The document discusses the evolution and competition of major tech companies (Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon) within the context of their respective software ecosystems. Each company's unique history has shaped its ecosystem, with Amazon especially focused on integrating services, while Apple and Google prioritize hardware and software interconnectivity. The analysis highlights ongoing rivalry and strategic positioning in the market, examining features, financial statistics, and cloud services offered by these firms.

1. Software
Ecosystem
 MICROSOFT
 APPLE
 GOOGLE
 AMAZON

2. 1. Introduction
1.1 General introduction
Traditionally, a software ecosystem refers to a collection of software products that have some
given degree of symbiotic relationships (Hansen).
Fig1: A conceptual model of a keystone-centric software ecosystem (Anon).
Software ecosystems (SECO) refer to the set of businesses and their interrelationships in a
common software product or service market. A Software Ecosystem consists of the set of
software solutions that enable, support and automate the activities and transactions by the actors
in the associated social or business ecosystem and the organizations that provide these solutions.
This is an emergent field inspired in concepts from and business and biological ecosystems (J.V.
Joshua, D.O. Alao, S.O. Okolie, O. Awodele, 2013). Along with SECOs introduce many new
research challenges on both a technical and a business level (Slinger Jansen, Anthony
Finkelstein, Sjaak Brinkkemper).
Once upon a time, tech behemoths such as Microsoft and Apple battled to persuade businesses
and consumers to purchase their computers, mobile devices or software packages. Those days
seem so quaint now. Today, the battle is on a much larger scale. It is a war between vast
ecosystems made up of hardware, software and online services, not just individual pieces of
hardware and software. Purchase an iPhone, for example, and you're buying into the entire
Apple ecosystem, including operating systems, apps, add-ons, music, movies, books and more
(Michael deAgonia, Preston Gralla, JR Raphael, 2013).
1.2 History
Company Apple Microsoft Google Amazon

3. Events
Established 1st
April 1976 4th
April 1975 15th
Sep 1998 1995
Founders Steven Wozniak and
Steven Jobs (apple)
Bill Gates and Paul
Allen(Hamza
Qureshi, 2012)
Larry Page and Sergey
Brin as “googol”
(google)
Jeff Bezos
(David
Ramirez, 2008)
Current
CEO
Tim Cook Steve Ballmer Larry Page Jeff Bezos
Financial
info
AAPL MSFT GOOG AMZN
HQ Cupertino, CA Redmond, WA Mountain View, CA Seattle, WA
Events
Years
Focused on
software
OS, apps,
laptops,
Tablets,
PCs
1977: Apple II
Introduced
1986: Desktop
Publishing Takes Off
1989: released first
Macintosh Portable
1991: First
PowerBooks Ship
1993: Newton
MessagePad Ships
1998: iMac Introduced
1999: AirPort Debuts
on iBook (apple).
2000: PowerMac Cube
launches
2001: The iPod
launches
2002: iMac G4
launches, Apple iBook
2003: iTunes Music
Store Opens
1981: Introuduced
Microsoft 16-bit
operating system
MS Dos 1.0.
1984: introduced
mac versions of
BASIC & Word
1985: introduced
next-generation
operating system
called OS/2
1993: introduced 32-
bit version operating
system
1995: introduced
windows 95
1998: introduced
windows 98
1999: introduced
Encarta Africana
(first complete
encyclopedia)
1996: search engine
called BackRub
1998: Google Inc.
2001: launches google
images
2003: acquire Pyra Labs,
the creators of Blogger
2004: social network
Orkut, lauch gmail,
acquire Picasa, cquire
Keyhole (later become
Google Earth)
2005: Google Mobile
Web Search, Google
Earth, launch Google
Talk
2006: Google Finance
launches, acquisition of
YouTube
2007: announce Android
2008: T-Mobile
announces the G1,
1988: Begins
Selling Books
1996: Launches
Amazon.com
1998: Acquires
Internet Movie
Database
1999: Opens
Music Store
2000: Begins
Selling Books,
Music, Video &
DVD
2001: Opens
Software &
Video Games
Store
2005: Launches
Search
Inside!™
Opens
Consumer
Electronics
Store

