IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rif/dpaper/1238.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Structuring the Smartphone Industry. Is the Mobile Internet OS Platform the Key?

Author

Listed:
  • Kenney, Martin
  • Pon, Bryan

Abstract

Until 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 cate-gory 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 architec-tures 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 strate-gies at odds with platform literature. We examine how the dynamics of this convergence may lead to a reconsideration of certain tenets of platform theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenney, Martin & Pon, Bryan, 2011. "Structuring the Smartphone Industry. Is the Mobile Internet OS Platform the Key?," Discussion Papers 1238, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    • Handle: RePEc:rif:dpaper:1238
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.etla.fi/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/dp1238.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oleksandr Shcherbakov, 2016. "Measuring consumer switching costs in the television industry," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(2), pages 366-393, May.
    2. West, Joel, 2003. "How open is open enough?: Melding proprietary and open source platform strategies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1259-1285, July.
    3. Kenji E. Kushida & John Zysman, 2009. "The Services Transformation and Network Policy: The New Logic of Value Creation1," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 26(1‐2), pages 173-194, January.
    4. Joel West & Siobhan O'mahony, 2008. "The Role of Participation Architecture in Growing Sponsored Open Source Communities," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 145-168.
    5. Annabelle Gawer & Rebecca Henderson, 2007. "Platform Owner Entry and Innovation in Complementary Markets: Evidence from Intel," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(1), pages 1-34, March.
    6. West, Joel & Mace, Michael, 0. "Browsing as the killer app: Explaining the rapid success of Apple's iPhone," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(5-6), pages 270-286, June.
    7. Ishii, Kenichi, 2004. "Internet use via mobile phone in Japan," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 43-58, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin Kenney & Bryan Pon, 2011. "Structuring the Smartphone Industry: Is the Mobile Internet OS Platform the Key?," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 239-261, September.
    2. Siobhan O'Mahony & Rebecca Karp, 2022. "From proprietary to collective governance: How do platform participation strategies evolve?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 530-562, March.
    3. Kimmo Karhu & Robin Gustafsson & Kalle Lyytinen, 2018. "Exploiting and Defending Open Digital Platforms with Boundary Resources: Android’s Five Platform Forks," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(2), pages 479-497, June.
    4. Wilson, Scott & Tanguturi, Praveen, 2012. "Meeting the growth challenge in the open mobile era," 23rd European Regional ITS Conference, Vienna 2012 60349, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    5. Pinar Ozcan & Filipe M. Santos, 2015. "The market that never was: Turf wars and failed alliances in mobile payments," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(10), pages 1486-1512, October.
    6. Rahul Basole & Jürgen Karla, 2011. "On the Evolution of Mobile Platform Ecosystem Structure and Strategy," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 3(5), pages 313-322, October.
    7. Martine Gadille & Alena Siarheyeva, 2014. "Limits to the construction of a community-based open innovation network and implications for specialisation of a small urban area," International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 5(2), pages 152-172.
    8. Perrons, Robert K., 2009. "The open kimono: How Intel balances trust and power to maintain platform leadership," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 1300-1312, October.
    9. Burcu Tan & Edward G. Anderson, Jr. & Geoffrey G. Parker, 2020. "Platform Pricing and Investment to Drive Third-Party Value Creation in Two-Sided Networks," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(1), pages 217-239, March.
    10. Campbell-Kelly, Martin & Garcia-Swartz, Daniel D., 2009. "Pragmatism, not ideology: Historical perspectives on IBM's adoption of open-source software," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 229-244, August.
    11. Minhyuk Sur & Deok-Joo Lee & Kyung-Taek Kim, 2019. "Optimal revenue sharing in platform markets: a Stackelberg model," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(4), pages 317-331, August.
    12. Nishino, Nariaki & Okazaki, Miki & Akai, Kenju, 2018. "Effects of ability difference and strategy imitation on cooperation network formation: A study with game theoretic modeling and multi-agent simulation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 145-156.
    13. Xing Wan & Javier Cenamor & Geoffrey Parker & Marshall Van Alstyne, 2017. "Unraveling Platform Strategies: A Review from an Organizational Ambidexterity Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-18, May.
    14. Jabbour, Chady & Rey-Valette, Hélène & Maurel, Pierre & Salles, Jean-Michel, 2019. "Spatial data infrastructure management: A two-sided market approach for strategic reflections," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 69-82.
    15. Jingtao Yi & Jinqiu He & Lihong Yang, 2019. "Platform heterogeneity, platform governance and complementors’ product performance: an empirical study of the mobile application industry," Frontiers of Business Research in China, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 1-20, December.
    16. Balka, Kerstin & Raasch, Christina & Herstatt, Cornelius, 2009. "How open is open source: Software and beyond," Working Papers 58, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Institute for Technology and Innovation Management.
    17. Lin, Wan-Ying & Zhang, Xinzhi & Jung, Joo-Young & Kim, Yong-Chan, 2013. "From the wired to wireless generation? Investigating teens’ Internet use through the mobile phone," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 651-661.
    18. Fabian Schueler & Dimitri Petrik, 2022. "Objectives of platform research: A co-citation and systematic literature review analysis," Papers 2202.08822, arXiv.org.
    19. Hussinger, Katrin & Schwiebacher, Franz, 2013. "The value of disclosing IPR to open standard setting organizations," ZEW Discussion Papers 13-060, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    20. Jens Foerderer, 2020. "Interfirm Exchange and Innovation in Platform Ecosystems: Evidence from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(10), pages 4772-4787, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    platforms; industry structure; smart phones; Android; iPhone;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rif:dpaper:1238. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kaija Hyvönen-Rajecki (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/etlaafi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.