[ergo98]

While the iPhone may have had a temporary large majority in the "smart phones consumers actually want to buy" field, they never had more than a fraction of the cell phone market,

The Windows monopoly was entrenched when the market was a fraction of a fraction what it was today: That's the whole essence of a monopoly -- it is self-sustaining.

While Android has made a lot of gains, there are still a lot of networked usages where you are left out if you don't get on the iOS train, whether it's a compelling platform itself or not. I'm going to grab my wife an iPod Touch purely so she can play a WeDoodle game, because that's what every other person on a mommy group plays. My bank released an iPhone application -- promoting it heavily -- after having never released a rich-client application for any platform ever, including when Windows had some 99% of the market.

That's the essence of a monopoly. When your choice is very heavily driven by the network effect of the product. Today it is much, much weaker than it was a year or two ago, but it is still in effect.

While the iPhone's very competitive, and while it has a near monopoly in terms of media popularity - I've seen many iPhones in movies, and no Droid - it by no means came remotely close to a monopoly

Well clearly it isn't now. Android has fractured that nascent monopoly (though many in the Apple cheerleading camp are now proclaiming that with the Verizon phone you no longer need to worry about developing for other platforms -- those suckers have an option of iOS devices on two carriers now. Problem?). Which is why I said that it was close. Two years ago the iPhone was the only smartphone that mattered. Even one year ago there was a strong argument made on places like here that the iPhone was all that really mattered.

And the reality is that if Google didn't have an enormous pile of cash to burn on this project, and they didn't have the "enemy of few" status to actually get the partnerships that mattered, today the iPhone would be the only valid smartphone choice.

[rorymarinich]

But you forget that the iPhone competed in many, many fields.

Consumer phone market? iPhone was up against every single cheap phone that called and placed texts. Those phones are still popular for the majority of the population.

Enterprise market? Blackberry was king. Nobody else came close.

Gaming device? The DS and PSP were and still are powerful competitors. The DS in particular, because Nintendo's one of the king game makers and they restrict all their games to their own console.

The iPhone competed very effectively in all those markets. But it never had a risk of dominating a single one. Compare that to Windows — if I wanted a consumer operating system that ran the best/most popular programs, I had to get Windows, because there was no other operating system that had anything like the programs I'd actually have to use. (Mac OS? Not even close.)

If Google didn't have their huge amounts of cash, we'd still have the Blackberry OS, which is still enormously successful (though it's taken a hit recently), and we'd have Windows Phone 7, which is actually a really damn decent operating system.

[ergo98]

I didn't forget anything.

The iPhone had overwhelming dominance in the consumer smartphone space. That is absolutely without question. That dominance is how it moved into the enterprise market, the gaming market, and so on. Exactly how Windows invaded the server room based upon the massive dominance it had outside of the server room.

If Google didn't have their huge amounts of cash, we'd still have the Blackberry OS, which is still enormously successful (though it's taken a hit recently), and we'd have Windows Phone 7, which is actually a really damn decent operating system.

If Android didn't prevent absolute iPhone dominance, RIM would be dead in the consumer space (and dying in the enterprise space), and Windows Phone 7 would have been DoA. Every single review would say "it's cute and all, but without the apps its a nonstarter".

[rorymarinich]

> Every single review would say "it's cute and all, but without the apps its a nonstarter".

I think we're getting to the point where we can't discuss this alternative reality meaningfully (but don't get me wrong, this was a very nice discussion!), but I'm curious. What makes you think that without Android nobody else would launch an App Store, or that nobody else would have the clout to get the sorts of apps that users are interested in?

Sans Android, the iPhone would still have the limitations inherent to a closed system that it has today. Anybody else could have added the background multitasking, or the free GPS, or any of the features that made Android popular, to their own OS, and attracted the same audience that made Android big. I mean, Microsoft is by no means a company that can't afford to compete with Apple financially, and RIM's no slouch either.

[ergo98]

What makes you think that without Android nobody else would launch an App Store, or that nobody else would have the clout to get the sorts of apps that users are interested in?

Android didn't prevent anyone else from entering the space. Yet where are they? If Android didn't appear and get a lot of often undeserved goodwill on Google's back (through much of its life it has been a seriously shitty platform. I've been using it since it was released but would not wish it upon even an enemy until recently), the iPhone would have conquered the whole smartphone market with ease.

Windows Phone 7 already appears too far behind, yet in an alternate scenario where Android didn't "fragment" the market it would have been impossible behind the times.