Once upon a time, Microsoft decimated Apple with a general purpose operating system and a separation of software from hardware. As the story goes, Microsoft's DOS won because it (either through hapless luck or strategic insight, depending on whom you believe) opened up its operating system and courted developers to become the standard for generic hardware.
Decades later, Google is hoping to do largely the same thing in the mobile market with its Android platform, but this time the platform is open source, not proprietary.
I'm not sure it matters. Not yet, anyway. For the near term, Apple's integrated platform will beat Google's open platform, just as it has been growing far beyond Microsoft's mobile growth rate.
In part this is because Google may lack the aesthetic touch that Apple has in spades, just as Microsoft does. Its newest update apparently is much better than earlier incarnations, but Android is still no iPhone killer.
... Read more- prev
- 1
- next