4. 2004: iMac G5
launches
2005: The Video iPod
and iPod Nano launch
2006: The iMac Core
Duo launches
2007:iPhone and Apple
TV
2008: Apple launches
the App store
2009: Apple releases
the iPhone 3GS.
2010: The iPad
launches
2010: Apple releases
the 4th
generation
iPhone, with video
calling, multitasking
and a new uninsulated
stainless steel design
(Matt Berger, 2011)
2000: windows 2000
2003: revealed its
office XP, Xbox and
server 2003
2005: Xbox 360
2007: new OS
Windows Vista, Ms
Office 2007
2008: windows
server 2008, SQL
server 2008 and
Visual Studios 2008
2009: Bing (online
search engine MSN),
windows 2007
2010: MS Office
2010, Xbox 360
2011: Office 365,
skype
2012: windows 8
(109 languages),
social network
Yammer (Hamza
Qureshi, 2012)
Google Chrome, Google
Mobile App for iPhone
2009: Twitter, Google
Chrome OS
2010: Nexus One,
Google TV, acquire
AdMob, a mobile display
advertising company.
2011: Google Wallet,
Chromebooks, offline
access to Gmail,
Calendar and Docs for
people using Chrome,
Android 4.0, Google+
Pages
2012: Google Play,
unveiled Project Glass,
acquire Motorola
Mobility, announce
Google Now, first Nexus
7
2013: Chromebook Pixel,
Google Now for iPhone
and iPad, video doodle,
updated Google Maps
app for smartphones and
tablets, Chromecast
(google company, N.d)
2010:Launches
Amazon MP3-
App for
Android,
Announces
Amazon App
for iPad
2011: Launches
Kindle, Kindle
Store & Kindle
Direct
Publishing
(KDP)
2012: Launches
Cloud Player
and Cloud
Drive
2013: Launches
Cloud Player
for iPad
(amazon, N.d)

5. 2. Background
Each of the four companies we're covering -Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft has a
different history. So their ecosystems have developed in vastly different ways. Microsoft and
Apple, for example, were born in the days when tech companies rose and fell based on the
hardware and software they sold, while Google is a child of the Internet. Amazon, on the other
hand, started with a vision of an integrated ecosystem almost from its founding -- in a New York
Times interview from 2005, CEO Jeffrey Bezos is quoted as saying that it is "...very important to
get into new categories beyond books reasonably quickly" (Michael deAgonia, Preston Gralla,
JR Raphael, 2013).
2.1 Amazon
Fig 9: amazon ecosystem (Joe McCann, 2012).
With owning content distribution, credit card numbers, devices and powering nearly half of the
internet with their Web Services offering, Amazon has the ability to ultimately disrupt the
competitive ecosystem space. Amazon has been incredibly successful, capturing 50% of the
Android tablet market share. But with additions like Amazon Drive, Amazon Cloud Player and
their Instant Video offering, Amazon is quietly encroaching into the digital omnivore's multi-
channel lifestyle typically dominated by Apple, Google and Microsoft. Amazon has consistently
added new facets to AWS(amazon web services) as it broadens the technology away from the
commodified storage and compute options, and into more complex areas such as the SSD-backed
DynamoDB NoSQL database (Staff, 2012). The AWS launched in 2002 and the portfolio of
services expanded over time. The Amazon Elastic Cloud EC2 was built in 2004, which is central
to the whole AWS infrastructure. Amazon itself is one of the clients for the EC2 platform

6. (Rammohan Narendula, 2012). Moreover, with AWS(amazon web services, cloud computing:
compute, storage, database), they have the ability to scale any sort of cloud-based offering for
any of their services going forward. This is a real threat to Google, Apple and Microsoft.
2.2 Apple
Fig 6: apple ecosystem (Joe McCann, 2012).
Apple is the obvious example of a company feeding the digital omnivore through their
ecosystem. They have hardware, software, millions of credit card numbers on file, software
distribution (App Store), content distribution (App Store), computers, phones, tablets, televisions
(Apple TV) and a cloud-based syncing mechanism (iCloud) to keep everything up to date and in
sync with each other. In order to beat market Apple bought Personal assistant app “Cue” For
Over $40M To Compete With Google Now (ALEXIA TSOTSIS). `1In addition to all of this
they have retail outlets to sell and promote their wares boasting record-breaking numbers with
their stores earning an astounding $4,000/square foot (2nd place is Tiffany with $2,700/square
foot) (Joe McCann, 2012). Apple has the ability for users to access content on multiple devices,
in an environment for which they are familiar and feel safe and secure using.

