Vendor lock-in
Encyclopedia
In economics
, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor
for product
s and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs
. Lock-in costs which create barriers to market entry
may result in antitrust
action against a monopoly
.
locking may be considered a vendor lock-in tactic as phones purchased from the vendor will work with SIM cards only from the same network. This creates additional inconvenience to the buyer as the phone cannot use a prepaid SIM from a different vendor while on vacation (a common tactic used by Asian tourists visiting another Asian country) and as a result the subscriber must also sign up the often expensive roaming service offered by the vendor. Additionally, should the subscriber wish to take out a second line for any reason, he/she must also get the line from the same vendor, as the SIM card of a competing vendor will not work. Sometimes, even the SIM card from the same vendor will not work and the buyer will be forced into buying another phone.
Various standards organizations, such as the US Department of Transportation
, regulate the design of certain automobile components to prevent vendor lock-in.
Also, some vendors practice a store-credit/gift certificate refund policy in the time of warranty if they can't replace or repair the product. This is illegal in many jurisdictions as it forces the client to buy a different article in the same shop possibly for lower price/quality ratio. It's also possible that the client is forced to buy a completely different product if the original product line is no longer sold.
This policy is different from the refund policy in case of dissatisfaction. In this case, the vendor offers to exchange the article in a typically short time frame. If the article is not faulty then the vendor has no obligation to exchange or refund it unless he's committed to do so in advance.
monopoly initially refused to allow anyone to interconnection
of their network to other networks or to non-Bell equipment,
until the Hush-A-Phone v. United States federal court ruling and the Carterfone
FCC regulatory ruling.
The Bell System allowed interconnection to third-party equipment only through the added expense of protective acoustic coupler
, while Bell equipment could be directly electrically connected to the network,
until a later FCC order which led to standardized modular connectors.
In the computer industry, both hardware and software, vendor lock-in can be used to describe situations in which there is a lack of compatibility or interoperability
between equivalent components.
This can make it difficult to switch systems at many levels; the application program, the file format
, the operating system
, or various pieces of computer hardware ranging from a video card
to a whole computer or even an entire network of computers. Note that in many cases, there are no technical standards that would allow creation of interoperable systems. At nearly any level of systems architecture
, lock-in may occur. This creates a situation where lock-in is often used as leverage to get market share, often leading to monopolies and antitrust actions.
In response to Flash Player's dominance as a video player, the HTML5 specification allows video playback without requiring the Adobe Flash plugin. In accordance with this standard, Mozilla Foundation
has natively (no plug-in necessary) included Vorbis
and Theora
playback in its flagship browser Firefox starting from the version 3.5, as they say "to enable unencumbered, royalty-free, open-source friendly audio and video playback on the Web" and Firefox 4.0 and later versions supports native (no plug-in necessary) playback of WebM
& VP8
in addition to Theora playback support.
, the biggest video website that has adopted HTML5 video playback is Daily Motion (with YouTube
currently running a beta) although a sizable amount of videos aren't encoded with a royalty-free codec.
Google
It is not required to have a Google Account
to use an Android device, but if one is added it cannot later be removed without a fulll factory reset, deleting all user data and applications.
was subject to a series of the longest and most complex monopoly antitrust actions in United States history, and presented the first significant model for understanding of how lock-in affected the computer industry. IBM had significant lock-in of the punched card
industry from its earliest days; before computers as we recognize them today even existed. From dominance of the card punches, readers, tabulators, and printers, IBM extended to dominance of the mainframe computer
market, and then to the operating system
s and application programs for computers. Third party products existed for some areas, but customers then faced the prospect of having to prove which vendor was at fault if, say, a third party printer didn't work correctly with an IBM computer, and IBM's warranties and service agreements often stipulated that they would not support systems with non-IBM components attached. This put customers into an all-or-nothing situation.
software carries a high level of vendor lock-in, based on its extensive set of proprietary API
s. Their degree of lock-in combined with their market share has made them subject to a number of antitrust lawsuits.
The European Commission
, in its March 24, 2004 decision on Microsoft's business practices, quotes, in paragraph 463, Microsoft general manager for C++
development Aaron Contorer as stating in a February 21, 1997 internal Microsoft memo drafted for Bill Gates
:
Microsoft's application software also exhibits lock-in through the use of proprietary file format
s. Microsoft Outlook
uses a proprietary datastore file and interface which are impossible to read without being parsed
, and such parsers may in turn not be able to exist legally without performing reverse engineering. For example, to access data contained in Outlook's '.PST' files, the application must process the request through Outlook instead of directly handling the file. Present versions of Microsoft Word have introduced a new format MS-OOXML. This may make it easier for competitors to write documents compatible with Microsoft Office in the future by reducing lock-in. Microsoft released full descriptions of the file formats for earlier versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint in February 2008.
