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From business perspective right and nothing new: printer manufacturers, video game system manufacturers, telcos and many more do this for years—building a base
by tferris 14y ago
From business perspective right and nothing new: printer manufacturers, video game system manufacturers, telcos and many more do this for years—building a base where they earn money when people using their stuff rather than buying the initial setup.
From user's and ecosystem perspective it's wrong and leads to bad user experience: proprietary and closed systems, gatekeeper controlling the 'market', limited to no competition within the proprietary ecosystems.
I don't want this and look back at that days where businesses made money from selling systems following or creating open industry standards.
- dmix 14y agoNoone's stopping competitors from launching platforms with open standards. The only factor is the content producers/app developers will go to where the most money can be made or where they can reach the largest audience. The users will ultimately go where there's the most (or best) content/apps. So the business models of the producers is the deciding factor.
- damian2000 14y agoAnd for an example of this look no further than Nintendo - selling a hardware platform (Wii, DS) on razor thin margins, but selling the games at a significant markup. Their inability to compete with the low priced smartphone apps is a big challenge to them.