Informatics seminar: The Paradoxes of Change and Control in Mobile Infrastructures: A Review of the Evolution of Three Mobile Operating Systems

Seminarium

Prof. David Tilson, University of Rochester, will give a talk on mobile infrastructures.

The advent of the smartphone as a platform technology has been accompanied by the rise of the critical role of mobile operating systems (OS) that tie together communities of device makers, network operators, developers, content providers, and increasingly complex networks of technologies. Together they are forming digital infrastructures par excellence. The multi-faceted and relational character of such digital infrastructures raises new questions about how change and control can be conceptualized and understood in these ecologies.

This paper draws on second-order analysis of the development dynamics of three mobile operating systems: Nokia's Symbian, Apple's iOS and Google's Android, as examples of digital infrastructures. The aim of the paper is to illustrate and validate a paradoxical theoretical framework of the dynamics of change and control for digital infrastructures. The analysis revealed complex path-dependent change and control in digital infrastructures. The paper discusses how specific deployment of control strategies significantly affects the evolution of the infrastructure, for example; user interface, development support, business model, and value extraction.