ActiveSync
is a proprietary protocol
used by PDA
s and handheld devices for data transfer with a personal computer
.
Apple often makes use of new or unusual hardware systems; they were the first vendor to make widespread use of Sony
's 3.5" floppy drive, and they devised their own Apple Desktop Bus
system for keyboard
s and mice, their own LocalTalk
networking system, the high-speed FireWire serial interface for storage and video transfer, the 30-pin iPod dock connector, and non-standard display interfaces such as ADC
, Mini-DVI
, and Mini DisplayPort
. Due to Apple's smaller market share the number of third-party providers was more limited than for the competing IBM PC
platform (though larger than for the Amiga
, which had similarly unusual components), and third-party providers sometimes had to license elements of the interface
technology, meaning that Apple made money on every peripheral sold, even if they did not manufacture it.
Prior to March 2009 digital music files with digital rights management
were available for purchase from the iTunes music store
encoded in a proprietary derivative of the .AAC
format that used Apple's FairPlay
DRM system. These files are compatible only with Apple's iTunes
media player software on Macs
and Windows
, their iPod
portable digital music players, iPhone
smartphone
s, iPad
tablet computer
s, and the Motorola
ROKR E1 and SLVR
mobile phones. As a result, that music was locked into this ecosystem and available for portable use only through the purchase of one of the above devices, or by burning to CD
and optionally re-ripping to a DRM-free format such as MP3
or WAV
.
In January, 2005, an iPod
purchaser named Thomas Slattery filed a suit against Apple for the "unlawful bundling" of their iTunes Music Store and iPod device. He stated in his brief: "Apple has turned an open and interactive standard into an artifice that prevents consumers from using the portable hard drive digital music player of their choice." At the time Apple was stated to have an 80% market share of digital music sales and a 90% share of sales of new music players, which he claimed allowed Apple to horizontally leverage its dominant positions in both markets to lock consumers into its complementary offerings. In September 2005, U.S. District Judge James Ware
approved Slattery v. Apple Computer Inc. to proceed with monopoly charges against Apple in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act
.
On June 7, 2006, the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman Bjørn Erik Thon
stated that Apple's iTunes Music Store violates Norwegian law. The contract conditions were vague and "clearly unbalanced to disfavor the customer". The retroactive changes to the Digital Rights Management
conditions and the incompatibility with other music players are the major points of concern.
, tracks on the EMI
label became available in a DRM-free format called iTunes Plus. These files are unprotected and are encoded in the AAC format at 256 kilobits per second, twice the bitrate of standard tracks bought through the service. iTunes accounts can be set to display either standard or iTunes Plus formats for tracks where both formats exist. These files can be used with any player that supports the AAC file format and are not locked to Apple hardware. They can be converted to MP3 format if desired.
As of January 6, 2009, all 4 big music studios (Warner Bros.
, Sony BMG, Universal
, and EMI
) have signed up to remove the DRM from their tracks, at no extra cost. However, Apple charges consumers to have previously purchased DRM music restrictions removed.
As of the end of March, 2009, all music available on iTunes is DRM-free, however, digital downloads of television shows, movies, and iOS mobile apps through iTunes are still DRM-protected.
VCR system. Since then, Sony has also used lock-in as a business tool in many other applications, and has a long history of engineering proprietary solutions to enforce lock-in. For many cases Sony licenses its technology to a limited number of other vendors, which creates a situation in which it controls a cartel
that collectively has lock-in on the product. Sony is frequently at the heart of format war
s, in which two or more such cartels battle to capture a market and win the lock.
Examples of Sony's formats include:
, Sony
digital camera
s and a number of other Sony products typically use Memory Stick
cards that can be manufactured only by Sony, co-developer SanDisk
, and select licensees. This memory can be more expensive in some markets when compared to alternative memory types that exhibit similar characteristics such as data transfer speeds. This is an example of vendor lock-in, as existing users of Sony products are less likely to purchase a competitors product that uses a different storage medium due to the extra cost of acquiring a differing storage media. Similarly this can discourage consumers with non-Sony merchandise from purchasing Sony products.
In contrast, Blu-ray Disc
was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association
where Sony is a member, but does not have a controlling position.
. The reasons for such designs vary; some are intended to quietly force customers into a vendor lock-in situation, or force upgrading customers to replace more components than would otherwise be necessary; others are the result of practical considerations such as cost, packaging, ease of design, unusual or enhanced features; and still others result from an ignorance of standards, or even an absence of standards. There may be little immediate financial incentive for a vendor to provide backward compatibility
or interoperability.
