If you’ve downloaded an app, bought something online, get free shipping, have a social media account, use enterprise software, listen to music, play games, or own a smartphone, then you are a real-time case study for this issue.
Outside of China, 95% of all apps are distributed by just two companies: Apple and Google. In America, one retailer, Amazon, controls 60% of all book sales, nearly 70% of all e-book sales and 40% of audio books. In the US, Apple collects 60% of all app revenue, Google the other 40%. So, if you are reading this, two of the five companies profiled in the chapter ahead likely made money off of it.
Which leads me to the topic of this issue, one that will shape the Media Universe for the decade ahead: The Trillion-Dollar Media Death Stars.
In the original Star Wars (now owned by Disney), the entire plot centered on the threat posed by the Death Star – a weapon so powerful that it could destroy an entire planet in one shot and which if allowed to be completed, would alter the entire conflict between the evil Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance. In a galaxy not so far away, our own universe, the largest bodies of each solar system create a gravitation pull around which all other planets and satellites orbit.
When you look at our Media Universe map below, it is easy to see why the same can be said for the modern Media Universe: In the foreseeable future – most especially over the course of the next 60 to 120 months – both the plot and gravitational pull of the media and entertainment planets above will be dictated by the largest, most valuable, most powerful companies circling the outer edges of the galaxy.
These Trillion-Dollar Media Death Stars: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft – along with their Chinese counterparts Alibaba and Tencent – are not just the biggest companies in media, they are the most valuable and powerful companies in the history of the world. Their influence is not only felt by the consumers who use their products, or the partner companies with whom they do business. These nation-state corporations touch nearly every aspect of the Attention Economy and dictate the rules by which nearly every consumer and company on Earth behaves.
The turbo-lasers of these Death Stars are not huge cannons pointed at planets, threatening to blow them to smithereens – but rather unbalanced market shares they use for unfair advantages, unlimited caches of cash they access to acquire their direct competitors and buy themselves into new market segments, gateway taxes they charge on countless parts of the media economy, and enormous shadows they cast that loom over the actions and behavior of nearly every company and consumer (especially in US) in the Media Universe.
The forces from these Death Stars, combined with the behavior of all other companies on this map in reaction to them, will course through the veins of the Media Business with every beat of its heart – pumping adrenalin into every decision, transaction outcome of the industry for at least the next ten years (or until new Death Stars arrive at the planet Endor to take their place. See: Return of The Jedi).
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