Also, the R&D is amortized across phones, ipods, laptops, desktops, and Apple TV. All but the non-touch iPods run variations of the same OS, with a lot of software shared between the platforms.

For example, the iPhone app store just leveraged the work Apple had already done for the iTunes store, which they also leveraged for Apple TV.

Another example: the Core Animation visual effects API. It originated in the iPhone team, but also came out in OS X, and is used on the Apple TV.

Other companies might want their own app stores, but they simply aren’t going to get the same return on their investment, and so are likely to limit their investment and so have a hard time competing. No leverage across product categories.

“Another possibility is the Intel camp, the X86 world catching up with the mobile world in terms of energy consumption and form factor constraints. Intel’s strategy is to make future versions of its Atom processor, which currently drives netbooks, become leaner and meaner so that they can fit into and run proper mobile handsets.”

Well, maybe, but people have already been running OS X on Atom-based netbooks. If Intel becomes the smart choice for handset hardware, Apple can adopt Intel, quite easily. It’d likely simplify things and reduce costs, because they wouldn’t have to support the ARM as well as Intel.

Then you’re back to the OS software, the 3rd party software, the App Store, and the other advantages Apple has already.

After Jobs, things will go downhill– and possibly pretty quickly. Engineers, salesmen and accountants will give their usual bad advice to upper management, upper management will believe them, et cetera and so forth.

I think you’re wrong. I certainly *hope* you’re wrong, and I’m quite certain you do also.

Remember how it looked in the dark days not so long ago when total MIcrosoft dominance in PCs and browsers seemed inevitable, Netscape a crumbling joke, Apple somehow managing to just barely still exist?

Not so true these days.

When I go to the local cafe full of upscale college students, most of them have their iphones plugged into their imacs. These are fashion-conscious people with disposable income who follow fads. I think the iphone is an ifad, and will stop being cool when everyone has one and then, like all fads, rapidly become uncool. Kind of like tulips did once upon a time.

I think you are right about PALM and RIMM and so forth becoming rapidly irrelevant. Nokia at least is playing with an interesting Linux distribution which may have long term potential, but for now Android is the thing.

Android is moving very very quickly, with the power of GOOG and now VZ (AKA The Death Star) behind it. Reviews of the new VZ Droid, Android 2.0 running on Motorola hardware, are said to be “very good”, see
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-10385806-266.html

And since I’m running the latest Cyanogenmod ROM on my G1, I’m *already* running Android 2.0, while the pundits debate whether it will be released for the older Android devices or not.

What do you get if you try that with your iphone? You get one ibrick and one more enemy of the Mad Fruit.

Apple has made a career of essentially co-opting if not quite stealing Open-Source software (the Mach microkernel, BSD Unix) which they will not be able to do with anything with the GPL on it (such as the Linux kernel and most of the software used with it) and *appearing* to be cool while being actually quite *uncool*.

Free Sofware is *genuinely* cool. What has held it back until recently is the lack of good release engineering (something big companies with paid employees are clearly still better at than internet-based anarchist collectives). Google seems to be doing decent release engineering with Android. Add some appealing commodity hardware and backing from a huge network like VZ, and the result should be interesting.

Cheers,

Cash

It’s a loss. Not only the missing porno apps, the other edgy ones we don’t get to see either.

But while Microsoft was happy to let you run porno on your computer, Steve won’t let you run porno apps on your iPhone because he doesn’t like the association with his brand. Fine if you don’t like porno. BUt what if porn is your life, like it is for my silent partner Bento? Apple is amassing great power. With great power comes great responsibility and it needs an understanding of restraint, which as a hegemonising coproration Apple is not equiped with. Power also corrupts.

RAZR never attained this level of market share dominance, and there wasn’t the surrounding infrastructure of apps and content to make its dominance self sustaining like there is with iPhone.

” Meanness, fear and general hopelessness meant operators never spent the capex; making fat margins, no-one wanted to rock the boat.”

Have a look at what those Euro national carriers paid for their 3G licenses 6-7 years ago

Suggest this is why money is tight* for investment

*an object lesson for us on the dangers of high debt levels-and the dreary, protracted aftermath of principal reduction