic research of theoretical issues, and a exploratory case study investigation. Using secondary data from the smartphone industry, the research confirms the oligopolistic nature of major global companies, especially the dominance of Apple and Samsung, the internationalization of production processes for the supply of parts and raw materials, also oligopolized, and a slowdown in disruptive innovations since 2019. The future challenge for the industry lies in the need for a new wave of creative destruction to prevent the sector from entering the maturity phase and advancing towards an imminent decline.