Exponential growth and the network effect

Why is it that once a product gets momentum in a market they it’s hard to over take them.

It’s all about the property of exponential growth. See geometric growth functions.

A competing entrant that doesn’t have momentum doesn’t have the ability to keep up.

It’s easy to find examples of exponential growth. It happens in many fields - like biology for instance with strains of covid like Delta swiftly replacing the original Covid strain or Omycron replacing Delta and so on.

It’s why VHS over took betamax and iPhone and Android dominated the phone market before the Windows and Blackberry options were able to compete.