The term Connector Conspiracy was coined to describe this situation, and implies the worst case scenario of a cabal
of manufacturers colluding
in secret to sell incompatible connectors. Yet actual lock-in attempts can fail, if adapters can be purchased or manufactured to make the components compatible.
s were hailed as the best solution to vendor lock-in. But there is still a possibility that one software vendor uses "embrace, extend and extinguish
" (EEE) tactics to achieves a dominant market share, which could render the standard obsolete. The history of SQL
is an archetypal example.
Since the late 1990s, the use of free and open source software
(FOSS) has arisen as a stronger solution. Because FOSS can be modified and distributed by anyone, the availability of functionality usually cannot tie a user to one distributor. The ineffectiveness of distributor lock-in means there's no incentive for FOSS developers to invent redundant new data formats if usable (royalty-free) standards exist.
In particular, copyleft
ed FOSS is in some respects particularly resistant to the above mentioned "EEE" tactics since anyone distributing modified versions cannot legally prevent free or competing redistribution of the modifications and their source code
. It is also, however, particularly well suited to those tactics in other respects, such as in competition with non-copyleft free and open source software.
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor
Vendor (supply chain)
A vendor, or a supplier, is a supply chain management term meaning anyone who provides goods or services to a company. A vendor often manufactures inventoriable items, and sells those items to a customer.- History :...
for product
Product (business)
In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced...
s and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs
Switching barriers
Switching barriers or switching costs are terms used in microeconomics, strategic management, and marketing to describe any impediment to a customer's changing of suppliers....
. Lock-in costs which create barriers to market entry
Barriers to entry
In theories of competition in economics, barriers to entry are obstacles that make it difficult to enter a given market. The term can refer to hindrances a firm faces in trying to enter a market or industry - such as government regulation, or a large, established firm taking advantage of economies...
may result in antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...
action against a monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
.
SIM locking
SIMSubscriber Identity Module
A subscriber identity module or subscriber identification module is an integrated circuit that securely stores the International Mobile Subscriber Identity and the related key used to identify and authenticate subscriber on mobile telephony devices .A SIM is held on a removable SIM card, which...
locking may be considered a vendor lock-in tactic as phones purchased from the vendor will work with SIM cards only from the same network. This creates additional inconvenience to the buyer as the phone cannot use a prepaid SIM from a different vendor while on vacation (a common tactic used by Asian tourists visiting another Asian country) and as a result the subscriber must also sign up the often expensive roaming service offered by the vendor. Additionally, should the subscriber wish to take out a second line for any reason, he/she must also get the line from the same vendor, as the SIM card of a competing vendor will not work. Sometimes, even the SIM card from the same vendor will not work and the buyer will be forced into buying another phone.
Automobiles
Automobiles are often made with certain parts, such as car stereos, which might be interchangeable. Sometimes the manufacturers will attempt to create lock-in by various means; in the case of a stereo, they might make the stereo unit an unusual size and shape instead of a standard one, or create a unique way for the dashboard part of the stereo to control a CD Changer in the trunk.Various standards organizations, such as the US Department of Transportation
United States Department of Transportation
The United States Department of Transportation is a federal Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with transportation. It was established by an act of Congress on October 15, 1966, and began operation on April 1, 1967...
, regulate the design of certain automobile components to prevent vendor lock-in.
Gift certificates
Gift certificates are textbook examples of vendor lock-in as they can be used solely in the vendor's shops. Gift certificates typically only worth their face price (no bonus credit is added), so generally, they do not represent any advantage over money.Also, some vendors practice a store-credit/gift certificate refund policy in the time of warranty if they can't replace or repair the product. This is illegal in many jurisdictions as it forces the client to buy a different article in the same shop possibly for lower price/quality ratio. It's also possible that the client is forced to buy a completely different product if the original product line is no longer sold.
This policy is different from the refund policy in case of dissatisfaction. In this case, the vendor offers to exchange the article in a typically short time frame. If the article is not faulty then the vendor has no obligation to exchange or refund it unless he's committed to do so in advance.
Telephone equipment
The Bell SystemBell System
The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...
monopoly initially refused to allow anyone to interconnection
Interconnection
In telecommunications, interconnection is the physical linking of a carrier's network with equipment or facilities not belonging to that network...
of their network to other networks or to non-Bell equipment,
until the Hush-A-Phone v. United States federal court ruling and the Carterfone
Carterfone
The Carterfone is a device invented by Thomas Carter. It manually connects a two-way mobile radio system to the public switched telephone network , making it a direct predecessor to today's autopatch....
FCC regulatory ruling.
The Bell System allowed interconnection to third-party equipment only through the added expense of protective acoustic coupler
Acoustic coupler
In telecommunications, the term acoustic coupler has the following meanings:# An interface device for coupling electrical signals by acoustical means—usually into and out of a telephone instrument....
