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1. Introduction
With the rapid spread of mobile terminals such as smart phones and tablets, the mobile internet industry is leading a new wave of big data era. PC operators, online game developers, and internet system providers are engaged in building their own platforms, as the popularization of mobile IT greatly reduces transaction costs between market players (Thomas et al., 2011; Carmelo and Juan, 2013). Platform is a dynamic business ecosystem that combines with frame body a range of complementary products, which is a specific market (Baldwin et al., 2006). Hence, platform innovation ecosystem is an interdependent partnership established by the core enterprise, which opens the innovation interface, with other participants that develop supporting products or technology for the platform enterprise, such as companies, universities, research institutes, upstream suppliers, and downstream distributors, users, and even competitors (Zhang et al., 2014). They coexist, are mutually parasitic, and work together to create value for consumers. The combination with advanced smart phones and 4G communication technology is more appealing for companies to create new ICT platforms (Suh and Kim, 2015). Thus, under the background of new pattern e-commerce characterized by small terminal, large platform, and rich ecology, this paper tries to promote the integration of mobile technology platform with ecosystem and explore the evolution pattern of mobile internet platform innovation ecosystem (MIPIE), which is helpful to advance healthy development of platform ecosystem.
Under the trend of mobile internet, business ecosystem theory has broken the concept of win-lose competition and emphasized that enterprises are interdependent in a symbiotic system. For example, Apple includes the record company, Hollywood movies, TV production companies, media companies, game software developers, electronics manufacturers, etc., into the business ecosystem via iPod, Tunes, iPhone, APP Store, and other products; thus, it firmly occupies the high-end market of mobile phones and computers. Platform-centric innovation ecosystem mainly concerns on network value, and platform provider plays a key role in innovating products or services (Iansiti and Richards, 2006; Heam and Pace, 2006). Many high-tech products and services can be regarded as “interdependent components that are built on the platform system,” thus provide a complex network for the company and the ecosystem (Gawer and Henderson, 2007). Thus, the construction of innovation platform is key for operation of...