7. 2.3 Google
Fig 7: google ecosystem (Joe McCann, 2012).
Google, not directly making loads of money on Android, has invested heavily in not only
Android, but in satiating the digital omnivore's appetite of a multi-device lifestyle. Sure Android
is running on smartphones and tablets, but Google has integrated the likes of email (Gmail now
has 425MM users), instant messaging, SMS and telephony (Google Voice à la Grand Central
acquistion), social networking (Google Plus which in less than one year has amassed 250MM
users, of which 60% are "active") ) (Joe McCann, 2012), cloud storage and sync (Google Drive),
software and content distribution (Google Play), computers (Chrome OS notebooks - not all that
successful, but still an attempt at growing the ecosystem), televisions (Logitech, Vizo, and other
Google TV devices) and even their own cross-device web browser (Google Chrome) to support
the multi-channel experience. This is the model for success going forward and is what is pitting
Apple's ecosystem against Google's

8. 2.4 Microsoft
Fig 8: microsoft ecosystem (Joe McCann, 2012).
For years Microsoft has been dominating the PC space, yet hasn't been able to grab a solid
foothold in the mobile and casual computing sector. Windows Phone has been a prototype of
sorts at best and not until just recently have they even had a real contender in the tablet space;
their Surface tablet is looking to change that.However, Microsoft has been investing in their
ecosystem for quite some time. Inorder to compete it seems looking Looking To Put Windows
Phone On Android Devices, Starting With HTC (DARRELL ETHERINGTON). Hotmail, Xbox,
Kinect, Azure, Exchane, So.cl (an attempt at a consumer social network), Zune (even though it
was a failure, it supported the ecosystem model), Skype, SkyDrive and now with additional
hardware such as the Surface tablet, the recent puchase of an enterprise social network
(Yammer), Microsoft is slowly building their ecosystem back up. In my opinion, the success or
failure of the enterprise adoption of Windows 8 (consumers always adopt much more quickly),
will determine whether they are truly a technological contender or simply the third wheel.
3. Analysis
Beyond Apple and Microsoft, there are new players in SECO game. Now it's not just but also
Amazon and Google and a host of specialists. Google and Amazon aren't hardware heavy hitters
(although Google is indirectly involved in hardware through its Android mobile OS), while

9. Apple and Microsoft are relatively weaker in shopping. Microsoft is strong in gaming, while
Amazon rules when it comes to books. But one way or another, they're all locked in a death
match. Microsoft uses the cloud for online entertainment and the mighty Microsoft Office, and
Apple has iCloud for its Macs and iOS machines. The most recent survey by Strategy Analytics
reports that 27% of US consumers have used iCloud, 17% Dropbox, 25% Amazon Cloud Drive
and 10% Google Drive (Gary Marshall).
Apple's foray into the consumer Cloud follows similar efforts by Google with GMail, Google
Docs, Picasa Web Albums, Google Books and Google Music, the last of of which went into
private beta only recently. The pending release of iCloud as part of iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion
also follows the recent introduction of Amazon's Cloud Player and Cloud Drive, which
supplants their streaming video service, and multi-platform Kindle bookstore as well as their
existing and extremely comprehensive Amazon Web Services (AWS) (Jason Perlow, 2011).
3.1 Comparison: Features and Services
Companies
Features
Apple Amazon Google Microsoft
Phone iPhone Nexus OEMs (original
equipment
manufacturer)
Tablet iPad Kindle Fire HD Xoom Nexus 7 Surface
Computer Mac Chrome* OEMs
Books iBooks Kindle Play Books B&N
Movies iTunes Amazon Play Movies
Music iTunes Amazon Play Music Xbox Music
Browser safari Silk Chrome IE
OS MacOS ChromeOS Windows
Mobile OS Ios Amazon Android Android Windows Phone
Office Apps iWork Google Apps Office
Search engine (google) Bing Google Bing

10. Cloud iCloud AWS (Amazon
Web Services)
Google Azure
Table: The state of play as of sep 2012 (David Cardinal, 2012)
3.2 Comparison: Market value, valuation and financial statistics
The $658 billion valuation that Wall Street places on AAPL is more than the total of $117 billion
for AMZN, $232 billion for GOOG, and $258 billion for MSFT (David Cardinal, 2012).
Fig: market value evaluation (David Cardinal, 2012)
Fig: Sequential quarter comparison of financials (visualign, 2012).

11. Fig: market capitalization (Clint Boulton , 2011).
3.3 Tablet wars:
Amazon and Google, which earlier analysis showed offers the Nexus 7 tablet on a similarly low-
margin basis, aim to really profit from tablets only once they are in owners’ hands via their
services businesses. Google is pursuing a similar strategy with its Nexus tablets, although it
seeks to profit by driving traffic to its search engine rather than by selling digital or physical
goods. Apple and Microsoft are meanwhile seeking to make good money on the devices
themselves. Microsoft, with its first own-brand tablet, Surface, is pursuing a path taken by
Apple, seeking a large profit on the device itself and encouraging owners to use its "ecosystem"
of services. With the iPad mini, Apple is sticking to the premium-brand strategy it has always
used for its media tablet and smartphone products (Christopher Williams, 2012).
3.4 Product comparison
Amazon Kindle
Fire HD 8.9”
Apple’s new
iPad
Microsoft
Surface with
Windows RT
Google Nexus 7
Processor 1.5 GHz dual-
core processor
1 GHz dual-core
processor
1.4 GHz quad-
core processor
1.4 GHz quad-
core processor
3G/4G support Yes (in some
models)
Yes (in some
models)
Unknown Unknown
Internal storage 16/32GB 16/32/64GB 32/64GB 8/16GB
OS Custom version
of Android 4.0
iOS 5 Windows RT Android 4.1
Table: (NDTV Correspondent, 2012) & (NDTV Correspondent, 2012)