, while Bell equipment could be directly electrically connected to the network,
until a later FCC order which led to standardized modular connectors.
Other examples
- Many printers manufacturers claim that if any ink cartridges, beyond those sold by themselves, are used in the printer, the warranty of the printer becomes void.
- The FilofaxFilofaxFilofax is a company based in the UK that produces a range of well known personal organizer wallets. The organizers are traditionally leather bound and have a six-ring loose-leaf binder system. The design originated at Lefax, a United States company based in Philadelphia who exported products into...
brand of personal organizerPersonal organizerA personal organizer, day planner, personal analog assistant, or personal planner is a small book/binder, designed to be portable, usually containing a diary, calendar, address book, and other sections usually including blank paper. It may also include pages with useful information, such as maps,...
s, for example, is not compatible with standard paper and ring-binder sizes, so users can buy additional and replacement supplies only from Filofax or a limited number of other suppliers. Costs are several times those of comparable stationery supplies in standard sizes and formats. - The K-Cup single-use coffee pod system is patented and licensed by KeurigKeurigKeurig is a Reading, Massachusetts-based coffee machine manufacturing company, known for its K-Cup single-serving brewing system.- Company :Keurig was founded in 1992 by Olaf Keurig...
, which is a subsidiary of Green Mountain Coffee RoastersGreen Mountain Coffee RoastersGreen Mountain Coffee Roasters is a publicly-traded brand of coffee based at Waterbury in the U.S. state of Vermont. The brand specializes in organic, fair trade, and specialty gourmet coffees. Keurig is a wholly owned subsidiary of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., and sells many of their...
. All K-Cups are licensed, there are no generics. K-Cup brewers can be used only with K-Cups, with the alternative being the optional reusable filter for use with any coffee grounds other than brands or blends approved by Keurig. Other Single-serving coffee brands, such as NespressoNespressoNespresso is the brand name of Nestlé Nespresso S.A., an operating unit of the Nestlé Group based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Nespresso machines brew espresso from special capsules containing ground coffee.- History :...
, also have proprietary systems. - Many vacuum cleanerVacuum cleanerA vacuum cleaner, commonly referred to as a "vacuum," is a device that uses an air pump to create a partial vacuum to suck up dust and dirt, usually from floors, and optionally from other surfaces as well. The dirt is collected by either a dustbag or a cyclone for later disposal...
s are only compatible with specific filter bags. - The detachable heads of electric toothbrushElectric toothbrushAn electric toothbrush is a toothbrush that uses electric power supplied usually by a battery to move the brush head rapidly, either oscillating side to side, or rotation-oscillation .- History :...
es can often only be replaced by heads made by the same company.
Lock-in for electronics and computers
Vendor lock-in is rampant in the computer and electronics industries.In the computer industry, both hardware and software, vendor lock-in can be used to describe situations in which there is a lack of compatibility or interoperability
Interoperability
Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together . The term is often used in a technical systems engineering sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to...
between equivalent components.
This can make it difficult to switch systems at many levels; the application program, the file format
File format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
, the operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
, or various pieces of computer hardware ranging from a video card
Video card
A video card, Graphics Card, or Graphics adapter is an expansion card which generates output images to a display. Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors...
to a whole computer or even an entire network of computers. Note that in many cases, there are no technical standards that would allow creation of interoperable systems. At nearly any level of systems architecture
Systems architecture
A system architecture or systems architecture is the conceptual model that defines the structure, behavior, and more views of a system.An architecture description is a formal description and representation of a system, organized in a way that supports reasoning about the structure of the system...
, lock-in may occur. This creates a situation where lock-in is often used as leverage to get market share, often leading to monopolies and antitrust actions.
Adobe
Adobe is accused of vendor lock-in because of their Flash Player. Adobe's browser plug-in is present in over 95% of computers worldwide and has been a cause of scrutiny against its privacy policies.In response to Flash Player's dominance as a video player, the HTML5 specification allows video playback without requiring the Adobe Flash plugin. In accordance with this standard, Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property...
has natively (no plug-in necessary) included Vorbis
Vorbis
Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
and Theora
Theora
Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container....
playback in its flagship browser Firefox starting from the version 3.5, as they say "to enable unencumbered, royalty-free, open-source friendly audio and video playback on the Web" and Firefox 4.0 and later versions supports native (no plug-in necessary) playback of WebM
WebM
WebM is an audio-video format designed to provide a royalty-free, open video compression format for use with HTML5 video. The project's development is sponsored by Google....
& VP8
VP8
VP8 is an open video compression format released by Google, originally created by On2 Technologies.After purchasing On2 Technologies in early 2010, Google has provided an irrevocable patent promise for underlying patents for the VP8 format, and released a bitstream format specification under a...
in addition to Theora playback support.
