The vertical control of Apple (most notably) as well as Amazon and Google is almost complete. The author noted that they don't have:
1. Billing/banking control - Purchases on all three go through credit cards, where a portion gets siphoned off.
2. Internet access control - Apple has a lot of clout, and can do basically whatever they want, but they're still limited by the ISPs and telecos.
I really hope to see these companies compete in these industries. However, he left off one more space where they don't compete: at the bottom of the stack, selling silicon. Companies like Samsung and Toshiba can build their own SoCs for the devices they manufacture. If those manufacturers start doing more internally, we might see some impressive and competitive new devices.
I don't think that any of the three are willing to try to integrate billing directly instead of relying on Paypal, Visa, etc. It's a regulatory minefield between all the world governments, and the % that the payment processors take is probably very much worth the costs that would otherwise be taken from keeping such a system working.
I'm sure Apple and Google have explored it, but in the end, found that the current payment processors provide both a level of service(Visa's payment backend, as far as I can tell, has never suffered non-scheduled downtime) and help avoid all the regulatory pitfalls that it's worth the price.
1. Billing/banking control - Purchases on all three go through credit cards, where a portion gets siphoned off.
2. Internet access control - Apple has a lot of clout, and can do basically whatever they want, but they're still limited by the ISPs and telecos.
I really hope to see these companies compete in these industries. However, he left off one more space where they don't compete: at the bottom of the stack, selling silicon. Companies like Samsung and Toshiba can build their own SoCs for the devices they manufacture. If those manufacturers start doing more internally, we might see some impressive and competitive new devices.