How Not to Execute Guerilla Warfare
By Kevin Wang
Situation
The Company was the leader in low level direct current (DC) test and measurement for decades, with growth
fueled in part by applications in cell phone production test where we shipped thousands of power supplies
used in the test racks. Although we were growing and led our product niche, we did not participate in the
major part of the cell phone test opportunity, radio frequency (RF) test equipment, a product segment dominated
by two much larger players.
Because the overall wireless industry was booming at the time, the Company decided to compete in the RF Analyzer market. We invested in a major development to introduce the Company's first ever RF test instrument targeted to work together with our power supplies and dedicated to cell phone production. We decided we could grow with the market, and hoped that we might take share from the big players on the basis of a complete, application-specific solution rather than superior technology. Our company provided two of the three major components of the RF analyzer system - the spectrum analyzer (SA) and control software - and partnered with another company to supply the third component, a signal generator (SG).
