The world of big business can sometimes turn nasty, particularly when there are billions at stake... From burger wars to space conflicts, click or scroll through some of the biggest business clashes happening in the world right now. All dollar amounts in US dollars.

When it comes to business battles, it doesn’t get much bigger than Burger King and McDonald’s. In fact, the competition with McDonald's is one that Burger King takes so seriously, that it even focuses much of its social media marketing on gently goading and teasing its market-leading rival...Examples of the online rivalry include Burger King UK hiding a Big Mac behind every Burger King burger it featured in its 2019 ads. Burger King revealed the prank on its Twitter account, posting: “There was a ‘Big’ Mac in every single Whopper advert in the UK in 2019. Shame you couldn’t see it.” The same social media account went viral with its "explains a lot" tweet reply to Kanye West's admission that McDonald's was his favourite restaurant.

From a wider strategic point of view, Burger King has gained serious territory on McDonald's by simplifying its image and its menus as well as directly challenging McDonald's products. But the Golden Arches is still winning this fast food fight for now as the McDonald's brand is valued at $175.6 billion (£126.5bn) while Burger King's parent company Restaurant Brands International trails behind with a valuation of just $29.3 billion (£21.1bn).

And now Wendy's is laying down a serious challenge as it announces plans to re-enter the UK market after a 20-year absence. Wendy's is planning up to open 400 outlets across the UK over the next few years, which will create around 12,000 jobs. It has also agreed a delivery deal with Uber Eats. Wendy's first UK location opened in Reading in June, and while the classic square burgers will be on the menu, more vegetarian options will be added to cater to UK tastes. 

However, even with its plan to attack the UK market, Wendy's will still be dwarfed by McDonald's globally, which has 1,300 outlets, and Burger King, which has more than 500.  Across the world Wendy's has more than 6,500 locations, compared to McDonald's 36,000 and Burger King's 18,000, and with a current company valuation of $4.9 billion (£3.5bn) Wendy's has got a long way to go to catch up. That said, Wendy's is confident it can make an impact in the UK due to its quality and service.

Here are two German discount retailers who have taken a number of other countries by storm, shaking the grocery retail market to its core by convincing shoppers that buying bargain groceries feels rather good. It’s not surprising then that the two have enjoyed a friendly rivalry over the years, although expansion into the US looks set to take this to a whole new level.

Lidl still seems to have the upper hand overall, having been first to up its game in terms of store ambience and offering 'A brands' for the first time, with Aldi following suit soon after. Aldi is enjoying rapid growth in Australia and has more than 1,800 stores in the US. But Lidl has stores in every single EU country and, while it only has 103 US stores currently, Lidl is engaging in a rapid expansion in the country, investing $500 million (£358m) to open a further 50 stores before the end of 2021.

 

These two tech stalwarts have been in fierce competition to develop the most cutting-edge smartphones and tablet devices for well over a decade. And it seems this battle is not going away any time soon, with both companies releasing new products every year.

Apple is preparing to launch its highly anticipated iPhone 13 series this year while Samsung is bringing its Galaxy Z Fold 3 to market, which has been touted as the company’s best foldable phone yet. When it comes to company value Apple is miles ahead, having become the first US company to be worth more than $2 trillion (£1.6tn) in August last year, while Samsung was valued at $278.7 billion (£217bn) in the same year. That said, in terms of handset sales Samsung regularly trumps Apple, until the fourth quarter of 2020 when Apple came top for the first time since 2016, taking up 20.8% of the global smartphone market following strong sales of its iPhone 12. But as both companies continue to innovate in the ever-changing tech landscape, who knows when Samsung could storm out in front.

Last year, audio technology company Sonos launched multiple lawsuits against Google, claiming it infringed no fewer than 100 patents including some vital technology that enables wireless speakers to connect with each other and synchronise. The search engine giant has countersued Sonos, proving there’s no love lost between these two rivals, although Sonos says the “goal is to have a positive relationship with Google”.

The decision to sue Google follows years of having to rely heavily on both Google and Amazon, according to Sonos. Its executives claim this has left the business vulnerable to the power imbalance of the situation. The fact that Sonos actually handed over the blueprints for its speaker technology back in 2013, when it agreed a deal with Google, reinforces these claims, the company says.

