If I remember correctly, around 2009/10/11/12 I used to read anything related to technology I found on the net. Of course I did not know many authoritative sources and quality of content was not always good. It never is. We have to curate, choose, etc. But those days I did not bother much about it. Mostly content creation was via personal sites. People used to write blogs then. Of course youtube and video content like conferences were there. But I consumed text more than videos (not so good home internet speed and data plans could have been factors). And Google Reader was there. I miss Google Reader.

It was sometime then that I read this post where the author in his 2010 mobile predictions says that there will be only 2 or 3 players remaining in mobile space in coming years (Apple, Google, BlackBerry). Others will be insignificant. I did not believe it when I read it. There was huge market and how could only 3 players remain significant? Microsoft was there (Bill Gates calls losing mobile space the greatest mistake ever). Since then the prediction has turned out to be true. The geographies did not matter, neither did prices, nor age/any other factors. And such a huge market (devices and second order(?) things like apps). Why doesn’t someone at least try to capture maybe only a small corner of it?

It took me some time to realize that this consolidation has actually happened. And then I saw/ started noticing this kind of consolidation in many other areas. There are only a few chip makers, only a few food delivery services, ride hailing services, ecommerce sites, etc. Why is that? While there maybe some R&D like factors(car, pharma companies, content creators like Netflix/ Universal Studios, git/mercurial ways of…), I think in technology it is mostly network effects. (While I don’t mean social networks, that reminds me there are only a few social networks, isn’t it? I mean even google plus…). And probably the most important factor is platforms. (TODO A post on platforms.)

In his book Zero to One, Peter Thiel aggressively pushes that startups should aim at becoming monopolies. (I did not like the book much. Am I not a target reader? Or is it similar to a self-help book?) Contrary to that, DHH advices an approach of taking it in context of life, remaining profitable, living non-work life, and being ok even if you are not a billionaire.

Now, knowing that in this connected world where the whole world could be considered as a market with theoretically infinite demand, things do appear to consolidate to smaller number of players, what are your thoughts?

I noticed that I did not use the term this phenomenon is known as: Oligopoly

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