I'm a little lost as to why seven teams duplicating effort is more "efficient" in any sense of the word than one or two teams working iteratively toward the same goal.
replyIf this were seven government funded teams solving the same problem, people would lose their minds over the 'waste' But when private companies do it, we call it efficient market competition. The duplication is the same - we just frame it differently.
Edit: fixed some typos caused by fat fingers on a phone keyboard
The benefit from having a 5% better product that hundreds of millions of people will use is worth the duplicated effort in the beginning. The numbers just make sense.
reply>If this were seven government funded teams solving the same problem
The problem here is "government funded" - the trials are not rationalized by free-market economics. That is, a 5% better product in the end would not be worth seven competing developments initially.