I had been reading Exponential by Azeem Azhar, and one of the key concepts in the book is the idea of Superstar companies which dominate specific niches within the market and include many of the big technology companies.
I remember the following day; my mind connected the idea of the star companies I had been reading about with the concept of a computer platform and realised that many of these star companies dominated at least one single system platform.
These superstar companies have some control over their computing ecosystems. They look to use this control to encourage users of the platforms they control to remain within the company ecosystem.
I aim to help clarify my thoughts on this idea by writing this article. I hope that you, the reader, will find the article interesting and enjoyable. I would also like to hear your thoughts and ideas on this, which you can leave in the comments below.
My definition of a technology ecosystem
A technology ecosystem is an interconnected network of technology platforms and related software. Ideally, there would be one technology ecosystem.
However, just like the ecosystems on Earth, the technology ecosystems are divided into several ecosystems. These environments are defined by the operating systems, related applications and services.
In technology today, I see three core ecosystems that most of us interact with. I will consider these ecosystems by the companies who dominate these ecosystems.
- Apple
- Microsoft
The Apple Ecosystem
Apple has two key technology platforms that make up the environment of the Apple ecosystem.
The first platform in the Apple ecosystem is the Apple Mac range of computers. Apple launched the first Macintosh computer in January 1984. Over the last 40 years, the Mac has evolved into the iMac
The second platform in the Apple ecosystem is the Apple iPhone and Apple iPad, which both run Apple mobile operating systems iOS. Apple launched the original iPhone in June 2007.
The market share for Apple products is lesser than their rival ecosystems. As of May 2022, OS X was used by 14.98% of users worldwide compared to 75.54% for Windows worldwide. Desktop operating system market statcounter
While the mobile ecosystem has Android is 71.45% compared to iOS 27.83% in May 2022. mobile operating system market statcounter.
However, Apple benefits from having a closed ecosystem as they own the rights to both the platform hardware and operating system.
The Google ecosystem
The Google ecosystem has various platforms and applications as a service.
The Google ecosystem consists of the Android operating system, which dominates the mobile phone market for non-Apple devices.
Yet when I think of Google, I don’t think of Android; I think of the Google search engine, another market Google dominates. It has used this market dominance to spread across the broader Internet ecosystem to offer consumer cloud services such as Google Drive, Gmail and the Chrome browser used to access these services.
Applications for the Google cloud services are provided by default in the Android operating system attracting many users to the greater Google ecosystem.
The Microsoft ecosystem
The Microsoft ecosystem is built around two key software environments.
- Microsoft Windows operating system
- Microsoft Office Suite
The Microsoft Windows operating system has dominated the desktop market since the mid-1990s when it replaced Microsoft’s earlier operating system, MSDOS.
Microsoft also launched the original office suite during the early 1990s, becoming the dominant office suite over the years.
Over the last few years, Microsoft Office has used the Office suite of applications to encourage business and individual users to use Microsoft cloud services with the launch of Office 365. This strategy enabled them to overtake Google and become the second-biggest provider of cloud services behind AWS (Amazon Web Services), which is part of Amazon.
The Microsoft ecosystem surrounding Office and Windows appears to be very attractive to companies and large public organisations that are risk-averse and attracted by the Microsoft brand and the fact it is the biggest software company in the world.
However, over recent years, Microsoft has looked to build a gaming platform around the Microsoft Xbox gaming console and the Windows PC platform.
Conclusion
In this article, I have concentrated on the ecosystems of Apple, Google and Windows as they are the three most significant technology ecosystems. I can, however, think of others, such as Amazon, which I have already mentioned in the Microsoft section above. What about Meta, which dominates whole areas of social media through its ownership of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp?
If you enjoyed this article useful you might be interested in reading our introduction to operating systems.