USA Today ran an article entitled, “Autonomous car future will demand tech company and automaker collaboration”.
Amusingly, the text of the article does not mention any such collaboration, or why the future will demand it.
Still, it’s worth thinking about the friend and foe relationships.
A helpful analogy is to the mobile phone industry.
On the Android side, the software itself is owned by Google, but the phone manufacturers are separate entities, who try to add value through a combination of superior hardware, distribution, pricing, and some proprietary software.
On the iPhone side, almost everything is branded and owned by Apple, except for the manufacturing, which is done by a variety of largely-anonymous Asian firms. Perhaps the most famous of these is Foxconn.
Dieter Zetsche, the CEO of Daimler, recently said, “We do not plan to become the Foxconn of Apple.”
How do they feel about becoming the Samsung of Google?
Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on September 24, 2015.
David Silver 