, the biggest video website that has adopted HTML5 video playback is Daily Motion (with YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
currently running a beta) although a sizable amount of videos aren't encoded with a royalty-free codec.
Google Account
A Google Account is a user account that provides access to Google-owned services such as Blogger, YouTube, and Google Groups. A Google Account can be identified either by the username or by their unique permanent ID...
to use an Android device, but if one is added it cannot later be removed without a fulll factory reset, deleting all user data and applications.
IBM
IBMIBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
was subject to a series of the longest and most complex monopoly antitrust actions in United States history, and presented the first significant model for understanding of how lock-in affected the computer industry. IBM had significant lock-in of the punched card
Punched card
A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...
industry from its earliest days; before computers as we recognize them today even existed. From dominance of the card punches, readers, tabulators, and printers, IBM extended to dominance of the mainframe computer
Mainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
market, and then to the operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s and application programs for computers. Third party products existed for some areas, but customers then faced the prospect of having to prove which vendor was at fault if, say, a third party printer didn't work correctly with an IBM computer, and IBM's warranties and service agreements often stipulated that they would not support systems with non-IBM components attached. This put customers into an all-or-nothing situation.
Microsoft
MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
software carries a high level of vendor lock-in, based on its extensive set of proprietary API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
s. Their degree of lock-in combined with their market share has made them subject to a number of antitrust lawsuits.
The European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
, in its March 24, 2004 decision on Microsoft's business practices, quotes, in paragraph 463, Microsoft general manager for C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
development Aaron Contorer as stating in a February 21, 1997 internal Microsoft memo drafted for Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
:
- "The Windows APIWindows APIThe Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was formerly called the Win32 API; however, the name "Windows API" more accurately reflects its roots in 16-bit Windows and its support on...
is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most ISVIndependent software vendorIndependent software vendor is a business term for companies specializing in making or selling software, designed for mass marketing or for niche markets...
s would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source codeSource codeIn computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
of many Windows appsApplication softwareApplication software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating systemOperating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
instead...
- "It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy driversDevice driverIn computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
, our high TCOTotal cost of ownershipTotal cost of ownership is a financial estimate whose purpose is to help consumers and enterprise managers determine direct and indirect costs of a product or system...
, our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties [...] Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, [but] it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move.
- "In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago."
Microsoft's application software also exhibits lock-in through the use of proprietary file format
File format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
s. Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...
uses a proprietary datastore file and interface which are impossible to read without being parsed
Parsing
In computer science and linguistics, parsing, or, more formally, syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a text, made of a sequence of tokens , to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammar...
, and such parsers may in turn not be able to exist legally without performing reverse engineering. For example, to access data contained in Outlook's '.PST' files, the application must process the request through Outlook instead of directly handling the file. Present versions of Microsoft Word have introduced a new format MS-OOXML. This may make it easier for competitors to write documents compatible with Microsoft Office in the future by reducing lock-in. Microsoft released full descriptions of the file formats for earlier versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint in February 2008.
ActiveSync
ActiveSync
ActiveSync is a mobile data synchronization technology and protocol developed by Microsoft, originally released in 1996. There are two implementations of the technology: one which synchronizes data and information with handheld devices with a specific desktop computer , and another technology,...
is a proprietary protocol
Proprietary protocol
In telecommunications, a proprietary protocol is a communications protocol owned by a single organization or individual.-Enforcement:Proprietors may enforce restrictions through patents and by keeping the protocol specification a trade secret...
used by PDA
PDA
A PDA is most commonly a Personal digital assistant, also known as a Personal data assistant, a mobile electronic device.PDA may also refer to:In science, medicine and technology:...
s and handheld devices for data transfer with a personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
.
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. has historically been well-known for its lock-in practices. For a long time their market share has been small enough that their anti-trust exposure has been substantially less than that of Microsoft or IBM.Apple often makes use of new or unusual hardware systems; they were the first vendor to make widespread use of Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
's 3.5" floppy drive, and they devised their own Apple Desktop Bus
Apple Desktop Bus
Apple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999....
system for keyboard
Computer keyboard
In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...
s and mice, their own LocalTalk
LocalTalk
LocalTalk is a particular implementation of the physical layer of the AppleTalk networking system from Apple Computer. LocalTalk specifies a system of shielded twisted pair cabling, plugged into self-terminating transceivers, running at a rate of 230.4 kbit/s...
networking system, the high-speed FireWire serial interface for storage and video transfer, the 30-pin iPod dock connector, and non-standard display interfaces such as ADC
Apple Display Connector
The Apple Display Connector is a proprietary modification of the DVI connector that combines analog and digital video signals, USB, and power all in one cable...
, Mini-DVI
Mini-DVI
The Mini-Dvi connector is used on certain Apple computers as a digital alternative to the Mini-VGA connector. Its size is between the full-sized DVI and the tiny Micro-DVI...
