Moore's law and price trends of digital products: the case of smartphones

Juhong Feng and Kam Yu

Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 2020, vol. 29, issue 4, 349-368

Abstract: Since the introduction of the iPhone by Apple in 2007 and Google's Android platform in 2009, the two systems have accounted for a total of 90% of the U.S. smartphone market. Apple, however, reaps most of the profit in the industry. In the second quarter of 2016, for example, Apple's iPhone gets 104% of the sector's profit. This suggests that the smartphone market resembles a Stackelberg leadership model. Despite Apple's strong market power, we investigate if the market leader is under pressure to be price competitive. We calculate a quality-adjusted price index for smartphones from 2007 to 2016. Our results show that the average price declines at an average rate of over 27% per year. The price trend is similar to other digit products such as computers, cameras, and portable music players. We observe that the large price decline reflects the effect of Moore's law, which predicts that the capacity of integrated circuits undergoes an exponential growth. The effect of Moore's law is incorporated into the Stackelberg model. We also observe that price trends of other digital products also follow a similar pattern. This suggest that the long-run price trends of digital consumer goods are somewhat independent of the market structures.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1080/10438599.2019.1628509

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