The platform economy is becoming an important engine for industrial innovation and economic growth. However, empirical research on how platform governance affects product performance through network externalities remains limited. Leveraging the perspective of platform ecosystems, this paper intends to empirically investigate the impact of platform governance on the product performance of complementors in the mobile application industry, based on firstly released apps on Apple’s App Store and Google Play. Our study shows that complementors of free mobile applications on the weakly regulated platform, Google Play, perform much better than those on the strictly regulated platform, Apple’s App Store, due to the larger size of the installed base. However, complementors on the strictly regulated platform, Apple’s App Store, can take advantage of highly valued end-users on the demand side and higher degrees of product differentiation on the supply side to enhance their product performance. This is likely due to higher entry barriers for complementors, and better user communities for end-users. We suggest that higher competition efficiency and performance levels are linked to the platforms associated with strict governance.

中文翻译：

---

平台异质性、平台治理与互补者的产品性能：移动应用行业的实证研究

平台经济正在成为产业创新和经济增长的重要引擎。然而，关于平台治理如何通过网络外部性影响产品性能的实证研究仍然有限。本文拟利用平台生态系统的视角，以苹果App Store和Google Play上首批发布的应用为基础，实证研究平台治理对移动应用行业互补者产品性能的影响。我们的研究表明，由于安装基数较大，在监管较弱的平台 Google Play 上的免费移动应用程序的性能比严格监管的平台 Apple App Store 上的要好得多。然而，在严格监管的平台 Apple App Store 上的补充，可以利用需求端的高价值终端用户和供应端更高程度的产品差异化来提升其产品性能。这可能是由于互补者的进入门槛更高，以及最终用户的用户社区更好。我们建议更高的竞争效率和绩效水平与严格治理相关的平台有关。