Competitive Landscape

What This Skill Does

This is how to map a sector so you actually understand who wins and why. You can't write a thesis on a single stock without knowing how it stacks up against competitors — direct, indirect, substitute. Most "bad" sector writing either ignores competition (too bullish) or flattens all players as interchangeable (too simplistic). Good sector mapping reveals which players have durable advantages, which are losing share slowly, and where the disruption is coming from that breaks the sector.

The output: a mental (and written) model of the sector that explains company differences, predicts share shifts, and identifies where value will accrue over 3–5 years.

The Five Lenses

Lens 1 — Structure

Market structure defines the economics available to participants.

• Monopoly / duopoly: One or two companies > 70% share. Strong pricing power but anti-trust vulnerability. Examples: Google in search, Visa+Mastercard in networks.
• Oligopoly: 3–7 players, >80% combined share. Moderate pricing power, tacit coordination, periodic disruption. Examples: US airlines, cloud infra (AWS/Azure/GCP).
• Fragmented: No player > 15% share, long tail. Low pricing power, commodity-risk, consolidation opportunity. Examples: most services businesses, traditional IT services.
• Two-tier: Few large incumbents + many niche specialists. Common in enterprise software.
• Emerging / platform shift: New architecture disrupting incumbent structure. Cloud vs on-prem. AI-native vs pre-AI. Mobile vs desktop.