, and Mini DisplayPort
Mini DisplayPort
The Mini DisplayPort is a miniaturized version of the DisplayPort digital audio-visual interface. Apple, Inc. announced the development in the fourth quarter of 2008, and now applies it in the LED Cinema Display and in all new Macintosh computers: MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, Mac mini,...
. Due to Apple's smaller market share the number of third-party providers was more limited than for the competing IBM PC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
platform (though larger than for the Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
, which had similarly unusual components), and third-party providers sometimes had to license elements of the interface
Interface (computer science)
In the field of computer science, an interface is a tool and concept that refers to a point of interaction between components, and is applicable at the level of both hardware and software...
technology, meaning that Apple made money on every peripheral sold, even if they did not manufacture it.
Prior to March 2009 digital music files with digital rights management
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
were available for purchase from the iTunes music store
ITunes Store
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...
encoded in a proprietary derivative of the .AAC
Advanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
format that used Apple's FairPlay
FairPlay
FairPlay is a digital rights management technology created by Apple Inc., based on technology created by the company Veridisc. FairPlay is built into the QuickTime multimedia software and used by the iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple TV, iTunes, and iTunes Store and the App Store. Formerly, all songs in...
DRM system. These files are compatible only with Apple's iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
media player software on Macs
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
and Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, their iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
portable digital music players, iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
smartphone
Smartphone
A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...
s, iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
tablet computer
Tablet computer
A tablet computer, or simply tablet, is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen...
s, and the Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
ROKR E1 and SLVR
Motorola SLVR
The Motorola SLVR is a series of mobile phones from Motorola, and is one of the series in the 4LTR line. The first phones were out in early 2005. They are designed to be very thin and lightweight.-L2:The SLVR L2 was introduced in 2005...
mobile phones. As a result, that music was locked into this ecosystem and available for portable use only through the purchase of one of the above devices, or by burning to CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
and optionally re-ripping to a DRM-free format such as MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
or WAV
WAV
Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
.
In January, 2005, an iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
purchaser named Thomas Slattery filed a suit against Apple for the "unlawful bundling" of their iTunes Music Store and iPod device. He stated in his brief: "Apple has turned an open and interactive standard into an artifice that prevents consumers from using the portable hard drive digital music player of their choice." At the time Apple was stated to have an 80% market share of digital music sales and a 90% share of sales of new music players, which he claimed allowed Apple to horizontally leverage its dominant positions in both markets to lock consumers into its complementary offerings. In September 2005, U.S. District Judge James Ware
James Ware (judge)
James S. Ware is the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and his chambers are in San Francisco, California.- Early life and education :...
approved Slattery v. Apple Computer Inc. to proceed with monopoly charges against Apple in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act
Sherman Antitrust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of violating the Act. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by...
.
On June 7, 2006, the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman Bjørn Erik Thon
Bjørn Erik Thon
Bjørn Erik Thon is a Norwegian jurist and ombudsman.He graduated as cand.jur. in 1989. From 1999 to 2000, during the first cabinet Bondevik Thon worked as a political advisor in the Ministry of Justice and the Police. He has been a member of Grefsen-Kjelsås borough council for the Liberal Party...
stated that Apple's iTunes Music Store violates Norwegian law. The contract conditions were vague and "clearly unbalanced to disfavor the customer". The retroactive changes to the Digital Rights Management
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
conditions and the incompatibility with other music players are the major points of concern.
, tracks on the EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
label became available in a DRM-free format called iTunes Plus. These files are unprotected and are encoded in the AAC format at 256 kilobits per second, twice the bitrate of standard tracks bought through the service. iTunes accounts can be set to display either standard or iTunes Plus formats for tracks where both formats exist. These files can be used with any player that supports the AAC file format and are not locked to Apple hardware. They can be converted to MP3 format if desired.
As of January 6, 2009, all 4 big music studios (Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, Sony BMG, Universal
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...
, and EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
) have signed up to remove the DRM from their tracks, at no extra cost. However, Apple charges consumers to have previously purchased DRM music restrictions removed.
As of the end of March, 2009, all music available on iTunes is DRM-free, however, digital downloads of television shows, movies, and iOS mobile apps through iTunes are still DRM-protected.
Sony
Probably Sony's most famous example of lock-in was the BetamaxBetamax
Betamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...
VCR system. Since then, Sony has also used lock-in as a business tool in many other applications, and has a long history of engineering proprietary solutions to enforce lock-in. For many cases Sony licenses its technology to a limited number of other vendors, which creates a situation in which it controls a cartel
Cartel
A cartel is a formal agreement among competing firms. It is a formal organization of producers and manufacturers that agree to fix prices, marketing, and production. Cartels usually occur in an oligopolistic industry, where there is a small number of sellers and usually involve homogeneous products...
that collectively has lock-in on the product. Sony is frequently at the heart of format war
Format war
A format war describes competition between mutually incompatible proprietary formats that compete for the same market, typically for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media. It is often characterized by political and financial influence on content publishers by the...
s, in which two or more such cartels battle to capture a market and win the lock.
