The Return Of The King: Time To Get The Bar Opened

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British Bankers Club @ Menlo Park, CA

Recently, we got a nice treat at BBC. Nice place to try Upper Class Experience. Food was great. The best part was the Open Bar in my opinion :) Thanks to our dear director. Seriously, let's talk about Openness. Before that, allow me to nag one more thing first: Open Internet.  It's been an extreme bad year on Net Neutrality.  Read When The FCC Kills Net Neutrality and search NN. gofccyourself please.


Why Open

Last chapter, I blogged about how Apple ignited the Smartphone Revolution.  All things being equal, that is the most common formula to tip a paradigm shift with unstoppable momentum. However, if to go to the next level, Open Platform strategy is the One. Android happened to be the winner this round. To be clear, lets focus on facts rather than on moral debates. Hopefully, history may teach us something for the road ahead.

Don't get me wrong, it almost always starts from visionary leaders creating superior (10x) products. e.g. Ford on "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.", and Jobs on "back to basic". But, no matter how successful, it is just a Product Strategy. That works great in the Bootstrap phase of the Paradigm Shift Life Cycle. It will take a Platform Strategy to go for the next level: Scaling. Open Platform is the most powerful strategy in terms of 3D: Diversity, Democratization and Diversification.

Jobs on back to basic

Diversity: It Is A Feature, Not A Bug

Many criticize Android Fragmentation issue. They are right. However, that also comes with bonus, called Choices. I don't know about you, but for me having any choice is always better than no choice at all in most of cases. Even if they maybe "inferior" than the leading One in some measures. So, you may continue to call it fragmentation, I will always call it Diversity.
opensignal.com: android-fragmentation, bgr.com: android-device-fragmentation-graphic

It all about a Platform that can sustain an Ecosystem. If you agree Ecosystem is a good analogy for the industry, then Darwin's theory should also be a reasonable analogy to get some fundamental insights, especially on variation and nature selection. Yep, you don't need that if you are lucky in a static industry/environment or optima solutions are known. Fortunately, Smartphone is neither of them.


An health ecosystem can resistant to uncertainty and rapid environment changes. In biology, Species Richness is a good measure of the health of an ecosystem. For example, QCOM's Android Firsts lists a handful OEM innovations way before Apple does. It is less about if each of them is commercial success or not. It all about trying something different, which may pave the way for the next big thing. When no one know what that could be, the best way is keep trying something new and trying as many as possible. An Open Ecosystem is very efficient in facilitating those "crazy" ideas at scale. BTW, kids also do biology, or Go Green at least.

calacademy.org on Biodiversity Ecosystem Function

Democratization: Big Is Kind Of Beauty

One Pandas is cute, and 1,600 Panda is definitely beautiful. yearbook.taipei 2014

In the mobile industry, falling of titans has became a norm, e.g. Moto, Nokia, Blackberry and hTC. They all had their glory. It's not necessary a bad thing for consumers if there are more choices and better/cheaper mobile phones. Android as an Open Platform, enables any device makers to build and differentiate their produce based on commercial products (Nexus/Pixel). Fundamentally, it puts a new spin on "division of labor" in the whole Smartphone Supply Chain. It is not just about 10+ companies contributes something (e.g. Pixel XL vendor list by IHS Markit ) to make a product.  But also, each vendor can development its part in parallel and advance on the same baseline/platform. It levels playing field to bring Economies of scale to the whole industry (instead of a few companies) via competition. Whereas, Walled Gardens rarely achieve or even allow such thing. Just try to image a world: any consumer can have a smartphone made by any company that she/he wants so long as it is made by Apple.

Diversification: Life Finds a Way

One "bad" thing maybe: it makes business harder for device makers. Yep on the other hand, a bigger pie is always better than a small one or not your pie. It is not even the full story. The longer term impacts is the Economies of Scope. For example, an component vendor can use its cash cow business in mobile (which is very big and still growing) to found new venture into other field. This is an common growth strategy.  And an Open Platform may take it to a whole new level.  In Android, there are many new fields already: Wear, TV, Auto, or even Chromebook runs Android Apps. The beauty is a vendor can reuse most of its talent and investment on Android technology on the new ventures or opportunities.


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