Managing Digital Transformation

Managing Digital Transformation

Learning Diary, I (01-Oct-2018)

RAJAT JADHAV (PGP08109)

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google 2018

Introduction:

The four companies which has changed the world around us significantly are Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. But if we ask what is common among all, it is the way they exploited technology. All four of them have begun their journey with small digital solution to people’s daily needs. The way they identified customer needs and used the digital to transform both their business and their customers’ life is dependent majorly on how they leveraged their capabilities to enhance their services.

Contested Boundaries:

These four have experienced rapid expansion is their business. This expansion lead to overlap in their business, however their core business remains the highest revenue generator. But as they expanded they began to eat into the profit of others. This led to generation of contested boundaries. The contested boundaries exist in following spaces: -

• Search: Google is the dominant player in search space whereas Facebook is not involved in search space. Amazon and Apple have search capability which they offer through their voice assistant Alexa and Siri respectively. When it comes to assistance Alexa is clearly the winner with around 50% share.
• Social: Facebook dominates this particular domain with user time of approx. 17.8% of all hours spent online. Google also tried with google+ but failed miserably in this space. Other two are not available in this space.
• Advertising: All the companies have overlap in this domain. It is the main source of revenue for Google and Facebook of the players. While for Amazon and Apple the numbers of dollars generated by these services is not high.
• Digital Store: All player has different offering on their digital stores. For music there exist iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Music. For Games and App there are app stores. Whereas Amazon has one differentiated offering in digital space i.e. the books.
• Entertainment: Google TV, Amazon Prime, Apple TV are all present in TV space, but all do not compete with each other as much as they compete with the Netflix. Netflix has such an overwhelming userbase. However, there is an overlap in Apple TV and Prime as Prime Videos are available on Apple TV in USA.
• Digital Payments: Barring Facebook all the three have offering in this domain.

Future of Boundaries:

The contested boundaries can playout in future in favor of any player. Predicting the future of business in today dynamic landscape is very difficult. However, in class we discussed how can these playout in future: