Business thoughts: Competition vs Market Fragmentation

In the past couple of weeks we have been reading some of these news:

• HTC interested in buying its own mobile OS (and dropping Android?)
• Amazon's next tablet will be a blockbuster and a thought that follows is: How "open" will Kindle tablet be? 
• GameStop Confirms In-House Android Gaming Tablet (Gamestop is one of the biggest videogame stores worldwide)
• Telefónica, Vodafone y Orange irrumpirán en la mensajería instantánea este invierno (Telefonica, Orange and Vodafone will get into IM this winter... )

Some talk about companies getting into markets to compete... but others aren't about competition, they are about fragmentation... which is quite different.

You and I can compete in many things... you may decide to manufacture a car and if I decide to compete with you I could manufacture one too... users would be able to buy yours or mine, but they know that the fuel can be bought at the same place, that they use the same roads and streets, and that they can be parked in the same parking spaces.

Now imagine if your car and mine couldn't use the same fuel... and that there are 5 or 6 other people manufacturing cars that use different fuels too. And different streets... and... and... it would be a nightmare.

That is the difference between fragmentation and competition.

If you want to fragment a market you need to have all the cards ready to guarantee yourself enough market share to prevail. You can't fragment to keep a 5% market share because you'll be eaten quite fast.

Apple can decide to fragment a market but only because they create a great product and provide all the tools it needs to succeed: good software, application store, content store, etc. Amazon can do the same (and did with Kindle) but what will Gamestop offer to differentiate itself? Games? Sony has a "Playstation certified" tablet... but of course Sony owns the Playstation and the Playstation Network. Will GameStop prevail as a player in the tablet market? We'll see...

The 3 most important Spanish carriers want to enter into the IM arena... (I remember when in 2001 we had in Xfera/Yoigo a IM project, compatible with MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger) to compete with WhatsApp (and the messengers Apple and others will release). How much money are they investing to create the "mega IM platform"? How will they make us change from WhatsApp to their new IM? Are their offering innovative new features? Will it be centred on user experience or just a defensive movement? or a tantrum against the loss of income? We'll see...