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NTU Management Review Vol. 32 No. 2 Aug. 2022

The Smartphone Manufacturers’ New Product Development
Performance in the Generation Transition of Android Ecosystem:
Exploiting Old Technologies to Enhance the Effects of Exploring
New Technologies

Jing-Ming Shiu, Department of Business Administration, National Cheng Kung University

1. Purpose and Objective

Platform firms continuously create new-generation platform technologies in
a platform-based ecosystem, and complementors also constantly adopt platform

technologies to develop new complements. However, past studies mainly focus on
platform firms and mostly discuss how to encourage complementors’ innovative activities
from the perspective of these firms. Meanwhile, less studies concern the perspective of
complementors and seldom consider how complementors can use platform technologies
to develop new products during generational transitions. Therefore, in this study, I explore

how complementors (smartphone manufactures) navigate the strategies of exploitative and
exploratory learning in response to the generational transition of platform technologies by
applying organizational learning theory to platform-based ecosystem research.

2. Defining Concepts and Proposing Hypotheses

The platform in the platform-based ecosystem represents the core concept of the
product and defines the architectural design. The platform is also the technical bottleneck

during the generational transition of products. The generational transition of a platform
means that the existing functions are significantly improved, or new functions are added.
The transitions will also change the interaction among components in the ecosystem.
Specifically, before the official release of the new-generation platform, complementors can

conduct exploratory learning on its technical characteristics and adopt this new-generation
platform to develop new complements more efficiently. Moreover, after the official release,
usually platform firms will consistently release updated platform technologies that fix bugs
and improve product performance. Complementors can thus continuously learn from the

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