It seems the hotel industry is adopting an ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ approach to competing with home rental service Airbnb. Marriott International is the largest hotel chain in the world and owns well-known global hotel brands such as Sheraton and Ritz-Carlton. In April 2019, Marriott launched its own home rentals service, Homes & Villas, in over 100 markets.

Reports suggest that Marriott realised Airbnb had become too large to ignore, with more than four million guests staying in Airbnb properties on one day in 2019. While traditional travel patterns were decimated by the COVID-19 outbreak, Marriott’s new venture, which allows for self-contained travel, boomed, and revenue was up by more than 800% in 2020 compared to the previous year. Marriott hopes its rental service will continue to compete by offering loyalty points to guests, which can be put towards stays in its hotels worldwide. Airbnb won’t back down easily though and plans to move into the hotel market following its successful stock market listing in December.

Amazon ruffled some serious feathers at delivery service giant FedEx at the end of 2019 when it announced that Amazon Marketplace traders were no longer allowed to use FedEx to deliver Amazon Prime packages. It cited poor performance standards as the reason behind the shift and came after what was described by Forbes as a “painful break-up” between the companies in August 2019, after FedEx ended its air deliveries contract in June and opted not to renew its ground deliveries contract from August 2019.

This was in light of the fact that Amazon was building on its burgeoning delivery network which, as of August 2020, was delivering nearly two-thirds of the company’s packages. Meanwhile, FedEx and other companies such as UPS are partnering with smaller services in an attempt to make a dent in Amazon's global dominance. FedEx also announced a partnership with retail behemoth Walmart in December to speed up the company’s online returns process; Carrier Pickup by FedEx collects returns from customers' homes, for free, in certain areas.

It was revealed late in 2019 that General Motors (GM) was suing Fiat Chrysler, claiming that the rival carmaker had been bribing members of the high-profile United Auto Workers union in order to gain the upper hand over GM for the best part of a decade. GM was seeking substantial damages estimated to rack up to $6 billion (£4.5bn).

The case continued as GM filed a further motion with the courts in early 2020 claiming Fiat Chrysler was withholding evidence, while Fiat described GM’s allegations as “preposterous”. The US courts threw out the lawsuit last July. General Motors wasn’t backing down though and a month later asked the judge to reconsider his decision to dismiss the case. The United Auto Workers union has since lost a whole group of its management team following the scandal, and relations between GM and Fiat Chrysler remain sour.

As two of the biggest US airlines, the long-running rivalry between American Airlines and Delta is no major surprise. What may raise a few eyebrows, however, is American Airlines’ decision to take Delta to court in December 2019 over its use of the word ‘Flagship’ to describe some of its services in customer emails.

American Airlines claimed the use of the term by any other US airline was confusing for customers as it had been using the trademark Flagship since the 1930s and Delta only began using the term in 2017. The court filing stated: “American believes Delta is looking to capture additional market share by targeting its greatest competitor, American, and eroding the brand, goodwill, and value that American has built over the past eighty years through the Flagship marks.” There has been no publicised update on the case, suggesting that American was unsuccessful in its attempt to sue. The companies’ biggest battle now is to see which airline will be quickest to recover passenger numbers following the coronavirus pandemic.

The battle between comic book giants DC and Marvel has been decades in the making, with each boasting its own universe of superheroes that star in popular comics and blockbuster movies. This rivalry stretches back to the 1960s, when Marvel writer Stan Lee released The Fantastic Four comic as an alternative to DC’s Justice League. In recent decades both have become cinematic box office powerhouses with Marvel releasing the likes of Avengers: Endgame, which is the second highest-grossing film of all time, and DC producing franchises including The Dark Knight and Wonder Woman.

The long-running battle was made into a best-selling book, Slugfest: Inside the Epic, 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC, which was then adapted into a docuseries, which premiered in October last year ahead of its release on streaming service Quibi.

