The first movers advantage is for real and has been documented (although I'm not in the position to give references right now). It is not equivalent with success.
Amazon.com is in exactly that position right now, that it has a first mover advantage, but also defends this with patents, law suits etc. If they lose those law suits, they can also lose some market share.
Microsoft does have several good american web-sites. They don't have any web-sites used widely in Europe except hotmail.com, and this is really surprising. In Europe, Microsoft is in no way associated with web-sites. I believe this is also the case in many other parts of the world.
Therefore, Microsoft is a global player in the OS market and the Office Suite market, but only a local, american player in the internet market. If they want to be a big player in the internet market globally, then they should start to do something about it. They are years behind on that.
Btw.: "First movers advantage" should be considered "First mover with a specific business plan or product". Word Perfect had all the market on DOS. Microsoft were the first to market a working office suite for Windows, which made them first movers in that business. So they got the Windows market share and Word Perfect lost. Word Perfect had the first mover advantage of having a customer base, existing file format etc., but their simply failed to use the advantage for business in Windows word processing. Still remember Word Perfect 5.1 for Windows? Should have been named 5.2 early beta. |
