Technological Compatibility between Platforms and Multi-homing of Third-Party Developers

Jing Tian, Fudan University
Xia Zhao, University of Georgia
Ling Xue, Georgia State University

Description

Platform compatibility is an important strategic decision in platform competition. However, the literature examining its role in platform competition is still lacking. This study focuses on investigating the impact of platform compatibility on developers’ multi-homing decisions, exclusive app contribution on the new platform, and app performance using a dataset of the developers and their complements that we collected from the app distribution sites of two major web browsers, Chrome and Firefox. Our results show that platform compatibility will attract more developers with small user bases on Chrome to join Firefox. Moreover, platform compatibility encourages multi-homing developers with less user base on Firefox to contribute exclusive apps for Firefox and weakens the negative effect of market competition on developers’ incentives of contributing exclusive apps. We also find that platform compatibility strengthens the positive relationship between multi-homing developers’ app performance across platforms but this moderating effect is weaker for exclusive apps.

 

Technological Compatibility between Platforms and Multi-homing of Third-Party Developers

Platform compatibility is an important strategic decision in platform competition. However, the literature examining its role in platform competition is still lacking. This study focuses on investigating the impact of platform compatibility on developers’ multi-homing decisions, exclusive app contribution on the new platform, and app performance using a dataset of the developers and their complements that we collected from the app distribution sites of two major web browsers, Chrome and Firefox. Our results show that platform compatibility will attract more developers with small user bases on Chrome to join Firefox. Moreover, platform compatibility encourages multi-homing developers with less user base on Firefox to contribute exclusive apps for Firefox and weakens the negative effect of market competition on developers’ incentives of contributing exclusive apps. We also find that platform compatibility strengthens the positive relationship between multi-homing developers’ app performance across platforms but this moderating effect is weaker for exclusive apps.