If you think about it even casually, there is a reason for that pattern. Over time, people gravitate to products and providers they prefer. That's why Apple consistently gets 60 percent to 70 percent of tablet sales.
In the fixed network communications or video business, there are slightly different dynamics, since the market originally was a highly-regulated monopoly business, with one authorized provider. Only since 1985 has the U.S. market been "competitive" in a legal framework sense, to growing degrees.
That highly unequal outcomes have been seen would not be surprising to anybody who studies market structure. In a highly capital intensive and competitive market, few entities really can risk the amount of capital required to compete. In a roughly $1.8 trillion global telecom business, annual capital spending of about $345 billion is typical.
The U.S. cable industry alone invests about $13 billion a year in a business generating about $98 billion annually, or about 13 percent percent of revenue.
AT&T and Verizon in recent years have been plowing about 14 percent to 16 percent of revenues back into capital investment.
The point is that "not so many" contestants can afford to spend that amount of money, every year, on capital investment. There are genuine economies of scale in the telecom and cable TV businesses and those advantages manifest themselves over time.
So whether you look at the India mobile communications business or the U.S. cable TV business, there are a few firms leading each industry. At some important level, that will "always" raise antitrust issues.
It has been clear for a couple of decades that no U.S. cable TV company would be allowed to gain more than 30 percent installed base of video customers. Thinking roughly along those lines seems also to have driven antitrust thinking about the proposed AT&T purchase of T-Mobile USA, as well.
At some point, at least in the U.S. markets, the leaders in mobile, video or fixed network services will be forced to diversify into other lines of business simply because they have reached the limits of success in their original businesses.
Rank | MSO | BasicVideoSubscribers |
1 | Comcast Corporation | 22,294,000 |
2 | DirecTV | 19,966,000 |
3 | Dish Network Corporation | 14,071,000 |
4 | Time Warner Cable, Inc. | 12,653,000 |
5 | Cox Communications, Inc.1 | 4,756,000 |
6 | Verizon Communications, Inc. | 4,353,000 |
7 | Charter Communications, Inc. | 4,341,000 |
8 | AT&T, Inc. | 3,991,000 |
9 | Cablevision Systems Corporation | 3,257,000 |
10 | Bright House Networks LLC1 | 2,079,000 |
11 | Suddenlink Communications1 | 1,250,000 |
12 | Mediacom Communications Corporation | 1,059,000 |
13 | CableOne, Inc. | 622,000 |
14 | WideOpenWest Networks, LLC1 | 460,000 |
15 | RCN Corp.1 | 333,000 |
16 | Knology Holdings | 256,000 |
17 | Atlantic Broadband Group, LLC | 254,000 |
18 | Armstrong Cable Services | 239,000 |
19 | Midcontinent Communications | 229,000 |
20 | Service Electric Cable TV Incorporated1 | 217,000 |
21 | MetroCast Cablevision | 169,000 |
22 | Blue Ridge Communications1 | 168,000 |
23 | WaveDivision Holdings, LLC1 | 159,000 |
24 | General Communications | 142,000 |
25 | Buckeye CableSystem1 | 133,000 |
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