Measuring the efficiency of standardisation policy using meta-frontier analysis: A case of mobile platform standardisation

While Android and iOS are now prevalent platforms in the mobile ecosystem, some still argue one standardised mobile platform is necessary to ensure the efficiency of content providers. For this reason, it is pertinent to examine whether government-led standardisation policy for mobile platform standard, WIPI, was efficient to content providers in South Korea. This study categorises content providers into three groups according to the period of mobile platform technologies and measures efficiency of each group based on stochastic frontier analysis. The results show content providers using MNO-dependent mobile platform are most efficient. However, as a hypothesis that the production function for each group is identical is rejected, additional analysis using meta-frontier production function is conducted to compare different efficiency levels for each group. In this case, content providers using a standardised mobile platform are least efficient rather, and firms using MNO-independent mobile platforms are most efficient.