Tim Bray on Apple vs. Google, iOS vs. Android:
Is it VHS vs Betamax, Mac vs PC, or Coke vs Pepsi? The current multibillion-dollar mobile-market war is a confusing tangle of software makers, hardware makers, and network operators. This isn’t what a theorists would call a perfect or even very clean competitive market, but it does seem to be delivering a regular flow of better, faster, more usable products to the people of Earth. It’s a privilege to be in it.
It is a classic war with many battles raging; not just those between Apple and Google. Also included are RIM, Nokia, Microsoft, perhaps HP and webOS, and not just for smart phones. Tablets and pads have yet to become mainstream.
Whether you call it a Smartphone or an App phone or an Internet phone, you’re typically talking about an expensive high-end device. Which, despite all the impressive numbers, is a small corner of the global phone market; the volume and the head count is in the phones owned by the people whose income tends towards the world’s average. So far, none of those are very Internet-enabled. iOS will never address this market unless Apple makes a conscious decision to shift its strategy away from profit maximization to market-share growth. I sure wouldn’t if I were them.
That’s not how Apple rolls.
I predict continued fragmentation of the rapidly growing smart phone space. Within a year, Android will lead in sheer units, followed by a rapidly dying Symbian, Apple’s iOS, RIM, and a long line of also-rans, including Microsoft, webOS and friends.