First-Mover Advantage
A firm, by being first in creating a particular business or market, sometimes enjoys a competitive advantage, which is known as first-mover advantage.However, the first-mover advantage is not always sustainable. For example, Palm was one of the first companies to enjoy competitive advantage over rivals in the PDA (personal digital assistant) / handhelds market. However, Blackberry came up with a handheld which let people do everything that Palm handhelds did, plus send and receive e-mail, plus browse the Internet, plus work as a cell phone. In other words, Blackberry changed the market for handhelds by redefining what handheld PDAs could do.
One can argue that the Blackberry enjoys a first-mover advantage in the newly redefined handheld PDA / smart-phone market. However, with the advent of iPhones from Apple plus its aggressive biz-dev partnership with AT&T, Blackberry's first mover advantage may not be sustainable. In other words, the iPhone has again redefined what a smart handheld phone / PDA device can do.
The above examples in the PDA / handheld / smart-phone space show that by having a superior product strategy coupled with speedy execution, a business can dislodge a first-mover in a specific market, redefine the market and claim itself to the the first-mover. In any case, in the rapidly changing high-tech industry, the term "First-Mover" can be a misnomer, and even an oxymoron. Nevertheless, it makes sense to use this buzzword sometimes in crafting strategy.
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