Nine reasons why tech markets are winner-take-all

In the 1960s, IBM dominated the computer mainframe market. It still does. In the 1980s, Microsoft and Intel dominated the PC software and processor markets. They still do. In the 1990s, with the advent of the World Wide Web, the winners were Google in search, Amazon in e-commerce and Facebook in social networking. They still dominate those markets. Since 2007, Apple and Google (Android) have dominated the market for mobile internet operating systems.

The pattern is clear. New tech markets are often intensely competitive, amplified by the volatile nature of the technologies themselves. But once a tech company achieves clear market leadership - usually as a fast follower with better execution than the pioneer - it soon attains complete dominance and is then almost impossible to displace. Instead, the threat is that a newer, bigger, adjacent market emerges, dominated by another player, as mainframes and PCs have been overshadowed by online, mobile and cloud-based technologies. In the words of industry analyst Ben Thompson of Stratechery.com, dominant tech companies can be eclipsed but not displaced.