In marketing, a "competitor" is not just somebody else doing a similar thing;
one form of competition is something entirely different that you might spend your money or time instead (a "substitute").
Many business plans ignore substitutes and only focus on similar competitive offerings.
Smartphones are substitutes for a lot of things: playing football with a friend; human ad-hoc conversation at a bus stop; playing Candy Crush instead of reading newspapers on your morning commute; entertaining yourself and your date at a romantic dinner.
"Smartphones are substitutes for a lot of things: playing football with a friend; human ad-hoc conversation at a bus stop; playing Candy Crush instead of reading newspapers on your morning commute; entertaining yourself and your date at a romantic dinner."
It's a treacherous slide from Visceral to vicarious, to finally virtual.
Yeah. Speaking for myself, it's not that there are all these online novels I can read for free. (OK, there are in the public domain but that's not my point.) It's that there is a lot of other reading and entertainment/education options out there.
Some of which are free/donation, some of which are not. I'd be pretty surprised if people in general were reading as many novels as they did at one point. (I may be wrong of course.)
In marketing, a "competitor" is not just somebody else doing a similar thing; one form of competition is something entirely different that you might spend your money or time instead (a "substitute").
Many business plans ignore substitutes and only focus on similar competitive offerings.
Smartphones are substitutes for a lot of things: playing football with a friend; human ad-hoc conversation at a bus stop; playing Candy Crush instead of reading newspapers on your morning commute; entertaining yourself and your date at a romantic dinner.