Towards a multi-criteria decision support method for consumer electronics software ecosystems
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2016

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.

consumer electronics

platform leadership

software architectures

ecosystems

embedded systems

Författare

H. Hartmann

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

Jan Bosch

Chalmers, Data- och informationsteknik, Software Engineering

Journal of Software: Evolution and Process

2047-7481 (eISSN)

Vol. 28 6 460-482

Ämneskategorier

Data- och informationsvetenskap

DOI

10.1002/smr.1785

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2022-04-06