Ecosystem could be “the word” of 2013, if only vendors, providers, ISVs and other technology conglomerates stop acting in a “This Town ain’t big enough for the both of us“ way.
As an App user* I am increasingly amazed, affected and annoyed by what in my view can only be described as turf wars between various technology providers. Increasingly cooperation – that originated by a desire to have a quick time to market – is being replaced by outright competition driven by a desire to own the full stack. Some recent examples:
- Phone manufacturers replacing perfectly good map applications with in-house brews*
- Search engines wanting to become social networks*
- Social networks* and web retailers* wanting to become advertising specialists
- Photo filtering apps opting out of 140 char event timelines* and v.v. event timeline apps adding photo filtering*
- Email providers abandoning the use of third party sync to enterprise messaging apps …