Software Industry Market Structure

As the core of information industry and the basis of national economy, the software industry now is the fastest growing industry of the world, and it will promote the world economic growth and social development.Due to the characteristics of the resources and technical features of the software product, the software industry has both competition and monopoly characteristics at the same time. The higher the degree of market liberalization (obstacle-free), the more intense market competition, the faster the pace of technological innovation ,the stronger the monopoly in the industry , the higher the degree of centralization ; as the stronger the monopoly , the higher the concentration, the more intense market competition, monopoly is not the ending but a new start of the next round of more intense competition; The software products market structure is similar to the oligopoly market structure characteristic, and at the same time it is also similar to the monopoly competition market structure characteristic. So when we use the traditional market structure classifies to analyze the software product market structure under the current network economic condition, we actually discover no one of the four kind of market structures can describe the economic characteristic accurately.For these unique industrial characteristics, a new market structure theory is needed urgently to describe and explain them to be, this leads to a new "competitive monopoly" theory .On the basis of this theory, we analyze the software industry in Dalian and give some development policy advices.The structure of the paper is arranged as follows:Part I is the Chapter I, which introduces the text of the research background, ideas and the main analytical framework of the paper.Part II is made of Chapter II and Chapter III. First introduce the traditional market structure theory of the four traditional market structure disturbances and the theory of contestable markets. Next introduce the meaning and characteristics of the software industry, define the traditional market structure is. not appropriate to the theory of the software industry. So we use competitive monopoly to describe the new market structure, and explain the reason that software industry in this kind of market structure, detail the enterprise behaviors, and prove that competitive monopolistic market in the software industry is efficient.Part III, is made of Chapter IV and Chapter V. First we set up an innovation network function and explain it is very useful to the software industry. Next use software industry in Dalian as a case study, introduce the basic situation of software industry in Dalian at present, and analyze the market structure, enterprise behaviors and economical performance. Then give some advices on the development of the Dalian software industry.