American Software Hegemony in Packaged Software and 'the Culture Software'

Abstract

United States-based companies continue to dominate the global market in packaged software. Although many have predicted this U.S. dominance will wane, particularly as a result of competitive threats from Japan, and more recently from low-wage, developing nations, erosion has yet to be significant. The United States benefits from nine factors that sustain its advantage in this industry: skilled labor, favorable capital conditions, sophisticated customers, close association with hardware vendors, a competitive marketplace, geographic concentrations, first-mover advantage, a strong intellectual property regime, and English as the software lingua franca. Industry-specific strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis Europe, Japan, and other nations are also discussed. In addition to these nine better known U.S. competitive advantages, two culturally linked assertions are presented that have received scant attention vis-a-vis competitive analysis. First, the industrial evolution of software development is at an immature...