Business and Management EE - Microsofts and Nokia's partnership

[Okku123]

Im really having trouble in finding a topic for my extended essay. These are the topics i have made up so far but are they both not narrow enough and how can I make them more narrow..? Can i do an EE on these topics?? Thanks for help!

1.To what extent can Nokia's current market share of smartphones be attributed to it's choise of using windows as their smartphone operating system instead of Android?

2. How effective has the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft been for Nokia as a smartphone strategy?

[bluedino]

Okay, so since it's been a few days and nobody's replied yet, I thought I'd just chip in what I think.

I agree that both your RQs so far do probably seem too broad, especially the second one. So for the first one.. I'm a bit hesitant on the bit where it says "instead of Android" because you don't actually know what would have happened if they did use Android, if that makes sense? You're kind of comparing two options, except for one of the options you don't actually know what might have happened - it would be pure conjecturing and speculation. That's just what I think?

Maybe you could just do "To what extent can Nokia's current market share of smartphones be attributed to it's choise of using windows as their smartphone operating system?" and then just look at what the benefits of using windows was? I'm not actually that knowledgeable about any of this, so I'm not really certain if this is still too broad/not. Have you done some research and seen whether there's actually lots of sources/information/evidence that you could use for this topic? I mean, if there's a lot of information about Nokia's current market share of smartphones and how windows really helped it, then the RQ might be too broad, but if the use of windows wasn't really that big of a deal, then maybe it'll work?

As for the 2nd one, I definitely think that's too broad. If you wanted to go down that road, you'd need to replace "smartphone strategy" with something much more specific. Maybe exploring how effective the partnership was for a specific smartphone/model? Also, when you say "How effective", if you were to do this question, you should probably be more detailed - as in, How effective has the partnership.. been for increasing sales of specific smartphone. Otherwise if you just have "How effective has the partnership.. been for specific smartphone".. it doesn't quite make sense..? Might just be me though.

Lastly, you should have a B&M EE supervisor, so make sure you ask him/her about your RQs and see if they've got any advice/suggestions they could give you/whether they think your 1st RQ is too broad. They are supposed to be guiding you, after all! So I hope this helps!