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Towards a multi‐criteria decision support method for consumer electronics software ecosystems
Author(s) -
Hartmann Herman,
Bosch Jan
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of software: evolution and process
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 2047-7481
pISSN - 2047-7473
DOI - 10.1002/smr.1785
Subject(s) - software , electronics , product (mathematics) , computer science , software engineering , systems engineering , engineering , operating system , electrical engineering , geometry , mathematics
Many consumer electronics firms are adopting an ecosystem‐centric approach for supporting third‐party applications. In an emerging market, a consumer electronics firm may need to create a new ecosystem or adopt a newly developed platform, both which has significant commercial and technical implications. In this paper we identify three types of ecosystems that are used today: vertically integrated hardware/software platforms, closed‐source software platforms, and open‐source software platforms. We introduce a first step towards a multi‐criteria decision support method, which determines what type of ecosystem is most suitable for a specific product category from a software engineering perspective. We use this method to analyze a wide range of consumer electronics products. The analysis shows that the vertically integrated platform type is most suitable for product with a high degree of innovation, and open‐source software platforms are more suitable when a large amount of variants are needed. The closed‐source software platform type is less suitable for most types of consumer electronics devices. This first step towards a full‐fledged decision support method can be used by platform owners to decide whether their platform can also be successfully transferred to another product type.