A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
Multi-homing and software firm performance: Towards a research agenda
Authors: Hyrynsalmi S., Mäntymäki M., Baur A.
Editors: Arpan Kumar Kar,P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan, M.P. Gupta, Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Matti Mäntymäki, Marijn Janssen, Antonis Simintiras, Salah Al-Sharhan
Conference name: Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society
Publisher: Springer Verlag
Publication year: 2017
Journal: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Book title : Digital Nations – Smart Cities, Innovation, and Sustainability. I3E 2017
Journal name in source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Series title: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume: 10595
ISBN: 978-3-319-68556-4
eISBN: 978-3-319-68557-1
ISSN: 0302-9743
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68557-1_39
Joining or leaving a platform ecosystem is a key strategic decision for software developers. ‘Multi-homing’ is strategy in which a company distributes its products via more than one platform ecosystem in parallel. ‘Single-homing’ is an opposite strategy in which the software is being distributed exclusively via a single platform ecosystem. On one hand, multi-homing can increase customer reach in markets where customers typically single-home. On the other hand, creating a new version of the software product for multi-homing purposes generates, e.g., conversion, maintenance, and marketing cost. Interestingly, multi-homing as a strategic choice in software business has thus far have received surprisingly little academic scrutiny. In particular, there is very little information on whether multi-homing is an economically viable distribution strategy. To fill in this void, we explore the financial performance between single-homers and multi-homers in mobile application ecosystems. We investigate how the decision to multi-home affects firm performance with a sample of mobile application developers. The results imply that the revenue growth has been faster among single-homers while our dataset is biased towards single-homers. This calls for additional research comparing the two distribution strategies. This paper acts as a starting point for a research agenda in order to better understand multi-homing a strategic choice in software business.