Platform control during battles for market dominance: The case of Apple versus IBM in the early personal computer industry

E den Hartigh, JR Ortt, G van de Kaa, CCM Stolwijk

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

42 Citations (Scopus)
45 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We conduct a case study of the battle for market dominance between the industry platforms led by Apple and by IBM in the early personal computer industry (1977–1986). Platform leaders such as Apple or IBM need to consider many technological, strategic, and network factors in managing their industry platforms. We explore how platform leaders deploy these factors and their interactions during a battle for market dominance. We find that platform leaders choose various control modes to do so, ranging from central control to distributed control. The adoption of these control modes is dependent on the choice of being first entrant with a technological discontinuity (central control) or follower (distributed control). Within a control mode, technological, strategic, and network factors are managed in a coherent way.

Previous article in issue
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4-12
Number of pages9
JournalTechnovation
Volume48-49
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Keywords

  • CWTS 0.75 <= JFIS < 2.00

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