Exploring Platform Ecosystems: A Comparison of Complementor Networks and their Characteristics Joey van Angeren
[email protected] Utrecht University Department of Information and Computing Sciences Master in Business Informatics MSc. thesis submitted under supervision of: First supervisor: Dr. Slinger Jansen (Utrecht University) Second supervisor: Prof. dr. Sjaak Brinkkemper (Utrecht University) November 2013 Abstract Owners of software platforms are increasingly dependent on developers of complemen- tarities. As the proprietary platform itself exhibits elementary or generic functionality, platform owners depend on a complementor ecosystem populated by third-parties. As such, the ecosystem became a pivotal determinant for the success or failure of a software platform in platform-based competition. At present, little is known about mechanisms at play in proprietary platform ecosystems, and it remains unclear how these ecosystems differ from each other across firms and platform types. Addressing this deficiency, this thesis investigates and contrasts four proprietary platform ecosystems through statistical and network analysis. The research compares the ecosystems that exist around Google Apps, Google Chrome, Office365 and Internet Explorer, with data obtained by means of automated app store data extraction and interfirm relationships obtained from company websites and Crunch- Base. Results show similarities among the four proprietary platform ecosystems. The ecosystems are sparsely connected and highly centralized, since 3.18% to 29.82% of com- plementors initiated interfirm relationships. Furthermore, the ecosystems are predomi- nantly populated by complementors that limitedly commit to application development, the average number of applications developed per complementor ranges from 1.34 to 2.18. This is especially apparent in the Google Apps and Office365 ecosystems, that display strong characteristics of power law scaling in the distribution of the number of applications developed per complementor.