The Mobile OS "War"

This seems to be a popular topic recently with news of Android on all sorts of new phones (Droid) and devices (Nook) and Apple’s financial call reporting booming business built on the back of the iPhone. And don’t I know I can’t bear to stay out of a good debate.

Some people think Android will win, others are putting their money on iPhone.

My opinion? Nobody will win. The reason is extremely simple: basic human ambivalence. While Tech Nerds debate the topic on the internet, most people are out losing their phones, dropping their phones, or finding the closest frapuccino with their phones. Whatever handset their network sells that falls into their price range, has a decent feature set, and isn’t unbearably ugly or hard to use is the one that most people will end up with.

And I don’t think this is going to be the iPhone, even if Apple wants it to be. I’ve heard a few people quote Apple’s original iPhone goal of 1% marketshare or their general goal of providing good products over, as some like to say, world domination. But are these stated goals really true? Is dropping the price to $99 for the improvement of the device or to sell more units? Is opening iPods to PCs for the quality of the product, or to sell more iPods? Is being able to run Windows on your Mac to provide a better experience (surely not) or to lure “switchers”?

iPhone’s current popularity comes from a lack of viable alternatives. I think true allegiance to the device is about as common as true allegiance to the Mac. And before you tell me how many people are switching to Macs, did you hear that some 80% of Mac users also have a PC in their household? I don’t call that true brand or OS loyalty.

When everyone else figures out how to make decent mobile devices — and they will — there will be enough alternatives that iPhone will no longer be running away with the game. I don’t think that any of them will be better, but a lot of them will be competitive, almost as good, or simply ‘good enough’.

Will someone finally emerge to dominate 70% or 80% of the market? Possibly, but with the service providers involved it’s not as simple as the PC market. For the time being, it’ll be spread over a lot of platforms and devices.