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Layer Player 24#

A layer player is a specialized company limited to the provision of one value-adding step for different value chains. This step is typically offered within a variety of independent markets and industries. The company benefits from economies of scale and often produces more efficiently. Further, the established special expertise can result in a higher quality process.


Apply this pattern to your own business and create your next innovative business model!

Examples: Iconic Cases

How they do it: Paypal’s offering to its customers is to provide a solution for the payment process. This solution is available to both private customers for peer-to-peer transactions as well as all kinds of merchants who can integrate Paypal as a payment solution to their online shop.
Learn more about PayPal →

How they do it: Especially in the area of personal computers, Microsoft is known as software provider. It’s core competency is to provide the operating system and compatible software such as the Microsoft Office package. However, in most of the cases, the company is not involved in the design and manufacturing of the hardware its software is running on.
Learn more about Microsoft →

How they do it: Mozilla provides software to browse website and organize communication. However the company only focuses on these services and does not engage in hardware nor content creation but only provides the infrastructure.
Learn more about Mozilla →

How they do it: ARM specializes in the area of processors with a characteristically low electric power consumption, ideally suited for mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers. The products designed and licensed by ARM are part of most modern mobile phones and personal digital assistants incl. those of manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung.
Learn more about ARM →

How they do it: Foxconn acts as component supplier to many OEMs. Here it focuses on mass production of specific parts used in electronic products. Through the focus on specific components it can achieve massive economies of scale making overall production cheaper.
Learn more about Foxconn →



Apply this pattern to your own business and create your next innovative business model!