Vertical integration is a hot term, but unless you have long term monopoly in the market, it’s more likely to be a losing strategy. If you bet on wrong directio

Vertical integration is a hot term, but unless you have long term monopoly in the market, it’s more likely to be a losing strategy. If you bet on wrong direction, you’re in much deeper troubles, as you cannot switch to other vendor that went other direction (switching vendors is also hard, but much easier than rebuilding and catching up on your internal R&D). And you lose power of market and economy of scale. Vendors can focus on developing their tech to be better, for everyone, as they get bigger R&D budgets, and you can just focus on improving things that are your true market advantage, not fighting in commodities market. Note, that doesn’t mean that IBM is doing right thing. But vertical integration is extremely overhyped.