The battle of foundations: There is no room for the weak!

Throughout this year's speech at WWDC, Apple has been at war with the world with competing products and applications with Dropbox, Box, OneDrive and Google Drive cloud storage; WhatsApp, Snapdchat and BBM messages; Skype and mobile phone calls; Google search engine and even Objective-C application programming.

Surprisingly? Not necessarily. The competitive front that big technology companies share will be gradually getting bigger. Battle companies are divided into two categories: powerful platform companies and the rest.

Power of the platform

Companies have a different platform than platform companies . Companies with a platform tend to provide a platform in a specific product, while platform companies operate more widely and tend to build hardware, operating systems and software on the platform. their platform.

Vertical integration if you can

The group of companies has the potential to ensure the title of "platform company" , including: Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. These companies are fighting on hundreds of fronts, making the current market context extremely interesting.

To clearly define what constitutes a foundation company, we can look at large technology companies through a free-development space called "open space" (white space) , the top area. of a platform that the company allows others to use. Platform companies spend more time determining the white space they provide than worrying about the white space provided by others. Companies that are not foundational companies think otherwise.

Box CEO Aaron Levie shared the background that the amount of white space provided by major suppliers varies. For example, he thinks Apple has done well in providing developers with space to rehearse.

With the WWDC conference held every year, Apple is doing well in pampering, sparing developers

There is a natural feedback loop provided with white space, according to Levie: if developers feel poorly cared for, they can give up and move on to development for another platform that provides combined value. better. This provides opportunities for new platforms, and new large platform companies, with opportunities to grow.

So the current platform companies are doing all to serve, and pamper, developers. We are in the midst of developer conferences so you can clearly see the platform giants are "flirting" with developers. And growing companies, like Box and Dropbox, will have to compete with big tech firms if they want to become a platform company in the near future.

Promote the platform

Apple's strong product expansion is hardly shocking. Along with other platform companies, Apple builds a larger and more diverse set of services: If a product, program or service can run on Apple's platform, it will build it on its own. or redeem it.

If a product, program or service can run on Apple's platform, the company will build it or buy it on its own, the Apple acquisition of Beats is an example.

You can see this clearly in the case of cloud storage. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and now Apple all offer cloud storage services. They can incorporate cloud storage into their web products ( Google ) or their operating systems and performance applications ( Microsoft ) or use it to enhance their device experience ( Apple ).

Dropbox and Box, compete in vertical cloud storage, and distinguish themselves by building individual services that bring value, more relevant than what the platform companies provide.

War is everywhere

The foundation company is the mess. Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon are all hardware companies, operating system companies, cloud computing companies, companies supporting smartphone application development, and to some extent corporate SaaS companies ( SaaS, software in the form of services ).

Amazon is a book-selling company. But so is Apple for iBook, and Microsoft is no exception when investing in Nook, and Google has a Books app on Android. Amazon sells music. Apple is like having iTunes, Microsoft has Xbox Music, and Google has Google Play Music.

When you do not compete on all fronts, you are forced to give up part of the end user experience for your opponent, and you agree to give up your other services.

Apple has Siri, Microsoft has Cortana and Google has Google Now

In areas where companies do not compete even more interesting: Apple, Google and Microsoft all make maps, but only two firms focus on search. But even that is not entirely true: Apple is turning to searching with Siri extensions and universal search in OS X Yosemite. To fight Siri, Google has Google Now and Microsoft has Cortana. And Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft all have their own app store. This list continues to grow further.

Facebook is leading the trend of simplifying the user experience and providing standalone applications, having a bigger trend for tech giants . to do everything.

What the hell is going on?

A question worth considering! When you control a platform and a diverse customer base, you can do more. It will become a scenario in which every platform company has to do everything. And when they try they will stand out.

And when services are increasingly intertwined, a crack in your platform can make users wobble and turn their attention to the opponent's platform.

If Microsoft didn't build OneDrive and then incorporated it into Windows and Office, it would give up the ability to store files for other vendors like Dropbox or Box. These companies then control where the files are stored, and where the stored files are where they tend to be edited. And therefore Office revenue may be affected.

Glory of the ruler

It is very difficult to challenge big platform companies, because they have all the basic advantages: Abundant cash, big profits and brand in consumers' hearts, things that young competitors or single platform companies almost never get.

Facebook buys WhatsApp at expensive prices to protect yourself

Facebook, a platform company in a separate field, purchased WhatsApp at an unbelievable price, not only to protect its customer base but also to prevent the group of four big men ( Big Four ). is Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft attack on its field.

So when a new company, a breakthrough appears, you should buy it because you are a platform company, you have money, and when you buy a new application / company, a breakthrough means those Your rival company's platform can't get it. You are now unique, The One!

Of course, when you have your own foundation you should build instead of buying too much.

Relevant market dynamics are one of the reasons why the price of cloud storage services is declining. Giants will buy or destroy new, breakthrough companies / applications. And since Dropbox is no longer interested in reselling companies ( because at this time platform companies are probably afraid of Dropbox ), Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google have built their own products to edge. paintings and then started to reduce their product prices so dizzyingly to hold back and squeeze Dropbox.

The enthusiasm of giants

In the past, a company would tremble when Microsoft jumped into their field. Microsoft is a platform company. Microsoft is now a giant in many areas, and each of them has an advantage that almost no one can catch up. Google has a huge amount of device through Android; Apple has the best ability to design and build brand perfectly; and Microsoft has an extremely deep corporate and corporate sales channel.

This means that breakthrough firms will have to fight back, not just imitate.

What is yours is mine, and mine is yours

What's more interesting is watching the giants steal from each other. OS X 10.10 Yosemite is an excellent operating system. But some of its features, such as the blurred side toolbar and overview search, are borrowed from Microsoft's Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Or many features on iOS 8 long known on Android.

All this has happened before and will happen again.

Context the current platform is innovating slowly? Not really. Every technology wave has a predominant firm, and their winning rate band tends to drop to 0 if you watch over a few decades.

Companies are building their own countries and empires, in which they control not only the rules, but also run stores and control currencies through a large number of products. As a result, companies will last longer, more enduring. The consolidation of hardware companies, software companies, companies serving businesses and consumer service companies will create a terrible combination of profits.

In that cycle, the living rule itself does not allow a company to stop, even for a minute of rest, because they know that over time, no one can remain a loser. They simply tried to extend their glory days before being buried by new people and depriving them of their status .