Does Alphabet (a.k.a Google) Have a Monopoly?

Yes, there is a monopoly. It’s somewhat like saying the north and south pole have a monopoly on ice… it only happens for a while in the summer months. Sure, Android has a huge market share today. What was their share ten years ago? Zero. In fact there have already been a few anti-trust cases. All that remains a mystery is: how long will the summer last?

Phone companies shipped a total of 344.3 million smartphones worldwide in the first quarter of 2017. Android operating system is in use on about 74% of those smartphones. That’s pretty healthy chunk. Remember the Windows phone? It’s less than one percent. Blackberry? No recollection? They are almost at zero. Those two is are huge companies who had plenty of money and know-how to make nice smartphones. Google has not beaten them in terms of manufacturing, actual Google makes no significant percentage of phones at all, but instead they out-played their competition by understanding the barriers to adoption for a new technology and effectively removing them.

There is a crucial 3% ‘Other’ category in market share. Most of all of that percentage represents new, nation-based operating systems in largely populated countries like China (MIUI) and India (Indus OS). What is unique about those is their primary interest is building wholly independent platforms rather than their bottom line.

In a similar spirit, several nations have objected to the broad control of Google’s smartphone offering while still allowing them to operate freely. “Based on our investigation thus far, we believe that Google’s behavior denies consumers a wider choice of mobile apps and services and stands in the way of innovation by other players, in breach of EU antitrust rules,” said Margrethe Vestager, the head of competition policy at the European Commission. A 7.8 million dollar antitrust suit filed by Russia settled out of court earlier this year, focusing heavily on opening the Android platform to other software vendors.

Apple continues to hold strong at #2 with no sign of slowing down their charge. In my view, their most dangerous angle is that they continue to innovate in the area of personal computing. It’s a reminder that the technology landscape could change dramatically at any time. Change is certain. In another ten years we may well see another major revolution.

Guest article written by: Ismail Jones is a master web and mobile developer and director of online publicity for Computers Plus Cellphones in Orlando, FL. He writes about all things web, tech, and programming. He is a big JavaScript fan and avid programmer.

1 thought on “Does Alphabet (a.k.a Google) Have a Monopoly?”

  1. they are covering almost all mobile market including software to hardware with pixel and nexus devices. the main monopoly with them is the Android system they are supporting and again google is the giant firm and has the ability to crunch any small startups who are feature competitor of any Google services by buying them.

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