BigTechCo Strategy: Paying the Platform Tax
In a world dominated by Aggregation Theory, a few large players own large vectors of distribution. Mobile? You can’t work around Apple and Google. Search? Can’t work around Google.
If you’re one of these large companies and you have a product that needs distribution through a competitor, you face a choice: do you pay a potential competitor their ‘rake’ - in whatever form that takes - or do you go it alone?
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Once you clarify what your business actually is, you then get to define who gets protection and who has to face competition. One framework you could apply: working with a competitor that cannibalizes a supporting, or new & unproven business is acceptable but one that risks a core business is a no-go.
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You can see why Fitbit resists some very vocal customer requests to build Apple Health support - they probably believe doing so will only let Apple compete with Fitbit faster.
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You can see why Fitbit resists some very vocal customer requests to build Apple Health support - they probably believe doing so will only let Apple compete with Fitbit faster.
Maybe, but if there's gonna be a silo that contains health data, I'd rather it be one silo, rather than each vendor of a health device getting their own. If anything, I wish Apple were far stricter about mandating that health apps (e.g. Withings/Nokia Health stuff) always make signing up for an account optional. It's a huge privacy leak, and there is no technical reason for it.
One big silo? That's vendor lock in all the same. Thanks, but no thanks. I like the idea if I switch to Android or Mobile platform X, I can migrate data.
