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IIThe authors acknowledge the assistance, discussions, and comments of Andrew Hargadon, Greg Linden, Jonathan Murray, Petri Rouvinen, Timo Seppälä, Urs von Burg, and John Zysman. We are particularly thankful to Joel West who contributed so much to the first version of this paper and without whose penetrating ideas and deep knowledge of the industry, we could never have completed the project. This research is a part of the ongoing collaboration of BRIE, the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California at Berkeley, and ETLA, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.Co-published in the BRIE Working Paper Series (Number 194).
ISSN 0781-6847
AbstractUntil the introduction of the iPhone, cellular telephony and the Internet were essentially separate. The Internet was a PC-based service, while mobile telephony was conducted on a telephone. Though there were mobile products that provided communication services such as email, web access and other Internet services were either unavailable or inferior to those available on a PC. The "smartphone" category redefined by Apple meant the convergence of traditional mobile telephony, Internet services, and personal computing. As these sectors merge into a single device, formerly separate industry architectures and their constituent firms are being forced into direct competition. We test theories of industry architecture and technological platforms regarding their ability to explain the strategies of key entrants in navigating the transition. We analyze in detail the actions and strategies of four major competitors, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, and, more briefly, Research in Motion and HP/Palm, from the framework of technological platform theory. Our analysis suggests that currently some competitors are following traditional platform strategies, but that Google and Apple appear to have adopted strategies at odds with platform literature. We examine how the dynamics of this convergence may lead to a reconsideration of certain tenets of platform theory.