[advisedwang]

> Where a great idea in a space once had 5-10 competitors, hundreds now appear - all competing for attention. Big companies used to move slowly, but now a ragtag team of two developers at a large firm can whip up something that looks top-of-market to the untrained eye in a matter of weeks.

Perhaps I'm out of touch, but I haven't seen this explosion of software competition. I'd LOVE to see some new competitors for MS Office, Gmail, Workday, Jira, EPIC, Salesforce, WebKit, Mint, etc etc but it doesn't seem to be happening.

[kbuchanan]

I think this list demonstrates the OP's point—entrenched, resource-heavy, and reputable firms have and will continue to capture most of the markets, not for lack of competition, but by ownership over the distribution channels.

Having said that, I don't think it's all AI (this trend's been going on for a while), nor do I think startups can't thrive—as the pie gets bigger, competitors can carve out yet smaller niches, as the OP points out.

[Eric_WVGG]

You're right.

The iOS app store would currently be flooded with newcomers in niche spaces — workout apps, notes, reminders, etc. And games, my god, there would be vibed clones of every game imaginable.

It's simply not happening.

[dpark]

App Store is already flooded with competitors for every simple niche.

That’s why this article makes no sense to me. The “Cambrian explosion” was the introduction of the app stores on phones. There are 2 million apps on Apple’s store.

[bad_haircut72]

Because writing code hasnt been the bottleneck for success on the app store in probably a decade, its all how to game algorithms / find someone with the power to boost your app

[hobs]

And the same is true for almost all those names the GP posted - they are big because of network effects - most people dont have time to evaluate the "quality" of software. In the long term the "quality" of software can be extremely variable, so mostly people just hitch their wagons to existing tools because if everyone else is doing it, it must make sense.

[wyre]

Could Apple's $99 fee to get on the App Store be contributing to with holding this flood, or their app review process?

[makeitdouble]

For JIRA competitors are a dime a dozen. A lot of them are targeted at startups and small shops who heard JIRA was hell and think their needs are really basic and will be for a long time.

The funniest I actually had to deal with was Monday. The very premise is that task management is simple and the visual interface will reflect that. Bright colors, low information density, minimal data model and very screenshotable screens. Then when actually using it for a dev team, the first question is how long we decide to try it before giving a verdict.

> Gmail

It really depends on what feature you rely on that aren't IMAP. If it's Google services integration, they might never be a competitor ever, for instance.

[theshrike79]

You could build the most technically perfect MS Office competitor and still get zero users.

It's not about quality, it's market share, vendor lock-in, people being set in their ways and refusing to change from a known thing in general.

Jira had to get REALLY bad before we switched to Linear for example - and there are still growing pains from heavy Jira users who had very specific ways of working.

[airstrike]

Some of us are building those... It just takes a little more time than vibe-coded AI slop