Open vs. Closed: the iPhone’s Future or Folly?

“To put a finer point on it, the question isn’t whether Motorola
and other Android adopters can woo iPhone owners away from Apple,
since their numbers are still very small relative to all cellphone
users – just as the number of Navigator users was tiny, when
Netscape was the dominant browser company, compared to those that
did not yet use a browser.

“No, the real test for Apple will be whether the 55 million
customers that are expected to buy their first smartphone between
now and the end of this year will buy an iPhone, or one based on an
open source platform such as the Android platform launched by
Google, or the Moblin OS initiated by Intel). After the early
adopters (i.e., those who probably already own an iPhone), that has
a lot more to do with marketing, partnerships and handset discounts
than with which platform has the most apps. If the answer is
Android or Moblin, then the apps will follow, and Steve Jobs will
have called the closed system long term coin toss wrong once again.
On that topic, see my analysis from a year and a half ago, titled
Steve Jobs’ Endangered Second Act.”

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