Abstract
Advances in the semiconductor and digital technologies urge the electronics industry to introduce modular structures of the products and correspondingly assume decentralized industry structure. This means for individual businesses a major shift in corporate strategy, which is vital, in theory, for attaining or maintaining their competitive positions in the market. However, the analysis of the Japanese digital still camera (DSC) industry made in the present work showed that the leading companies have maintained their competitive edge without radical strategy shift. This was probably because high pixel counts, regarded as the principal measure of image quality, remained as the focus of competition, which favored companies with their own distinctive and integrated design solutions. The importance of technical features of the products and demand situations in the evolution of product architecture and industrial structure cannot be denied, but actual courses of evolution are under strong influence of the shared beliefs about the value of products or functions, corporate strategies, and their interaction, as demonstrated by the present work.
