Apple Ruling the Smartphone Market
Apple has been the most popular smartphone in the U.S for several years for now. It is interesting to look at its percent share year after year in comparison to other types of smartphone. Looking at some of the drastic increases of market share only forces me to think of the diffusions of a new behavior into social networks.
As discussed earlier in the course, the world is essentially one large social component. With the increased speed of communication, there are very few social components in the world that are isolated from the rest of the world. With this being said, I think we can all agree that the connectivity of the United States’ social network is a lot stronger and higher. When a new behavior, such as owning an iphone, is adopted by one person in a smaller social network, such as current undergraduate students at Cornell, once one person adopts it if the threshold is small enough and the payoff of adopting the behavior is large enough then it can spread from small social groups within Cornell. This type of example really exemplifies a behavior spreading throughout social networks.
Earlier I mentioned the if threshold of spreading to other “nodes” in the social network is low enough and the payoff of adopting the new behavior is high enough then the behavior of adopting the newly released iphone will most likely spread throughout smaller social networks at Cornell and, of course, larger ones. The payoff of adopting the new iphone would of course be the iphone direct benefit reasons and information based reason. Will your interactions with other people in this social network improve because of this new phone you have bought?