Smart Timing for Smart Products? Complementor Multihoming in Nascent Platform Markets

ABSTRACT In multi‐platform markets, complementors often choose to offer their products or services across several platforms—a strategy known as complementor multihoming. This approach has gained significant attention from both industry practitioners and management scholars. Building on existing research regarding the factors that influence complementors' decision to multihome and the associated performance implications, this study examines the timing strategies involved in complementors' multihoming decisions. Specifically, we investigate the drivers of the timing of complementors' sequential multihoming, focusing on the factors that affect the timing of their first and subsequent multihoming. The empirical context of our research is the ecosystem of platforms and complementors in the nascent smart home market. Our results show that early entrants transition more quickly from single‐homing to multihoming (i.e., joining a second platform) than late entrants, suggesting that they adopt a hedging strategy in response to the high uncertainty present in the early stages of the ecosystem. We also find that the drivers of the timing of multihoming may differ for the first and subsequent multihoming. For the first multihoming, the market traction of non‐adopted platforms is associated with how quickly complementors multihome. However, this relationship dissipates in subsequent multihoming decisions. Nevertheless, certain factors influence the timing of all multihoming: when joining a second or third platform, complementors are faster to adopt platforms that are technologically similar to those they have already joined. We discuss the managerial implications of these findings for platforms and complementors navigating multi‐platform ecosystems.