A lot is going on these days about ecosystems and I think the dream of One Ecosystem to Rule Them All aka The American Matrix Dream will not really happen.
Two Worlds
Technologically, we need both hardware and software. The more both can communicate and work together reliably, the better. The more consistent they are, the better. So it makes sense for a lot of analysts to say that the company who has the hand on both can provide the greatest experience and thus, the biggest success. Right.
The equation
Problem is, hardware is made in Asia, software is made in the West. This is a crucial point. Nobody can really compete with Asia’s 30 years of experience building computers, motherboards, graphic cards, monitors etc. We can’t, just on a worker salary basis. It’s pretty much the opposite for software with the West having a huge advantage and experience since Palo Alto and the Silicon Valley. Despite the availability of a robust open source OS, nobody in Asia really conquered the world with its software (except for Nintendo, who does hardware too). But they are listening, trying, testing (HTC Sense). And when a company like Apple ask Asia to build beautiful devices, Asia learns, copies and does it more and more precisely (Samsung’s laptops and lawsuit for their successful Galaxy Tab) and innovates too (Asus netbooks, EEE Pad).
It’s a fascinating relationship where I believe the separation will stay this way: It will take a long time before Asian job cost equals the West one so that a Western company can really invest the hardware department and it will take a long time before Asia figures out how the West works in front of a monitor (massive culture shift there, very clear when comparing Western/Japanese game developers and their creations). Everybody needs everybody.
Therefore the scenario of a few companies having control over their own hardware/software ecosystems, vertically, seems unlikely. There are way too many players in the game and the patent mess will maintain a very slow progress.
The past
Every single closed architecture, super great closed ecosystem controlled by one company died, but one (resurrected through the music lie of “being fair” with artists via iPod/iTunes back in 2003). Technology follows Darwin’s law: the one who can adapt faster and more than the others wins. Apple is a good case as the once really closed company had to switch to Intel and make iTunes available on Windows to touch more people and more than just survive, make an insane profit and be the company we know today. It’s not just about innovation, there’s a fine balance to find between design and business model.
So an ecosystem controlled by one company either die through the complexity or overhead of two distinct businesses in one (hard/soft), or subtly, massively change. That fact plus the Western-software/Asia-hardware separation makes sure that ecosystems can only work through multiple companies and partners through multiple countries at huge scales (I’m talking about the half a billion computer/phones sold every year, not the 28 million iPad or 100 million Wii sold to this day). At smaller scales, it’s a double-edged sword: When it works, it’s awesome (Wii) but when it doesn’t, hardware makes it hard to be flexible (what to do with the 3DS now?). At bigger scales it becomes very risky.
The future
I think we’ll see hardware manufacturers offering full hardware ecosystems (cloud@home+sensors+monitors+sound bars+tablets+phones) like Ikea is selling full kitchen and then you will have the usual players for the full software ecosystem part: Microsoft, Google and always Linux, which will probably get more stronger as generations of computer wizards will emerge. And when Asia will be capable of producing software for the entire world, the West will probably be able to produce hardware too. We’ll then see what happens. A new loop in our history.
At the end what really counts is the software, which runs the world.
Meanwhile, Steve Jobs just resigned as CEO of Apple. Interesting.