Competition is Bad in the Tech World
We have long believed that competition is a good thing; it causes companies to put a lot of thought and work into their product to make it better and cheaper than those of their competitors. It is always better to have competition to ensure that we as consumers have the best choices available to us, especially in the tech world with all the phones and gadgets we love. Are we correct in believing that? Just take a tour of the tech coverage, and you begin to think that competition must be a bad thing.
When word comes out about an upcoming tech product, the first thing that starts appearing is how this new product will be a “gadget x killer.” You know what I’m talking about. There have been no fewer than a dozen smartphones that were going to be the big “iPhone killer.” Some of these gadgets were going to be “BlackBerry killers” or “Windows Mobile killers.” It seems that every new smartphone is going to kill off some other phone. That must mean that competition is a bad thing if we all want a new product to kill off an existing one. It must be better to have only one product in a category, right?
Netbooks, those cheap, little notebooks that have taken the tech world by storm, have been “notebook killers” since they appeared. MIDs have also been touted as “notebook killers.” Those notebooks must need killing off with everything out to get them. Those of us who cover the tech world must believe it is, so as we keep anointing products as killers of something else. It must mean that competition is a bad thing, or we wouldn’t want it killed off so regularly.
Consumers feel that way, too, no matter what you think. Check the comments on a review of any new tech product, and you’ll be inundated with claims that the product will kill off the competition and that it will be deserved because all other products “suck.” In any given tech category, there is obviously only one product that deserves to live and all others need to go away. It’s repeated too often to not be true.
Now that we have come to grips that competition in the tech world is a bad thing, there only remains one important task. That is deciding which single product in each category is the one that lives. That will be the hard part, I am pretty sure.
too much violent language in this segment of the tech world — how about “challenge” instead of “kill”?
“It seems that every new smartphone is going to kill off some other phone. That must mean that competition is a bad thing if we all want a new product to kill off an existing one.” — Huh? “Kill or be killed” is the ultimate level of competition. Calling for “killers” means we want fiercer competition, not less of it.
In the UK, the existence of five competing 3G companies has produced some cheap phone and mobile broadband deals. This is nice if you live in urban areas. However, in rural areas it’s impossible for five competing companies each to build a decent network and make a profit, given such a low-density customer base. The rural market can probably only sustain one or two proper networks. The result is a poor rural service. It’s hard not to believe that the rural scene would be better served by collaboration than competition.
Maybe, like your bible, it’s meant to be taken metaphorically? I know when I see that statement, that’s how I take it.
There’s a difference between “competition”, and “Marketing”. ‘iPhone Killer’ is not competition, it’s marketing yap.
And the post category is…
Some people takes things too seriously
Life’s short… who has time to read or pay attention to the “categories” assigned to blog posts?
I’ve noticed the effect James talks of. When I hear business leaders talking, they always trumpet the virtues of competition, yet their actions belie what they say. They not only want to beat their competitors, but to vanquish them. They try to create a world with less competition, not more.
Someone will say this is only natural, and ask if I wouldn’t behave in the same way. That is somewhat beside the point. What I’m trying to pin down is the inconsistency of statements and actions in this area of life.
Actually, I think the whole “killer” thing is simply because journalists, especially tech journalists, are always looking for a way to hype whatever they are writing about, and create drama whether there is any inherent in the topic or not. Take, for example, political journalism, where the bulk if what is written is about the latest campaign moves, the gaffs, the strategies, etc., and very little is actually written about the candidates positions on issues, other than to discuss whether they may have changed them.
Likewise, tech journalists prefer to write about the ‘exciting’ battle between two products, which takes much less thought, understanding, and time than writing a detailed, objective analysis of a product and the situations in which it might be optimal for particular users or not. It also makes for (or is thought to make for) more ‘exciting’ reading, even if it’s much less useful.
So, it’s not that competition is bad, it’s just that most tech journalists, and especially most bloggers, are bad journalists and lack an in-depth understanding of the products and industries about which they write. So, rather than giving objective analysis, they resort to hype about ‘killers’, and the ‘next big thing’.
Competition is good. The reason is is it drives innovation. Innovation may be cheaper prices for what we already pay for or may drive costs of the exisitng items down thanks to the new category. Case in point, netbooks. When they first came out, notebooks were much higher in cost then they are now. Now notebooks are almost the same price as netbooks. Which do you get?? This is innovation. It’s not a high tech innovation we like, but it’s more of a right pricing of what we already have. Most people don’t need a firebreathing laptop. Netbooks suffice and work because they are cheap and do the job well.
Well, it’s better to believe in your product so much that you think it will kill the competition (or are willing to market it that way), than to be so desperately scared of competition that you give your OS to Nokia, and small computers with decent keyboards disappear from the market for 10 years and then you sue the next people to make small computers for trademark infringement of all things…
Apparently, Psion’s founder didn’t believe in participating in competition.
the only downside to competition, i warrant, is the compatibility between different products
just look at all the different storage media
The ultimate competition is WAR. When are most of the worlds leaps of progress made?? During war. Radar: WWII for example.
Therefore, competition is great for development and the commentary journalists and bloggers give this competition is good too, even if it is hype driven. That just makes it more interesting. Think about it when you read a headline like “Product x, iPhone killer!!” and you think, ‘that is so not true!!”. Has the journalist not achieved what he set out to do?? You read it and then bitch about it to your friends. “I read this article on so and so’s blog, what a load of rubbish” Now yr friends might go and read it to join in yr discussion in more detail. As far the blogger/journalist goes, I think that it’s job done!! Don’t you?? More hits; More copies sold; More awareness. Beats the competition of other publications/blogs. And so the competition continues…..;-)
Good title, bad supporting article. Real quick, the thing that’s bad about competition in the tech world, particularly in the mobile market, is that exclusivitity deals block communication between people (ie- Verizon’s ‘the network’) on separate networks. Establishing a standard platform for any mode of communication could be a great thing, but if acheived improperly could be extremely dangerous to progress. Like the battle between Dems and Republicans and all things really, there must always be a balance. For this reason, interconnectivity is the best substitute, and is best realized by the cooperative nature of the open source movement.
I don’t understand the argument. If X kills Y why is that bad? If X is better than Y then that’s good, and if no X can kill Y then Y will be to expensive.