Complicated Courting of Amazon and IBM

Coopetition, anyone? While Amazon may have won a high profile court battle against IBM regarding cloud services for the government, Amazon still supports many of IBM's platform technologies. With the increasing overlap of partners playing in each other's layer of the stack while still maintaining a partnership, one has to wonder: will companies eventually breakaway from their partners in an effort to dominate more stack layers, or will we see more collaboration among historic competitors?

Glass half-full, I would suggest the latter. According to game theory in economics, if competitors work together, they can optimize the value of the market as a whole. Even though rivals won't see as big of a slice of the pie if they crush their competitor, companies as innovative and intelligent as Amazon and IBM must realize that collaboration is mutually beneficial and grows the market regardless of the occasional heated conflict.

What do you think? Thoughts, comments, rebuttals?

Google Shopping Express

One Day, Google Will Deliver the Stuff You Want Before You Ask

Fresh off the tail of Monday's class on eBay and Amazon, Google answers "Yes" to the question, "Does eBay play in the same stack as Google?" Last Wednesday, Google announced a same-day shipping service titled, Google Shopping Express, further blurring the stack lines of the tech giants we've discussed thus far. The service is in direct competition with eBay Now (one-hour delivery service), and as you may correctly suspect, Amazon as well. Just don't expect eBay to retaliate with a self-driving car...or maybe...

Considering Eli's good point of eBay perceived as an "antique" e-shop, would you use Google for your online shopping needs given the new service? Or do they suffer from a different branding issue that also ends in a lack of e-tail sales?

Amazon: Packed in the Stack

How Jeff Bezos Made Amazon Everyone's Everything All of the Time

"There are some things that you can only do," Bezos said at one point, "Or only do really well, if you get to play in the entire stack, including all the way down to the hardware and the operating system." 

Right from the horse's mouth, Jeff Bezos mentions Amazon's strategy for the stack: domination. In the article, Bezos details Amazon's current products and service in the stack, including its new virtual tech support feature, Mayday, which has just been introduced in its recently debuted Kindle Fire HDX. And as a treat for us MS-MBA students, he shares what he views as the company's greatest opportunity in the stack (spoilers: it's software). 

This is a great precursor to our discussion about Amazon and eBay next week (sadly, I'm not on one of the Amazon teams). Considering Bezos' emphasis on the customer and a mantra of "Premium products for non-premium pricing", you can begin to see how being in all layers of the stack really pays off. 

Amazon’s Instant Video App Adds AirPlay Support For Streaming To Apple TV

Yes, it finally happened. You can now watch Amazon Instant Videos on your Apple TV through the Amazon Instant Video app on your iPad, iPhone, iPod, etc. Although the article doesn't elaborate much more on this statement, it does bring up the issue of 1st-party vs. 3rd-party offerings, which we'll discuss soon in class.

The Apple TV allows consumers to easily play iTunes content on their TV's, adding another incentive to purchase media from iTunes. Amazon, although not as robust as iTunes currently, still offers an impressive digital library of movies, TV shows, books, music, audio books, media subscription services (through Prime) and most recently, original content. Now that Instant Video is AirPlay compatible with the Apple TV, it is only a matter of time before it becomes an Apple TV app, similar to what happened with HBO Go. But will market dominance change now that Instant Video is AirPlay compatible?

Most likely not. iTunes is still the leader in music sales and TV show and movie downloads. And let's not forget its behemoth app store. By opening up Instant Video to AirPlay, Apple TV is giving consumers even fewer incentives to buy other streaming boxes, like Roku or Tivo, further solidifying Apple TV's surprising market dominance. Apple TV's weakness has arguably been its narrow content access, but opening up the Amazon library and its Prime streaming service to AirPlay silence most of these critics.

Personally, Amazon is my pick for digital content because I'm locked into their networking effect. I'm a Prime member and rely on Amazon for most of my shopping. It's quite convenient to make and track purchases, both digital and physical, in one place. Plus, the digital streaming service included in my membership is a great alternative to Netflix, a service that Apple doesn't proprietarily offer.

With the last Apple device I own being open to Amazon Instant Video, I really have very little incentive to buy anything apart from apps from iTunes. However, most consumers will still purchase content through iTunes because it is what they are used to. Apple is just affirming their place in the emerging "TV layer" of the stack, most likely in preparation for the highly speculated iTV which will no longer be just a hobby.

What do you guys think? Good move or bad move by Apple to allow Amazon Instant Video to AirPlay to Apple TV?

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/17/amazons-instant-video-app-adds-airplay-support-for-streaming-to-apple-tv/