Concentration in the mobile operating systems market

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the concentration of the mobile operating systems market, revealing a highly imbalanced oligopoly dominated by Android, with over 80% of new devices using it, indicating significant market dominance.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative analysis of market concentration using HHI and CR4 indices, highlighting the dominance of a few key players in the mobile OS industry.

Findings

Four major OSes hold over 99% of the market

Android is installed on over 80% of new devices

Market concentration has remained highly imbalanced over time

Abstract

Concentration phenomena concern the ICT market. Though the regulatory action has been active mainly in the telecom network operators industry, even more significant worldwide concentration phenomena affect other industries. The market of mobile operating systems is analysed through two concentration indices to get a quantitative picture of the current situation and its evolution over time: the Hirschman Herfindahl Index (HHI) and the Four-Firm Concentration Ratio (CR4). A strongly imbalanced oligopoly is shown to exist, where the four major operating systems take over 99% of the market, but the dominant operating system Android alone is installed on over 80% of the new devices.