Standards, critical mass, and the formation of complex industries: A case study of the mobile Internet

Abstract

► Some industries include multiple interfaces and thus multiple interface standards. ► Many interface standards require a critical mass of users or complementary products for growth to occur. ► Critical masses partly build from previously created critical masses in the mobile phone industry. This is one of the few papers to analyze multiple interface standards in a single industry and it finds that standard setting in such an industry is much more complex than those covered in the existing literature. In the mobile Internet, some of the interface standards initially required so-called integral design while others have been built on top of these “basic” interface standards. The former interface standards enable basic data connections between phones, services, and content while the latter ones connect the mobile phone with content and applications from other industries such as music, video, publishing, broadcasting, and payment. This paper shows that in connecting the mobile phone and other industries, each critical mass of phones, services, and content partly builds from previously created critical masses.