IT Terror Warring States: The Last Step to the Final Monopoly

IOS6, iPhone5, iPad Mini, Win8, Surface, Lumia, Galaxy Note, Android4.2 and Nexus7 are increasingly attractive. Among them, the "king of software" Microsoft has been involved in hardware on a large scale. For Microsoft, which has been in the PC-level software market for more than 30 years, such a change is not only the choice of a company, but also a great change in integrating the industrial ecology.

The ultimate proposition of an industry is approaching: the global IT behemoth is approaching, the spring and autumn period of heroes' rise has long passed, the Warring States period is moving towards the best stage, and the "super unification" like the Qin Empire is approaching day by day.

"Great unification" is in full swing.

In the high-end market such as global IT consulting services, only a few companies such as IBM, Accenture and Infosys can survive and make profits, not to mention that the latter two benefit from lower tax costs or labor costs respectively; In the B2B field of telecommunication equipment, except Cisco, the profits of Ericsson and Huawei dropped sharply, while ZTE, Nokia Siemens and Alang all suffered losses. In the PC field, needless to say, the PC market itself is shrinking, the profits of the upstream monopolist Intel are beginning to decline, and both HP and Dell have gradually lost the necessity of retaining PC business. On the contrary, Lenovo achieved the "first" among the poor by virtue of its strong cost control; Not to mention that in the field of mobile phones, except for Apple and Samsung, the profits of other manufacturers are negative; In the LCD market, Sharp, Sony and Panasonic, which once ranked first, second and third, have fallen into an abyss since they were seized by Samsung and LG.

Merger can only be profitable if it is close to monopoly. For example, there have been many horizontal integrations recently: Seagate and Western Digital formed an oligopoly in the market, and immediately realized a big leap in profits in the traditional storage market, which was extremely unprofitable; In the DRAM market, Elpida, which was originally formed by the merger of five or six Japanese manufacturers, will eventually be sold to Micron in order to compete with the first Samsung. In an online video market like China, the merger of Youku and Tudou is also necessary for survival.

More and more vertical integration is more intense and spectacular than horizontal integration to form monopoly. For example, Sybase in the database market relies on SAP to achieve vertical integration to counter Oracel and Microsoft. The integration of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's acquisition of Sun occurred before it; Apple's vertical integration strategy was successful. After Google acquired MOTO, the process of vertical integration was greatly accelerated.

The latest and biggest example is Microsoft's involvement in hardware. Microsoft is one of the two cores of the previous generation IT industry ecosystem, controlling the whole ecosystem, and the other is Intel. The success of such an enterprise is closely related to the integration of upstream and downstream industrial chain partners. Countless downstream PC manufacturers, accessory manufacturers, and even various application servers and databases all rely on the operating system to defeat Microsoft in the PC era, because you can't defeat this huge interest group and ecological chain.

However, Microsoft has been involved in mobile phone OS for a long time and has not been successful, because the essence of mobile phone OS is the Internet ecology, not the software ecology on PC. Because, when Jobs took Apple to find the golden key to the mobile Internet, Apple stepped onto a new altar, and the closeness of the older generation of IT companies and the openness of the Internet were well bonded together; Google, which has powerful Internet genes, followed closely, and Android became the most threatening force for Apple. Microsoft, abandoning the software ecology of the PC industry, is "imitating", but what is helpless is that Windows, the cash cow of its PC revenue, has begun to decline sharply, and the last "hesitation factor" that lasted for several years has been removed.

The inevitability and paradox of "ultimate monopoly"

In fact, the evolution of IT industry has changed the rules of the game in traditional industries: in traditional industries, many industries are dominated by three or more enterprises when they mature, such as nuclear power market and large aircraft manufacturing. While others have more businesses to survive, such as cars and retail. However, in the IT industry, even the top three may not survive.

The core is because the real essence behind the IT industry is "information", which is a "collection of knowledge" condensed in enterprises, and knowledge is inherently homogeneous. Therefore, in homogeneous competition, the strongest enterprise can gain absolute advantage. For example, in the field of electronic OEM, TSMC ranks first, and its market value is much higher than HP and Dell, which is almost equal to Intel; ; Hon Hai's profit in a single quarter can be as high as $654.38 billion, which is the power of monopoly position.

Only where there is "real differentiation" can many enterprises be allowed to exist. For example, in China's steel market, many local interests are intertwined, which hinders the monopoly of the market.

Therefore, in the IT industry, many companies monopolize a certain segment, which is "natural selection". Google does search, Facebook does social networking, and Amazon does e-commerce. The problem is that these huge behemoths are still driven by the strong impulse of capitalist expansion, and will not be satisfied with the horizontal monopoly of a certain market, but will further expand vertically.

Thus, the war of vertical integration began! The giants are at war!

The development of 3D printing, big data, cloud computing and other technologies will certainly promote the further evolution of management systems. The evolution of management system, like a new weapon of giant enterprises, can help them further expand their fields. For example, if there is no IT, it is almost difficult for multinational companies to operate; For example, without Internet operation, Apple's complicated vertical integration is almost impossible to succeed. However, new technologies and new management capabilities will greatly expand the "capability boundary" of enterprises, which will inevitably make it possible to produce larger vertically integrated enterprises.

Don't be surprised if there are one or two "Cosmic Stream" super enterprises spanning software and hardware, control chips, OS and even terminals in the future. Just like Samsung's position in South Korea today, it is even higher. One or two super monopolies may be certain, alienating the ideal of "* * *", and no anti-monopoly law can cut it. Or, even if they are nominally laid off, they still control the global industry.

The strongest will win in the free market, and the winner will eventually become a monopolist, which will eventually make the market lose the freedom of diversification. This is an unsolved paradox, especially in the IT industry. At present, it is in the final stage of the final monopoly. Maybe this process will take 50 years, or 15 years, and no one knows for sure.