12. 3.4 Comparing cloud services:
3.4.1 Google:
3.4.1.1 cloud computer
After the creation of Chromebook, Google is taking a "100% web" approach to everything it
does. Google has spent a lot of time refining its many cloud services, and there have been a few
changes - so for example Google Docs has been rolled into the wider Google Drive service.
Google Drive is designed to do two things: create and share documents, and share files. Files you
store on Drive can be accessed from phones and tablets with the Google Drive apps, and there
are also desktop apps for PC and Mac that can automatically synchronise files between your
computer and your Drive.
3.4.1.2 Play
Google Play, entertainment arm of Google's cloud offerings, and it has five types of content:
Android apps, movies and TV programmes, music, books and magazines (Gary Marshall, N.d).
3.4.2 Microsoft:
3.4.2.1 cloud computing
Microsoft's been doing the cloud computing thing for decades: Hotmail (later Windows Live
Hotmail, and now Outlook.com) was one of the first web-based email services and Microsoft
bought it back in 1997 when nobody really knew what cloud computing was. Its Azure platform
powers many big businesses, and Xbox Live brought all kinds of entertainment to the Xbox.
Like Google, Microsoft has been revising its various cloud offerings, so for example its Live
Mesh file syncing service was retired earlier this year. File synchronization is now handled by
the soon-to-be-renamed SkyDrive. SkyDrive is rather similar to Google Drive: you can use it
to share and synchronize files between different devices, and you can create Word documents,
Excel workbooks, PowerPoint presentations, OneNote notebooks and Excel surveys inside your
browser.
3.4.2.2Entertainment
When it comes to entertainment in the cloud, Microsoft's track record has been patchy: its MSN
Music was relatively unsuccessful rival to Apple's iTunes and was shut down in 2006, and its
next attempt was tied to the supposed iPod-killing Zune music player. Xbox Music works
across multiple platforms: the web, Windows 8 and Windows RT, Windows Phone 8 and the
Xbox 360. It also gives a companion service, Xbox Video, which offers movie rentals and
purchases and which once again works on PCs and tablets (Windows 8 and Windows RT only)
as well as on the Xbox (Gary Marshall, N.d).

13. 3.4.3 Amazon
3.4.3.1consumer cloud services
Amazon isn't just the world's biggest retailer. It's one of the world's biggest cloud services
providers, and its servers power some of the internet's favourite services. In 2011 it decided to
join the consumer cloud party too, and since then it's quietly added some very useful cloud-based
features. The most recent example is Amazon's AutoRip, which automatically adds MP3
versions of CD or vinyl records you've bought to your cloud music player - and which checks
through your purchase history to AutoRip CDs and records you've bought in the past.
3.4.3.2 cloud player
Cloud Player, Amazon's online music streamer provides access via the web or via iOS and
Android apps. The free version is limited to 250 songs, with the option to have up to 250,000
songs for £21.99 per year. Amazon also has an App Store for Android - not just the customized
Android that powers its Kindle Fire devices, but ordinary Android too. (Gary Marshall, N.d)
3.4.3 Apple
3.4.3.1cloud service
iCloud which would provide easy access to your documents, important information and iTunes
library, and which Apple no doubt hoped would erase the memory of its former cloud service,
MobileMe.
The media side of iCloud works very well indeed across Mac and iOS devices: you can buy a
song on iTunes on the desktop and it'll magically appear on your iPhone or iPad, and if you've
bought a movie or TV show on one device your Apple TV knows about it and knows where you
left off. You can store your entire iTunes library in the cloud and stream it too, but unlike rivals
such as Google Play Music the Apple version isn't free: iTunes Match, as it's called, is £21.99
per year. iCloud will sync your calendar, contacts and email between devices, can be used to
save web pages for later reading and, if your chosen apps support it, it can be used to sync files
too.
3.4.3.2 Why apple cloud
iCloud is about to be revamped: when iOS 7 ships later this year there will be new photo sharing
features enabling friends and family to add content or comments to your photo and video
streams, and iCloud Keychain will create passwords and securely store credit card and account
logins for you. There will also be new, web-based versions of Apple's iWork apps, which are
already available to iCloud users as public betas (Gary Marshall, N.d).
3.4.4 Comparing cloud storage features:
Cloud storage Free storage space Upgrading cost

