Economic Hybridization or Cannibalization?

Okay, so a few posts ago I wrote about economic hybridization, where two companies can simultaneously move toward each other in terms of services and goods to become more similar than different. The end result is a company which really doesn't fit in any single category, but rather, sits broadly across them horizontally.

After I wrote that post, I began to read my daily news and I began to get the sneaking sensation that maybe, at least in some cases, it wasn't so much hybridization as cannibalization. What do I mean? Well, let's look at some examples.

Sometimes, there's just the cost of doing business. If someone comes out with 'the next big thing', competitors must adapt and adopt a similar functionality, or risk being left behind in the dust. A good example of this is Chase Bank, who released their remote deposit capture in 2010, allowing consumers to deposit checks by using their camera phone. Now, we see many other banks, some that initially branded themselves as more "progressive" or "branch-less" (like Ally Bank) trying to catch up to the innovation. To take a step back, Chase has also been offering envelope-less deposits for years now, and only now are people beginning to catch on (like Citibank), or, like Bank of America, beginning to question not only the value of an ATM but the value of bank branches overall. (Side note: Bank of America, as part of its thinner branch policy is actually planning on having 5,345 branches by the end of 2014, down from 5,856 at the end of 2010-approximately a 10% decrease.)

In other cases though, it seems as though they are directly cannibalizing each other's bread and butter. What are some examples of direct competition?

• Apple has not officially announced it yet, but snooping in the operating system code has shown that they have some plans to make a move into mobile photography. This space, originally commandeered by the likes of Instagram and Color, could potentially be more of Apple's territory, as Apple tries to hedge in on the current fad in mobile by adding a social photo sharing component to its phone services
• Apple has been thwarted however, by the likes of Amazon, who has recently announced it's new cloud-based music storage scheme, edging out both Apple and Google in the race to a cloud-based music storage system. (As a side note, this service looks pretty great- 20GB of storage is $20 a year, music bought from Amazon doesn't count toward your storage capacity and one purchase from Amazon gets you a first year of 20GB storage for free! Not huge, but hey, who's going to say no?)
• As if MOL didn't have enough competition trying to get people to pay hard cash at its terminals to buy Facebook credits, Zong and Boku are all over its business now
• And in the epic battle that never ends between Google and Apple, Google has begun to work a lot more like Apple, holding back on its release of the Honeycomb code in an effort to try to control the development on its brand new platform. Some argue that it's because there were major changes in the platform that they wanted to work out before releasing it, but others say its because Google is paying more attention to the strategy around releasing platforms and the synergies it can gain by controlling releases. By stealing Apple's strategy, Google is hoping that it can be...more uptight? Interesting move.

What does this mean though? Maybe it's a little bit of both hybridization and a little bit of cannibalization. Either adapt or be eaten (slowly through strategy or by someone stealing your product ideas). That's evolution for ya.