My worry is that this like saying (in the 90s) that Apple (or Honeywell, Novell, Amiga, whatever) should make a Microsoft PC - 'focus on the hardware, stop aski

My worry is that this like saying (in the 90s) that Apple (or Honeywell, Novell, Amiga, whatever) should make a Microsoft PC - 'focus on the hardware, stop asking developers to make an entirely new version of software for their losing standard' - instead of taking due anti-trust action against the fixers of the market. That's akin to saying "Okay, we found a winner - all OS sales will be to this one (or two - whatever) companies. Everyone else can compete underneath the vertical on the final consumer product of this mono(duo)poly but they can not compete to make a better OS/platform/marketplace/social website". I mean, I think we both understand each other here. We both understand that there are companies that monopolize parts of the software industry, and prevent others from competing. Can I try to say what I think you're getting at? I don't want to put words in your mouth, so please correct me if this is not right. Your analysis, I think, is trying to say that there are other places that a company can compete when corners of the information industry are monopolized; and that companies can bide their time in an attempt to win the 'next big thing'; that the nature of the information industry and its companies is to leapfrog one over another by 'disrupting' the current paradigm and finding a throne in the next (wary, thereon, of being similarly usurped). In this analysis someone would point to competition being fair in the sense that everyone has some relatively fair chance at being the next big paradigm setter. Maybe someone who believed that would say to someone like me that I'm looking at competition in the market on too small a scale. That I'm look at a fair phone market when soon everyone will be wearing smart glasses (or whatever) instead. Someone who believed that might say to Blackberry that if they want to be a top dog again they can't do it in phones - they have to go make some digital glasses.