Industry Expert Blogs

A client turned me on to a great new book, “The Age of the Platform” by Phil Simon. It’s about how Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have radically transformed the landscape. For me, it's not just social networking - it's social computing, changing how things are designed.

I’m borrowing this right from Phil’s description of why he selected these four companies as the platforms at the center of this shift:

“1) They are rooted in equally powerful technologies—and their intelligent usage. In other words, they differ from traditional platforms in that they are not predicated on physical assets, land, and natural resources.

2) They benefit tremendously from vibrant ecosystems (read: partners, developers, users, customers, and communities).”

All these platforms are making this kind of impact in large part because they run on devices powered by one company: ARM. They match the above description, as a purveyor of intellectual property with virtual design and fabrication allies. ARM processors power social computing.

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