Examples of Sony's formats include:
- Audio ElcasetElcasetElcaset was a short-lived audio format created by Sony in 1976, building on an idea introduced 20 years earlier in the RCA tape cartridge.In 1976, it was widely felt that the compact cassette was never likely to be capable of the same levels of performance that was available from reel-to-reel...
- Audio or computer data MinidiscMiniDiscThe disc is permanently housed in a cartridge with a sliding door, similar to the casing of a 3.5" floppy disk. This shutter is opened automatically by a mechanism upon insertion. The audio discs can either be recordable or premastered. Recordable MiniDiscs use a magneto-optical system to record...
and the related ATRAC3 encoding system - Super Audio CDSuper Audio CDSuper Audio CD is a high-resolution, read-only optical disc for audio storage. Sony and Philips Electronics jointly developed the technology, and publicized it in 1999. It is designated as the Scarlet Book standard. Sony and Philips previously collaborated to define the Compact Disc standard...
- BetamaxBetamaxBetamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...
, Video-88 mm video formatThe 8mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats for the NTSC and PAL/SECAM television systems. These are the original Video8 format and its improved successor Hi8 , as well as a more recent digital recording format known as Digital8.Their user base...
, Hi8, Digital8Digital8Digital8 is a consumer digital recording videocassette for camcorders based on the 8 mm video format developed by Sony, and introduced in 1999.The Digital8 format is a combination of the older Hi8 tape transport with the DV codec...
, and MicroMVMicroMVMicroMV was a proprietary videotape format introduced in 2001 by Sony. This cassette is physically smaller than a Digital8 or DV cassette. In fact, MicroMV is the smallest videotape format — 70% smaller than MiniDV or about the size of two US quarter coins. Each cassette can hold up to 60 minutes...
videotape formats - PlayStation PortablePlayStation PortableThe is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
Universal Media DiscUniversal Media DiscThe Universal Media Disc is an optical disc medium developed by Sony for use on their PlayStation Portable handheld gaming and multimedia platform... - Memory StickMemory StickMemory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, launched by Sony in October 1998, and is also used in general to describe the whole family of Memory Sticks...
s, used for a wide variety of applications in Sony products
, Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
digital camera
Digital camera
A digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...
s and a number of other Sony products typically use Memory Stick
Memory Stick
Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, launched by Sony in October 1998, and is also used in general to describe the whole family of Memory Sticks...
cards that can be manufactured only by Sony, co-developer SanDisk
SanDisk
SanDisk Corporation is an American multinational corporation that designs, develops and manufactures data storage solutions in a range of form factors using the flash memory, controller and firmware technologies. It was founded in 1988 by Dr. Eli Harari and Sanjay Mehrotra, non-volatile memory...
, and select licensees. This memory can be more expensive in some markets when compared to alternative memory types that exhibit similar characteristics such as data transfer speeds. This is an example of vendor lock-in, as existing users of Sony products are less likely to purchase a competitors product that uses a different storage medium due to the extra cost of acquiring a differing storage media. Similarly this can discourage consumers with non-Sony merchandise from purchasing Sony products.
In contrast, Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association
Blu-ray Disc Association
The Blu-ray Disc Association is the industry consortium that develops and licenses Blu-ray Disc technology and is responsible for establishing format standards and promoting business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc...
where Sony is a member, but does not have a controlling position.
Connector conspiracy
Manufacturers of computer hardware sometimes design unusual or proprietary connectorsElectrical connector
An electrical connector is an electro-mechanical device for joining electrical circuits as an interface using a mechanical assembly. The connection may be temporary, as for portable equipment, require a tool for assembly and removal, or serve as a permanent electrical joint between two wires or...
. The reasons for such designs vary; some are intended to quietly force customers into a vendor lock-in situation, or force upgrading customers to replace more components than would otherwise be necessary; others are the result of practical considerations such as cost, packaging, ease of design, unusual or enhanced features; and still others result from an ignorance of standards, or even an absence of standards. There may be little immediate financial incentive for a vendor to provide backward compatibility
Backward compatibility
In the context of telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backward or downward compatible if it can work with input generated by an older device...
or interoperability.
The term Connector Conspiracy was coined to describe this situation, and implies the worst case scenario of a cabal
Cabal
A cabal is a group of people united in some close design together, usually to promote their private views and/or interests in a church, state, or other community, often by intrigue...
of manufacturers colluding
Collusion
Collusion is an agreement between two or more persons, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage...
in secret to sell incompatible connectors. Yet actual lock-in attempts can fail, if adapters can be purchased or manufactured to make the components compatible.
