The Browser Wars! Image from Choose Opera

Nowadays, the world seems to be filled with all sorts of products that are either destined to improve our lives (though unecessary in the first place), or to ruin it.

Equally, my friends, are the number of corporations claiming to be number one and creating mere assumptions that their products are the best that the world has ever seen. But the crazy problem about the market ranks game is that if there are fifty companies competing for a slice of the market for plastic bags, forty-five of them would say that they are 'number one'. That leaves the remaining five to settle for the 'number two' spot. Or if they would be humble enough, they'd go for the third, fourth, and fifth spots.
In the mobile phone market, we have Nokia and Sony Ericsson battling for the top spot. Both of them claim that their products have the best features that the other doesn't have. This question answers the matter: why are there Nokia fans and Sony Ericsson fans? Consumers are not really stupid enough to stick with an awful mobile phone model just because of their brand loyalty. Simply said, Nokia has its share of cons, and Sony Ericsson has its own too.

Even the web browser market cannot escape from this phenomenon that we will call the 'Number One' phenomenon. Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox both claim the summit of the hill. Both IE and FF has its own share of great features good enough for bragging into the cyberspace. Which leaves Opera at the 'far' Number Two spot.

Do these numbers mean anything about quality and all? Not significant at all, actually. With the concrete example of the web browser industry, being at the bottom doesn't always mean that they are actually at the bottom when it comes to features and all sorts of stuff that consumers are looking for .

Now, for the closing remarks, what happens to the poor ones who fail to become number one? They still manage to grab a share of the very huge market and still earn good money with it. Look at the console wars between Sony and Microsoft. They manage to sell millions of the Playstation and Xbox units, leaving poor Nintendo at either Number Two or Three. But the thing is, Sony is diversified from cameras to TVs and mobile phones. Microsoft is backed with Bill Gates' billions. Nintendo, on the other hand, sells a healthy number of its Wii and still go to bed smiling with dollars. No, nobody gets bankrupt.

Being Number Two isn't that bad after all!