Econ101 Paper

ECON101 |

Monopolistic Mobile

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Market Structure of Mobile Phone Giants |

Steven Glover 4062139 ECON101 SUM12

9/13/2012

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For starters, the article I read digs a little deeper into the maltreatment of employee’s than I care about. However, it really got me thinking about how monopolistic the electronics market has become. For this topic I am going to harp on the big three in the cell phone market; Apple, Android (Google), and Blackberry. These “Big Three” have become pretty much the only types of phones one can buy. It is only a matter of time before they become the “Big Two”, and “The Only” phone you can buy.

If you look back about ten years ago and think about phone shopping, it was easy. Should I get a camera phone or not was pretty much your only question. The market had several brands to choose from and your options with each brand had options and upgrades. Now you think more about the brands operating system and what you can do with it. Three companies are dominating the market. Everything you do with your phone is controlled by them. You have to purchase applications through them. You cannot even purchase apps through third parties because the “Big Three” has contracts with your service provider to not allow third party downloads. What a crock of crap this is. You not only have to purchase the phone and pay your bill, but now you can’t even do what you want with your phone. If you tab it all out, you are paying a company for a product, paying to use the product (which your provider has to pay the company to allow you to use), and then you are paying the company again to download apps. These companies are raping our wallets, getting larger and more powerful each day, and no one can stop them.

The “Big Three” are growing, some faster than the others. “During the past decade, a few giants have managed to fence in market after market for hardware, software, and content. Some did so simply by buying up their competitors.”(B. Lynn) Before we...