Catching-up during technological windows of opportunity: An industry product categories perspective

There is empirical evidence of how challengers in an industry can take advantage of technological discontinuities that open "technological windows" of opportunity, which allow them to reduce their market share gap with market leaders, a phenomenon known as "catching-up." However, this literature has examined leader–challenger catching-up processes within a particular industry as a whole, without considering the different product categories that can usually be identified within that industry. In fact, firms may have different market shares depending on the category under consideration, and technological discontinuities can be product category related. We extend the literature on windows of opportunity and changes in market leadership by showing that the chance a challenger has to reduce the market share gap with the market leader in a product category during a technological window depends on (a) whether the market leader in the focal product category is also the market leader in other product categories, (b) the share of a challenger's business in the focal product category relative to its overall business in the industry, and (c) the relative size of the product category with respect to the other product categories in the industry. We contend that such across-category factors influence the leaders and challengers' propensity to exploit opportunities resulting from technological discontinuities in a product category. We test a set of hypotheses using data on 31 mobile phone makers competing in India from 2003 to 2020 in the feature phone and smartphone product categories.