There’s a lot I could talk about today. I could talk about the release of Ashley Madison data. I could talk about former Subway spokesperson Jared Fogle’s well deserved fall from grace. But I found one statistic that intrigued me.
That statistic is about how Android and Apple dominate smartphones. Over the last two years, a whopping 96.8% of all smartphones sold have been either Apple or Android backed devices. So far in 2015, Windows phone got 2.5 percent of the market, Blackberry got 0.3 percent and the rest got 0.4 percent. Over 329 million smartphones were sold over the past three months. Over 319 million of those either had an Apple or Android logo. Experts suggests the smartphone market has reached it’s peak maturity phase. China has reportedly reached cell phone capacity. Not to mention China’s economy is teetering on the brink. In fact, economies around the world are slipping. Look at Greece. Look at our own stock market recently. Maybe that explains why smartphone sales are dwindling. Experts suggest concentrating on both ends of economic extremes, luxury buyers and economy class buyers, is the only thing keeping smartphones sells afloat. But wait…both Android and Apple dominate both sectors.
There’s a part of me that’s wants to congratulate Apple and Android for building such mega prosperous smartphone conglomerates. But I‘m also concerned this is leading to smartphone monopoly. When two billion dollar companies own almost 97% of an entire market, that’s not good for competition. Competition is always good for a free market economy. It keeps prices fair and it keeps bigger companies accountable. Remember, when any corporation gets too big to fail, they’re often too big to care. Also, there could be a struggling entrepreneur somewhere who wants to build the next great smartphone. Going up against the two biggest companies in the world could easily discourage this up and coming entrepreneur. What are some other reasons why monopolies are bad for business, and bad for society in general?