The impact of competition on technology adoption: an apples-to-PCs analysis

Adam Copeland and Adam Shapiro

No 462, Staff Reports from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: We study the effect of market structure on a personal computer manufacturer?s decision to adopt new technology. This industry is unusual because there exist two horizontally segmented retail markets with different degrees of competition: the IBM-compatible (or PC) platform and the Apple platform. We first document that, relative to Apple, producers of PCs typically have more frequent technology adoption, shorter product cycles, and steeper price declines over the product cycle. We then develop a parsimonious vintage-capital model that matches the prices and sales of PC and Apple products. The model predicts that competition is the key driver of the rate at which technology is adopted.

Keywords: Computer industry; technological innovations; Competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com, nep-ino, nep-mkt, nep-net and nep-tid
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr462.html (text/html)
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr462.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Competition on Technology Adoption: An Apples-to-PCs Analysis (2010)
Working Paper: The Impact of Competition on Technology Adoption: An Apples-to-PCs Analysis (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fednsr:462

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Reports from Federal Reserve Bank of New York Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gabriella Bucciarelli ().