The competition between entertainment streaming services has heated up in the past year as coronavirus restrictions have given people more time than ever to sit at home and watch films and TV shows. Netflix has long held the crown as the most popular streaming service and has an astonishing 209 million subscribers after 10 years in the business, but Disney’s flagship streaming service Disney+, which only launched in 2019, is already not far behind...

Disney+ passed the 100 million subscriber milestone in March this year, and factoring in its ESPN+ sports platform and Hulu subscription service in the US, it could be on track to knock Netflix off the top spot by 2024. Netflix isn’t going down without a fight though, and the site recently sealed a five-year, billion-dollar deal for rights to Sony Entertainment Pictures movies, including the upcoming Spider-Man films. 

Despite both hailing from the US, where they've had a long-standing rivalry with Dunkin' Donuts positioning itself as the all-American down-to-earth option in contrast to Starbucks’ purposefully high-end presentation, these two companies are competing more directly with each other internationally as well.

Starbucks' global store count has surpassed 32,000, while Dunkin’ Donuts welcomes customers at more than 11,300 locations worldwide, and both brands were in the midst of aggressive expansion plans before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. While Starbucks has pivoted to takeout orders and continues to open new stores throughout the crisis, in July last year Dunkin’ Donuts announced that it was closing 800 US-based stores following the havoc wreaked by COVID-19 on the hospitality industry. Starbucks looks to be winning this one for now, but the rivalry between America’s two biggest coffee-based chains bubbles on…

AMD and Intel have been competitors in the laptop, desktop and server processor market for decades. Intel has traditionally led the battle, with a significantly larger market share than AMD. However, in recent years, AMD has been catching up, and in January the company managed to overtake Intel in its share of the desktop central processing unit market for the first time in 15 years. Intel continues to dominate the mobile computer and server markets, but the gap is certainly closing between these computing giants.

Both Intel and AMD have shattered sales records during the pandemic as the world invested in new tech to facilitate working and socialising from home. As a result, both are also falling prey to the global shortage in semiconductor chips, which essentially act as the ‘brain’ of every piece of tech, from laptops to washing machines. Intel, which unlike AMD actually produces chips, recently suggested that the shortage could last until 2022 and it’s yet to be seen what the impact will be on both businesses.

Uber and Lyft are the two primary ride-sharing services operating in the US. Founded in 2009 and 2012 respectively, they have been fighting it out between themselves for market share ever since. Uber has also expanded overseas, while Lyft remains a US- and Canada-based service. Although the rivalry is well-established, in light of high-profile quality and safety concerns surrounding Uber, Lyft is now promoting itself as focusing more on these issues, as opposed to offering a cheaper service than Uber.

Lyft President and co-founder John Zimmer (pictured) explained in 2019: “It’s not about a price battle between the two players anymore, it’s about getting the best service, having the best software and real world operations.” Both firms went public in 2019 and have experienced mixed fortunes since. Both are growing rapidly, but losses are also mounting up as they invest heavily and fewer people take taxis during the coronavirus pandemic. Who knows who will drive away victorious in this particular business battle.

Peloton and Echelon are another pair of businesses that have profited from the pandemic as gyms shut and people had to work out from home. Peloton experienced a 113% increase in sales in June 2020 but hit a snag when incredible demand left customers waiting months for their equipment deliveries. Rival company Echelon described itself as “ready” when the pandemic hit, and it was able to capture the sales that Peloton couldn’t fulfil, prompting a 700% increase in sales in June last year compared to 2019.

 

But the feud between the two fitness companies started long before the COVID-19 outbreak, as Peloton launched legal action against Echelon in 2019, claiming the rival had ripped off its technology and was selling “cheap, copycat products” in an attempt to get a “free ride off Peloton’s innovative technology.” The companies have been trading accusations of trademark and patent infringement ever since.

 

British Airways' monopoly as the UK's national airline was suddenly challenged when Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic took off in 1984. What followed was a series of disputes throughout the 1990s, which began with each company suing the other for libel in 1993. This was followed by a £4 million ($6.4m) fine that BA had to pay in 1999 after Virgin reported the carrier for offering incentives to travel agents; BA was found to be in breach of EU competition rules.

