[Part I] The Duopoly Between Apple And Samsung?

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2013년 05월 23일 Sue J. Hur

"Two's not enough to provide true competition.
These guys are getting ready to kill the Internet,
that's where this [disordered, no-rules and] unregulated duopoly is headed."
-Mark Cooper

"Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something."
- Thomas Edison

A duopoly is a market condition in which two companies producing a similar type of product have control over the market. It's a situation in which two companies own all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service.

What are some popular example of a duopoly? Well, Visa and Mastercard. They exercise a major control over the electronic payment processing market in the world. Pepsi-Coca Cola is another example - they're major shareholders in the soft drinks market. Airbus and Boeing are duopolies in the commercial jet aircraft market.

As for the smartphone market? You know it - Apple and Samsung.

In the recent decade, the technological phenomenon of the smartphone market has proliferated further and further as an essential tool of communication, organization, information, social utility and entertainment for the modern era. For years, the smartphone market was dominated by the two tech titans Apple and Samsung.

These two corporations have driven the market towards a duopoly. Starting from the advent of Apple’s iPhone, then met by an equally competent challenge from Samsung’s Galaxy. It is no wonder that the lucrative smartphone market duopoly has been difficult to challenge.

In recent years, other brand names such as Sony, LG, Huawei, Motorola, and HTC that have taken the Android Platform to challenge the Apple-Samsung duopoly with their own smartphone devices.

There were (and arguably still are) high barriers of entry required in drawing the colossal amount of innovation towards the design of ‘apps’ - but there was, of course, with the spread of the adaptable Android App Market (in contrast to Apple’s exclusive App Store).

The Android Platform, by being non-exclusive to one particular maker, has allowed many competing tech corporations to bridge the initial barriers to entry and prosper in the essential smartphone industry.

Does that mean that there is a push for an oligopoly structure? Increasingly, the popularity of LG L series and Sony Xperia (to name a few) has increasingly pushed the smartphone market into an increasingly oligopoly structure. However, as we wrote before, Samsung and Apple's shares in the market increased while others fell.

*This article is divided into 2 parts. Look forward to '[Part 2] The Duopoly Between Apple And Samsung'!

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