scholarly journals APP IMPERIALISM: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE CANADIAN APP STORE

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nieborg ◽  
Chris Young ◽  
Daniel Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Material ◽  
Potential Growth ◽  
Value Capture ◽  
App Store ◽  
Intellectual Properties ◽  
App Economy

In this paper, we introduce the notion of app imperialism by exploring the political economy of the Canadian iOS App Store. Building on Dal Yong Jin's concept of "platform imperialism", we argue that US companies dominate global app stores through the systematic acquisition of capital resources. App imperialism marks the outsized economic footprint and influence of US companies in national app stores. Using a longitudinal financial dataset, we qualitatively coded the top-50 of revenue-generating game apps in April 2015 and 2016. Distinguishing between value creation (generating revenue) and value capture (appropriating profit) allowed us to determine the plight of Canadian app developers. While the Canadian App Store exhibits a large degree of source diversity, featuring a high number of active app developers, we found the ability of Canadian developers to both create and capture value negligible. US owned developers, publishers, parent-organizations, and intellectual properties, on the other hand, were overrepresented. These initial findings suggest that any potential growth in the Canadian app economy will be increasingly captured by US-owned companies. These results question the effectiveness of Canadian cultural policy frameworks, which have been particularly proactive in supporting Canada-based game studios. While our initial analysis offers just a temporal and regional snapshot of the App Store's political economy, it gestures towards broader critical material issues related to platform capitalism and app diversity.

scholarly journals Lost in the App Store: The Political Economy of the Canadian Game App Economy

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Nieborg ◽  
Chris Young ◽  
Daniel Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Emerging Technology ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
App Store ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
App Economy ◽  
Le Canada

This commentary discusses the political economy of apps. The authors found that Canadian-made game apps are notably absent in the Canadian App Store. This should be both worrying and surprising, as Canada has a relatively sizable game industry. While policy conversations on digital transformation focus on emerging technology, the authors point toward the power and politics of digital platforms as one of the key issues preventing growth in the Canadian digital economy.Ce commentaire discute de l’économie politique des applications. Les auteurs ont observé que les applis de jeu fabriqués au Canada sont absents de l’App Store canadien. Cette situation devrait surprendre et inquiéter, puisque le Canada a une industrie du jeu relativement grande. Les conversations sur les politiques relatives à la transformation numérique portent en grande partie sur les technologies émergentes, mais les auteurs tiennent à souligner que le pouvoir et les politiques relatifs aux plateformes numériques sont parmi les raisons clés pour lesquelles l’économie numérique au Canada ne croît pas autant qu’elle le pourrait.

scholarly journals App Imperialism: The Political Economy of the Canadian App Store

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512093329 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Nieborg ◽  
Chris J. Young ◽  
Daniel Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Business Studies ◽  
App Store ◽  
The Us ◽  
Complex Ecosystem ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
Spatial Trajectories ◽  
App Economy

To critically engage with the political economy of platformization, this article builds on the concepts of platform capitalism and platform imperialism to situate platforms within wider historical, economic, and spatial trajectories. To investigate if platformization leads to the geographical redistribution of capital and power, we draw on the Canadian instance of Apple’s iOS App Store as a case study. App stores are situated in a complex ecosystem of markets, infrastructures, and governance models that the disparate fields of business studies, critical political economy of communications, and platform studies have begun to catalog. Through a combination of financial and institutional analysis, we ask if Canadian game app developers are effective in generating revenue within their own national App Store. Given Canada’s vibrant game industry one would expect Canadian developers to have a sizable economic footprint in the burgeoning app economy. Our results, however, point toward the US digital dominance and, therefore, we suggest the notion of app imperialism to signal the continuation, if not reinforcement of existing instances of economic inequalities and imperialism.

scholarly journals Change in the political economy of land value capture in England

2019 ◽  
Vol 90 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Catney ◽  
John Henneberry
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Land Value ◽  
Value Capture

scholarly journals From ‘no cultural policy’ to ‘centralised market orientation’: The political economy of Hong Kong cultural policy (1997–2015)

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Ho
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Market Orientation ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Chief Executives ◽  
Cultural Policies

This study examines changes in the cultural policy in Hong Kong amid the transformations of political economy in the 1990s, following the handover in 1997, and under the administration of three Chief Executives (and their teams) up to 2015. When reviewing the literature on cultural policies in Hong Kong, this study examines the interaction the policies have with the political-economic development in Hong Kong (within the scope of this study) and subsequently explores changes in the principles of the policies. In other words, this study attempts to understand the conditions under which cultural policies were formulated in Hong Kong (the conditions of the production of local culture). The analytical framework of this study is based on two observations of the political and social changes occurring in Hong Kong (1997–2015): (1) changes in the government’s governance attitude since the handover in 1997, and (2) a series of economic blows Hong Kong has endured since 1998. Differing from the ‘descriptive literature’ defined by Schuster, this study understands that these changes are a result of the influence of a postcolonial state and neo-liberalism on public policy formulation. It is argued that the Hong Kong cultural policy framework has shifted from checks-and-balances towards centralised market orientation.

Apps of Empire: Global Capitalism and the App Economy

2020 ◽  
pp. 155541202093782 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Nieborg
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mobile Platforms ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
Capital Intensive ◽  
App Economy

This article interrogates Dyer-Witheford and De Peuter’s Games of Empire. Since its publication in 2009, the game industry evolved significantly, adding billions of players, dollars, and devices. One of the driving forces of this transformation has been the global diffusion of mobile media. This raises the question: Do mobile platforms and the app stores operated by Apple and Google allow for a radical departure from global hypercapitalism? This question will be explored by taking on three themes: shifts in labor, the political economy of platformization, and the capital-intensive mode of app production and circulation. Doing so addresses two gaps in Games of Empire’ s approach: a dearth of empirical economic analysis and the acknowledgment of work in critical platform studies and mainstream economics. It is concluded that rather than providing a staging ground for dissent or collective action, apps of empire signal the foreclosure of an exodus from global hypercapitalism.

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