The competition to be Britain’s best airline has continued in recent years, with both companies unveiling their new business class offerings within weeks of each other in 2019: Virgin with its Upper Class Suite and BA with its Club Suite. For once, British Airways and Virgin were fighting for the same team in March last year when Airlines UK, a trade body of which both airlines are members, called for the UK government to provide financial aid to the collapsing aviation industry during the coronavirus pandemic. The solidarity didn’t last long, however, after BA's recovery bid was bolstered by a £2 billion ($2.8bn) injection by the UK government, while investors and creditors had to finance a £1.2 billion ($1.7bn) bailout for Virgin. Then, last September, BA announced the launch of its new London Heathrow to Lahore route, which will be in direct competition with Virgin’s service to the Pakistani city. The business battle continues...

The two key players in the billionaire space race also happen to be two of the richest people in the world: Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, and Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla. Their respective aerospace companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, are seeking to be the first to make civilian space travel a reality, and the competition so far has seen them battling to reach pivotal milestones in the new space race. Blue Origin launched the first civilian suborbital flight for paying customers in July, but it's lost out to SpaceX elsewhere...

In 2013, SpaceX beat Blue Origin to win the rights to lease the rocket launch platform used in the Apollo moon missions, while in 2015 SpaceX successfully invalidated Blue Origin’s patent for landing rockets on boats at sea, having already trialled the method years before Bezos’ rockets attempted it. SpaceX continues to edge out in front as the company recently won a $2.9 billion (£2.1bn) contract to build spacecraft for NASA’s Artemis programme, which hopes to put humans on the moon by 2024. Blue Origin had been working on the initial phases of the Artemis programme, but was cut out at a later stage. As NASA's primary commercial partner, SpaceX is tallying up the victories over Blue Origin, but only time will tell as to which billionaire venture achieves mainstream space travel first.

Elon Musk isn’t the only billionaire coming toe-to-toe with the founder of Amazon. Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, controls Reliance Industries Ltd, which has become embroiled in a court battle with Amazon. Both companies have interests in the same retailer, Future Group, as a means of dominating the Indian consumer goods market, which is reportedly worth $1 trillion (£718bn). Amazon owns a 49% stake in Future Coupons, giving it indirect ownership of a stake in the company, while Reliance Industries bought $3.4 billion (£2.4bn)-worth of assets from the Group earlier this year. Amazon objected to the sale and it was put on hold, before a New Delhi high court overturned the decision. Amazon is now appealing again, and the case will go to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has now blocked the sale again but neither Reliance or Amazon are likely to back down, as both are looking to secure – or block – the largest retail sector deal India has ever seen. India is a market with immense potential for growth, and the outcome of this dispute is likely to shape the development of the country’s e-commerce for years to come, as well as the companies themselves.

The clash of the aircraft giants started in the 1980s, when the European manufacturer Airbus started to eat into US firm Boeing’s market. Both sides and their governments have accused the other of receiving unfair state subsidies, taking their case to the World Trade Organisation.

The bitter dispute became one of the longest and most costly in the trade body’s history. The feud has spilled over into advertising, with Airbus giving its rival’s plane a Pinocchio-style nose in an image released in 2012. The two sides are still in competition, but both companies’ biggest concern right now is tackling the chaos wreaked by the coronavirus pandemic. Boeing has made more job cuts, announcing that 30,000 workers would be axed following heavy losses in the run-up to October. Meanwhile, Airbus suggested in the same month that no further cuts would be made to its staff, after the plane-maker made 15,000 workers redundant in the summer.

Video sharing app TikTok has blazed into the social media sphere, and became the most downloaded app of 2020 with an impressive 115 million downloads in March alone, according to Appfigures data. Instagram has long been considered the younger, trendier relative of parent company Facebook, but Bytedance-owned TikTok’s overwhelming growth rate looks to be threatening its crown as the home of Gen Z audiences…

Last August, Instagram introduced its new Reels feature, allowing users to create and edit 15-second videos with backing music. The move was seen as a direct response to TikTok’s arrival on the scene and its surging popularity with short videos. Only time will tell whether Facebook’s 10-year old protégé or Bytedance’s new kid on the block comes out on top.

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