14. Company
Google 15GB of total storage $4.99 per month for 100GB;
and $9.99 per month for
200GB.
Microsoft 7GB of storage £16 per year for 50GB and
£32 per year for 100GB
Amazon 5GB of free storage and comes
with desktop (PC and Mac), iOS
and Android apps
20GB (£6 per year) to
1,000GB (£320 per year)
Apple 5GB of storage (purchases don't
count towards that total, and
neither do the photos you share
via iCloud's Photo Stream
service)
$20 per year for 10GB, $40
for 20GB and $100 per year
for 50GB
3.5 Comparison core product line:
Fig: strength by core product line (Clint Boulton, 2012).

15. 3.6 World Population with access to ecosystem services
Fig: media categories - music, movies and books (Daniel P., 2012)
4. Conclusion
a. Critical evaluation
Google wants everybody to use its cloud offerings so it can sell ads, but Apple wants to use its
cloud offerings to sell hardware. As a result its focus is much narrower, and it's not particularly
interested in doing great things on non-Apple devices.
Google gave developers at I/O a Chromebook Pixel, a high-end Chrome OS laptop that should
set off alarm bells at Apple. Google also launched Google Play game services, for Android, iOS
and the Web. Apple's focus on its own platforms will hurt it here: Given a choice between
integrating the Apple-only Game Center and the cross-platform Google Play services, developers
are likely to lean Google if they're not exclusively committed to iOS. Apple looked outward with
iTunes by creating a Windows version; it should have launched an Android version of Game
Center instead of burying its head in the sand . Despite the absence of a significant Android
update, Microsoft isn't any closer to changing the balance of power in the smartphone market.
Apple at least is doing well here, though Android's relentless rise has to be keeping Apple
executives awake. Google also beat Apple to the punch by launching its streaming music service,
the inelegantly named Google Play Music All Access, before Apple could launch one of its own.
here was a lot of attention paid to Google+ at Google I/O, particularly to improvements made to
Google+ Photos. Though Facebook remains the leader in social networking, Google's vision of
social computing is no longer laughable, because Google has the power to force participation and

16. because some services, like Hangouts, are really good. Google+ is unavoidable, for better or
worse. But Apple and Microsoft have nothing comparable, outside of a few strong stand-alone
services like iMessage and Skype (Thomas Claburn, 2013).
Part of the problem is Apple and Microsoft spends far too much energy keeping Google out
instead of deploying services that are better than Google's. Apple's iCloud also suffers in
comparison to Google's cloud offerings, as has been documented in various reports. Microsoft, at
least, has shown it can compete in the cloud, even if it's too reliant on Office as a way to rope
customers in. Meanwhile, Google is pushing ahead with its Cloud Platform to compete with
Amazon Web Services. The company opened Google Compute Engine to the public, added PHP
support to App Engine and introduced Cloud Data store.
Mobile phones and tablets are there already, but desktops and laptops are mainly missing
touchscreen and the Xbox is still the same old one.
Big launch for Microsoft ecosystem will happen earliest in 2015 with Windows 9, when they
will announce a new Xbox and devices will have better support for the operations needed (touch
screen, DLNA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, NFC)
b. Future of software ecosystem
The future of computing is clearly cloud-y, and the giants of tech haven't been slow to notice.
Google was an early adopter, of course, but Amazon was quick to spot the potential too - and
today its cloud services power everything from Amazon's own music and movie streaming to
banks' online offerings (Gary Marshall).
Companies
Factor
Apple Amazon Google Microsoft
Future
Software
Ecosystem
Mac OS X, dubbed
"Mavericks," Apple
iWatch, an Apple
HDTV set, 6-inch
Apple phablet (Jason
Hiner, 2013).
Retina MacBook Pro
(13-inch version as
well), iOS 6 (Devln
Coldewey, 2012)
3D eye-tracking
smartphone and free
off-contract
smartphone (almost
certainly run
Amazon’s modified
version of Android,
Fire OS)(Sebastian
Anthony, 2013).
7-inch Kindle Fire
(Jason Hiner, 2013).
Nexus 5 (next
version of Nexus
4) with Android
4.4 KitKat (Jason
Hiner, 2013).
pen-capable
Galaxy Note,
Surface
RT(likely
renamed surface
2) (Devln
Coldewey,
2012)

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