Rivalry enablers in ecosystems: The role of dominant operating system platform openness across diverse national contexts
A dominant OS platform's openness to device makers fosters competition among them and reduces concentration.
Summary
The study uses web-traffic data on mobile phones and tablets in 190 countries between 2009 and 2019 to test how the openness of the dominant operating system affects concentration among device makers, measured with the Herfindahl index. Openness, moving from proprietary and unlicensable to licensable to open-source, reduces concentration, and the effect is stronger where the dominant platform has a high market share and where antitrust enforcement is stronger, and weaker in richer markets. Open-source Android is associated with more device makers, since smaller manufacturers such as Xiaomi and Oppo can customise it, while iOS, which only Apple builds devices for, is associated with higher concentration where it dominates. For platform sponsors, openness spreads competition downstream, but it needs a regulatory environment that prevents subtle discrimination against complementors.
Editor's opinion
A dominant platform decides how competitive the businesses built on it can be: an open operating system lets many device makers thrive and keeps their market unconcentrated, while a closed one concentrates the profit pool in the sponsor. The effect is strongest where the platform is dominant and regulators keep it honest, so a platform's openness is a structural lever on industry economics, not a question of goodwill.
Key concepts
platform openness · operating systems · market concentration · device makers