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Executive Summary Sapphire is currently in a leadership position of converged mobile devices in the UK market. Due to timing of entry, the corporate solution is further along the product development and adoption curves than the retail solution, although the same number of resources is devoted to Marketing both offerings to carriers. Value is currently created at the upstream end of the value chain, as well as research & development activities. However in the mobile communications industry today, value must be further emphasised on downstream activities such as marketing & sales and services. Sapphire does offer professional services in designing a solution that best fits an organisation, but this is predominantly focused on US clients. Sapphire’s current competitive advantage is the relay, a piece of infrastructure that handles data communication from the server to the handheld. Other advantages include the strong brand name ‘Twinkle’ that reflects email management, time saving, and ‘always on’ with an easy-to-use data entry method. Finally, it is the only converged solution that provides an ‘out-of-the-box’ experience; Sapphire provides the hardware, software, and server, which carriers can sell as one package with their airtime. Although these advantages have been sustained for 5 years, they will not hold out much longer due to increased competition and technology development. For example, firms offering push email technology such as Aqua are partnering with companies producing handhelds such as the Slate handheld. As such, new advantages must be built and protected in order to maintain Sapphire’s leadership position in this market segment. The key factors for competitive success that have been identified include technological innovation, ease-of-use, hardware & software customisation, customer support, and effective distribution channels. Therefore, Sapphire must focus on these key factors in order to ensure future viability when competing in the UK market. Finally, there are some gaps identified in the external analysis. Although not all fit with Sapphire’s core competences, those that do fit include › Expanding the push technology to become a ‘mobile content’ company instead of simply ‘mobile communications’ and › Innovate a fashionable and stylish converged data and voice handheld. Along with focusing more on downstream value chain activities, a holistic strategic direction is required in order to sustain and increase growth in this highly competitive market. Core to this plan is leveraging past experiences in North America to further penetrate the corporate (and higher revenue-generating) market prior to focusing on the retail segment in the UK. This way, new competences in dealing with the prosumer market can be further developed internally prior to spending funds externally, which may leave Sapphire prone to increased competitor attack in the mobile professional segment. By monitoring and evaluating various performance measurements such as market share, profitability, and handheld shipments and activations, this will enable Sapphire to better plan, modify where appropriate, and execute the action plan put forward. It is estimated that by following this strategic marketing plan, revenues from handheld sales and service will increase from approximately USD $100 million in 2005 to almost USD $250 in 2007, with a gross margin of over USD $125 million generated from the UK market. Core to this plan, howe