Smartphones, platforms and business models: policies for the apps economy

The combination of mobile technologies and cloud computing lower the cost of experimentation and innovation in what we can call the “apps economy”. Patrik Karrberg at LSETech shows how an understanding of delivery platforms, especially its architecture and related business models, could be used to identify key success factors informing policy makers. Patrik has received research funding from Research Council UK (New Economic Models for the Digital Economy) for his work on platform innovation, due to be presented autumn 2013

The emergence of the mobile internet in Japan and the UK: platforms, exchange models, and innovation 1999‐2011

In 1999 Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo launched arguably the world’s first successful mobile Internet services portal called “i‐mode”. In Europe at the same time a series of failures diminished the opportunities to attract customers to the mobile Internet. Even though similar Internet technologies were available in Japan and the UK, very different markets for services developed during the initial years 1999‐2003. When the West expected Japanese firms to become dominant players in the mobile digitalisation of services during the introduction of 3G networks, it remained instead a national affair. The dominant views of how markets for mobile services operated seemed flawed.   So‐called delivery platforms were used to connect mobile phones with service contents that were often adapted from the PC world. Designing and operating service delivery platforms became a new niche market. It held a pivotal role for the output of services and competition among providers.   This thesis sets out to answer a set of inter‐related questions: How and where did firms innovate in this new and growing part of the service economy and how are new business models mediated by service delivery platforms? It argues that innovation in the digitalised economy is largely influenced by firms achieving platform leadership through coordination of both technological systems and the creation of multi‐sided exchanges. This thesis demonstrates from cases of multi‐sided markets in operator‐controlled portals, of mobile video and TV and of event ticketing in Japan and the UK that defining the scope of the firm on the network level forms the basis for incremental innovation, the dominant form of service innovation. A parallel focus on coordinating platform technology choices forms the basis for firms to trade fees, advertisements, and user data, enabling control over profitable parts of multi‐sided value networks

Economics of the cloud: employment effects in two exemplary sectors in the USA, the UK, Germany and Italy

It is commonly felt that cloud computing will bring changes to information handling practices with widespread effects on organizational structures and strategies. In this post, Jonathan Liebenau and Patrik Karrberg show how better models to assess the economic effects of cloud computing can provide concrete evidence of what is more or less likely to be those changes. The authors report the findings from a study that accounts, in detail, for the likely impact of cloud computing in major industrial and services sectors

European Internet traffic: indicator of growth and competition in digital services – a summary

In a recent blog, LSE Tech argued that the European telecommunication sector’s business structure is experiencing significant challenges. Here, Patrik Karrberg, Jonathan Liebenau and Silvia Elaluf-Calderwood takes one step further by looking at the current dynamics of the internet routing businesses. The authors claim that the increasing importance of internet exchanges could be expected to affect pricing, act as a catalyst for how traffic is routed in the physical infrastructure, and be seen as an important institution for the European internet economy. A continuous monitoring and data gathering about the evolving market for interconnection in Europe can contribute to a regime of efficient ex‐post regulation

Spectrum allocation for emergency services in the UK and Europe: An open set of questions to be researched

In light of the upcoming changes that we may foresee in spectrum allocation, Silvia Elaluf-Calderwood, Jonathan Liebenau and Patrik Karrberg outline key questions on spectrum allocation for emergency services in the UK and Europe

Enterprise efficiency in the use of ICT in China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Japan & the USA: first interim report on LSE-Dell research

Axicom approached LSE Enterprise on behalf of their client, Dell Inc to research and report on IT efficiency. The main objective of the project was to investigate how IT has been driven by efficiency and scale in large enterprises, with the goal of identifying 3-5 key factors central to this. The analysis was based on survey data and in-depth interviews with large enterprise CIOs, carried out at six-month intervals. The final report will be issued during summer 2010

International perspectives on information security practices: opinions, preferences and tools in the financial services industry

This study, commissioned by McAfee, considered that computer security is much more than the application of anti-viral patches and checks on data integrity, such that it is integral to the core of all information-intensive businesses. Drawing on the full range of disciplines that contribute to social studies of information systems management, a research methodology was devised that would focus particularly on the banking and financial services sectors, making it possible to capture attitudes and behaviours that not only affect the very largest and most influential firms in the European economy, but also to focus on a community of Chief Information Officers (CIOs). By concentrating on two leading banking and financial services' firms in each of four European countries, including Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands, the research team were able to successfully gauge the attitudes and likely behaviours of CIOs with regard to information systems security software in the near future