[scarface74]

Android is cheap and it's widely used because it's open. If manufacturers weren't able to customize it to their needs, we would still be living in a world with separate OSes for every single manufacturer.

That’s not what happened with PCs. DOS/Windows was never open but when OEMs wanted an OS, they chose Windows. By 1990, every manufacturer of computers besides Apple who tried to make thier own operating system was dead.

Before Android or iOS, there were dozens of Windows Mobile phones. Most Manufacturers were not capable of making thier own OS.

If Microsoft could build at least equivalent mobile OS as Android or iOS, they would get pretty much all corporate customers to themselves and it would most definitely affect private customers as well.

They could and they did make a good mobile OS. By the time it was released it was too late. Android had already won over all of the OEMs and developers didn’t want to develop for it.

Also, with the iPhone, the trend of the “consumerization of IT” started. Blackberry owned the corporate world before the iPhone. But between both Apple adding features that made it a decent corporate alternative and executives bringing thier iPhones to work and demanding from the IT department that they make it work, Apple basically took over the corporate mobile market.