Competitors

Competitors can often be one of the largest threats to an emerging technology. Competing companies often use there size or brand name to influence customers view of new superior technologies with cheaper substitutes and propaganda.
	New technologies almost always represent an enormous threat to competing company, making derailing the new technology in their interest. Companies are working hard to satisfy customers and implement customer relationship management, but doing this alone may not be enough to succeed when others do it better or faster with a newer technology. The complexity of the current marketplace demands flexible and quickly executed strategies in order to gain customer loyalty through superior customer relationships rather than a superior technology. There are several ways a competitor can go about this legally or illegally:
·	Brand name propaganda
·	Aggressive price wars with existing substitutes
·	Physically threaten competitor (not so common in modern times)
·	Highlight and emphasize any and all advantages of existing substitutes over the new technology, keeping quite its improvements through propaganda
·	Control required infrastructure or resources
·	Given forewarning develop a successor
Brand name propaganda is usually not the only or primary reason for forcing new technologies out of a market however can still influence market shares of products heavily. An example of this is the video game console Atari linx which despite being technically superior compared to its Nintendo counter-part failed to claim a comparable market share.
Competitors threatening inventors of new technologies with death isn’t very common in recent years, however was common place in past centuries. An example of this is Barthélemy Thimonnier who despite inventing the first sewing machine in 1830 was threaten by death after 200 competing tailors destroy his factory and forced him to flee Paris in bankrupt. The sewing machine was reinvented successfully several years later.
A competitor can engage in aggressive price wars with its substitutes by drastically reduce their price usually to the point of making a loss in an attempt to bankrupt its competitor before raising its price again.
Given forewarning of a looming new technology of a competitor a company may strive to release a successor to it at a similar time as the release of its competitor’s new technology. This is done either through corporate espionage and/or step-up their R&D programs.
Competitors controlling a technology requiring an existing infrastructure or limited resource usually have government intervention with new technologies or lease use of the infra-structure however the can often be biased towards their product which are substitutes.  Microsoft is an example of this. Microsoft is renown for using its size and market share especially.

“Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, the world's richest man, made his first extended appearance in the antitrust trial of his company Monday, arguing in disembodied electronic form on a giant video screen that he and his company never tried to intimidate or hobble competitors in the technology industry.” 
The Washington Post
November 3, 1998.
Volume 118, Number 55.

Sources
Mogee Research and Anaylsis
CONVERGENCE MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS LTD