This post was mentioned on Twitter by DanielEran: New: Inside Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone OS as business models – http://tinyurl.com/ykklghl...

If Android were able to stave off the iPhone’s growth and then eventually overtake it…then Windows Mobile already would have done so, as it’s in the exact same position as Android but with a few years’ head start. But WM share is going down, not up.

So that’s my prediction – Android gradually eats into and overtakes WM’s marketshare, and the iPhone remains unaffected. Let’s come back to this post after a few years and see how it turned out ;-)

One major complaint. Microsoft did not win the market by supplying a “unified experience”, Microsoft won the market by applying monopolistic practices, blocking the competition from being pre-installed on PCs.

Unlike most of the people here I’ve used OS2, GEM, GEOS, Double DOS, CPM, Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent DOS, and DR-DOS. Windows really had no advantages over OS2, GEM, and GEOS, other than it came pre-installed on your computer. With Microsoft blocking everyone but Apple from pre-installing anything but Windows, the current Mono-Culture was born.

No other market has a Mono-Culture, and computers wouldn’t either, if not for Microsoft’s practice of using its muscle to block any competition from happening. This is why at present it is damned hard to buy a computer with Linux pre-installed. A manufacturer who wants to install Linux will be politely told by Microsoft that they shouldn’t do this, oh, and your price for Windows goes up next month. If they drop their Linux plans, the price for Windows miraculously drops.

Only Apple, who used a non-standard processor was able to avoid the Windows trap. Microsoft wasn’t interested in producing an OS for the 68XXX and Power processors, the market wasn’t big enough. When Apple moved to X86 I suspect that some people at Microsoft were hopeful that they could gain Apple as an OS customer. Fortunately Apple’s development of OSX had reached a point where it was far superior to Windows XP, and I suspect that Apple staff laughed themselves silly when they saw Vista, and OSX development continued.

In the meantime Linux development has also continued, resulting in an operating system that is far superior to Windows, and in some respects superior to OSX. This is not a problem for Apple, who provides an integrated hardware/software environment, and who contributes to the development of Free and Open Source software.

It is however a problem for Microsoft. Microsoft has now been caught for copyright infringement twice. For all their complaints about the Free and Open Source software communities “stealing” their product, it turns out that Microsoft, that great respecter of “Intellectual Property” is the worst thief.