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Should Apple license the iPhone OS?
August 7, 2010 | 6:26 pm
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By Chris Meadows
On Wired.com, John Siracusa (who I’ve mentioned previously for his insightful look back at the early e-book industry on Ars Technica) looks at the argument being raised in some quarters that Apple should license its iPhone OS to other hardware manufacturers, lest it risk being relegated to a tiny fraction of the mobile market by Android, much as the Mac was relegated to a tiny fraction of the PC market by Windows.
Siracusa is skeptical of this argument, and for good reason. As he points out, the situations are not quite analogous. For one thing, whereas PCs could serve a wide enough variety of needs, and therefore market niches, that a single manufacturer could not hope to fill all of them, it is not clear that this is the case for mobile devices. Unlike the “overpriced” Macs vs. commodity PCs, iPhones’ prices are not appreciably higher than competing devices.
Whether iPhones will be succeed or be relegated to minority player status depends on a number of factors, including device quality, critical mass, and carrier availability. Siracusa points out that Apple really needs to get the iPhone available on more than one carrier—ideally, have it available in all the same phone-company stores that currently sell Android devices.
It’s kind of funny to see an article one day declaring that Apple has dominated the tablet market in a way that makes it hard for competitors to catch up, and then the next find one addressing concerns that Apple might be in danger of minority-player status in the cell phone market. I had thought that the iPhone was already selling better than any competing smartphone while Android was having a hard time taking off.
But then, I once thought nothing could knock Palm off the top of the PDA market, too. How quickly things change.
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Comments:
Another nonsense article from Wired. Firstly Apple’s not licensing to other manufacturers had ZERO affect on the monopoly of the market, which Microsoft had already sewn up long long before – so much for this writer’s history knowledge. The writer’s next effort to draw a parallel with the iPod also fails as Apple did not license out the iPod software to Windows, it just launched a Windows version of iTunes.
An even bigger flaw in this daft article is the writer’s assumption that Apple want to dominate the mobile market as Microsoft dominated all PCs way back. Anyone who has a slight grasp on Apple’s historical strategy knows that Apple have no interest in dominating the market. Their driver is quality and elegance and simplicity achieved through control. They want to build the best phone. A phone for the top of the market.
Right now Android is growing exponentially. It was always going to because it comes free and is the only real alternative OS to Apple and it is on cheap phones. Apple have no problem with this market model. Android also has increasing problems with the variety of versions floating around and the security issues that are building up around it due to the fact that no one is protecting the gates in the way Apple does. We have also started to see carriers start to include compulsory apps that can’t be removed and expect to see a wider adoption of this control strategy. When the first big wave of malware starts to engulf mobile OSs we’ll see which OS survives better and which users are forced to download anti malware apps that slow their mobile’s down and start the whole Windows cycle again.
The last comment from Howard sounds like the typical Apple fanboy spouting off. What Apple quality? It is all smoke and mirrors. Ask those that are having trouble with their iPhone antennas. Steve Jobs is a master at creating an aura around products that deludes people into thinking they are “insanely great”. Take a look at the iPhone 4′s famous retina display and compare it to its close competitor in the Android world, HTC Evo. No real difference. If anything, the Evo’s screen looks nicer.
The fact that Android phones are doing better than iPhone surprises a lot of people. Of course, partly this is because so many phone models use Android without people knowing about it. Another example where Apple’s marketing really shines. Perception is reality but only to a point.
A lot of people still think that the Mac is easier to use than a Windows PC. It was once but that was very long ago. IMHO, they are now equally hard to use and they share many features anyway.
While Apple once did represent quality, now they only represent the illusion of quality. What success they have simply reflects the fact that marketing works. That is their chosen market segment, the smoke and mirrors segment.
I don’t know if this juvenile ‘fanboy’ term is an attempt at an insult or not. What I do know is that when someone tries such tactics and fails to offer any argument in their favour, then they illuminate far more about themselves than their target.
Having worked in many corporations who have used both Macs and Windows machines I have long experience of the enormous financial costs incurred to maintain Windows systems. As one working currently in a corporation using dozens of iPhone4s and iPads I can say that the organisation hasn’t experienced a single problem with the iPhone4 and the widely held view here, as it is across the enlightened tech world is that this antenna nonsense has been hyped beyond belief – demonstrated loudly and emphatically by the massive sales figures achieved in the face of every effort by the Windows supported media.