The borders of mobile handset ecosystems: Is coopetition inevitable?

Today, the mobile phone industry witnesses important changes, shifting from a value chain to a burgeoning business ecosystem. This paper deals with the relationships that are at the very core of mobile OS ecosystems for IMTs (smartphones and PDA): Microsoft-OS, Symbian-OS, Palm-OS and RIM-OS over the period 1998–2006. Our study confirms that an ecosystem’s borders are unclear. More than half of our sample’ relationships are shared by at least two different ecosystems. The ecosystems we studied do not differ in terms of exclusive relationship which suggests that coopetitive strategies are particularly relevant in mobile platforms war.