A Patent-Based Tool to Support Component Suppliers Assessment in the Smartphone Supply Chain

In this article, we suggest a patent-based tool for assessing component suppliers' innovation quality in the smartphone supply market. Since suppliers' portfolios enclose technologies useful for different end products, the tool allows an accurate assessment by performing two filtering steps to select only patents groups relevant for the evaluation. Employing text mining techniques, the methodology leads to a systematic suppliers assessment procedure for buyers operating in specific markets by proposing innovation criteria. To test the robustness of the tool, the case of the smartphone supply market is studied. While the innovation quality of its entire patent portfolio has no relationship with the market performance achieved by the component supplier, a positive relationship between the innovation quality of smartphone-related patents and the supplier's market share has been detected, exhibiting that the likelihood of being selected is positively associated with the suggested innovation metrics. In addition, findings show a positive relationship between suppliers' concentration on the smartphone segment and their selection. The work suggests to consider innovation metrics capable of proxying specific technological features of a component supplier, avoiding general analyses on its overall patent portfolio. In particular, three patent-based metrics measuring technological capability, technological impact, and marketability are proposed.