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

Abstract

This research analyzes the new product development performance of 11 smartphone manufacturers (i.e. complementors) in a total of 10 generation transitions from Éclair Android 2.1 to Android 10.0 in the Android ecosystem (i.e. platform-based ecosystem) of Google (also known as platform vendors). My analysis results show that both the exploitative learning in the old generation and the explorative learning in the new generation of Android operating systems have effectively improved smartphone manufacturers’ new product developments. In addition, the higher the degree of exploitative learning in the old generation, the more effective it is to increase the positive impact of explorative learning in the new generation on the smartphone manufacturers' new product development performance. This research supplements earlier studies in the discussions about the ambidexterity of complementors and the performance of new product development in the platform-based ecosystem theory.