My friend Arjun recently blogged about something interesting – Can iPhone dent Windows marketshare? Here’s the gist. iPhone is based on OS X and Apple has hinted of opening iPhone for developing 3rd party apps. With iPhone quite likely to dominate the cellular market, 3rd party apps for OS X (iPhone) are likely to proliferate. When this happens, the developers will then port the apps to Mac OS X and hence increase the ecosystem for Macs – thereby denting Windows marketshare.
I think there is a distinct possibility that iPhone will dent Windows marketshare, but in a different way.
1. Apple with iPhone x.0 may actually deliver on “convergence” which has been the holy grail for everyone.
2. SaaS is taking off in a big way in the b2c and b2b spaces.
(2) is already happening and going by Apple’s track record (1) is also highly probable (iPod was not the first music player, similarly iPhone can dominate the cellular market even though its a late entrant). In such a scenario, coolness, usability, and high quality basic apps (voice, voip, email, browser, multimedia) are all that matter. Apple doesn’t need to worry too much about 3rd party apps. With most of the apps being delivered over the web, all Apple needs to make sure is to get the platforms right (great UI, email, browser etc). iPhone will likely displace the PC and hence Windows.
January 31, 2008 at 5:23 am
One major reason why iPhone will be a big hit. MacOS is basically Unix based. Since that is a freeware , you ll have lots of freelancers who d build applications as a Hobby or whatever reasons.
Do not know about other phones but, wrt the iPhone once its in a wireless network (ofcourse if there are Macs around) the data flow is seamless. Worth the experience.