Avoiding vendor lock-in for computer software
In the 1980s and 1990s, public, royalty-free standardStandardization
Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.The goals of standardization can be to help with independence of single suppliers , compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality....
s were hailed as the best solution to vendor lock-in. But there is still a possibility that one software vendor uses "embrace, extend and extinguish
Embrace, extend and extinguish
"Embrace, extend and extinguish," also known as "Embrace, extend and exterminate," is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with...
" (EEE) tactics to achieves a dominant market share, which could render the standard obsolete. The history of SQL
SQL
SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
is an archetypal example.
Since the late 1990s, the use of free and open source software
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
(FOSS) has arisen as a stronger solution. Because FOSS can be modified and distributed by anyone, the availability of functionality usually cannot tie a user to one distributor. The ineffectiveness of distributor lock-in means there's no incentive for FOSS developers to invent redundant new data formats if usable (royalty-free) standards exist.
In particular, copyleft
Copyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
ed FOSS is in some respects particularly resistant to the above mentioned "EEE" tactics since anyone distributing modified versions cannot legally prevent free or competing redistribution of the modifications and their source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
. It is also, however, particularly well suited to those tactics in other respects, such as in competition with non-copyleft free and open source software.
Razor and blade
The razor and blades business model involves products which regularly consume some material, part, or supply. In this system, a reusable or durable product is inexpensive, and the company draws its profits from the sale of consumable parts that the product uses. To ensure the original company alone receives the profits from the sales of consumable, they use a proprietary approach to exclude other companies. Inkjet computer printers are a common example of this model.Loyalty programs
One way to create artificial lock-in for items without it is to create loyalty schemes. Examples include frequent flier miles or points systems associated with credit card offers that can be used only with the original company, creating a perceived loss or cost when switching to a competitor.See also
- Anti-patternAnti-patternIn software engineering, an anti-pattern is a pattern that may be commonly used but is ineffective and/or counterproductive in practice.The term was coined in 1995 by Andrew Koenig,...
- Embrace, extend and extinguishEmbrace, extend and extinguish"Embrace, extend and extinguish," also known as "Embrace, extend and exterminate," is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with...
- Format warFormat warA format war describes competition between mutually incompatible proprietary formats that compete for the same market, typically for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media. It is often characterized by political and financial influence on content publishers by the...
- Free softwareFree softwareFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
- GroupthinkGroupthinkGroupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without...
- Market powerMarket powerIn economics, market power is the ability of a firm to alter the market price of a good or service. In perfectly competitive markets, market participants have no market power. A firm with market power can raise prices without losing its customers to competitors...
- Network effectNetwork effectIn economics and business, a network effect is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. When network effect is present, the value of a product or service is dependent on the number of others using it.The classic example is the telephone...
- Open formatOpen formatAn open file format is a published specification for storing digital data, usually maintained by a standards organization, which can therefore be used and implemented by anyone. For example, an open format can be implementable by both proprietary and free and open source software, using the typical...
- Open source software
- Open standardOpen standardAn open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....
- Open systemOpen system (computing)Open systems are computer systems that provide some combination of interoperability, portability, and open software standards. The term was popularized in the early 1980s, mainly to describe systems based on Unix,...
- Path dependencePath dependencePath dependence explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant....
- Hardware restrictionsHardware restrictionsHardware restrictions refers to restrictions in any device that places technical restrictions on what content can run/play on said device or what users can do with certain content. Hardware restrictions can be used with software DRM and digital signatures...
- Proprietary softwareProprietary softwareProprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
- Digital Dark AgeDigital Dark AgeThe digital dark age is a possible future situation where it will be difficult or impossible to read historical digital documents and multimedia, because they have been stored in an obsolete and obscure digital format...
- Vendor Relationship ManagementVendor Relationship ManagementVRM, or vendor relationship management is a category of business activity made possible by software tools that provide customers with both independence from vendors and better means for engaging with vendors...
(VRM) - Customer Relationship ManagementCustomer relationship managementCustomer relationship management is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing,...
(CRM) - Extended Relationship Management (XRM)
- Capability Maturity Model IntegrationCapability Maturity Model IntegrationCapability Maturity Model Integration is a process improvement approach whose goal is to help organizations improve their performance. CMMI can be used to guide process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organization...
(CMMI) - Capability Immaturity Model (CMII)
External links
- Lessons from Format Wars has a section on Sony
- Vendor Lock-in Definition - by The Linux Information Project
- The Intertemporal Dynamics of Consumer Lock-In - by Gal ZAUBERMAN