...so sayeth the Woz.
http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/18/apples-wozniak-calls-the-winner-in-mobile-race-spoiler-it-isnt-apple/
For a while I wasn't sure what I thought about this, but I believe that I agree. Droid will win (or rather open platforms will win).
Here's my logic... please argue :).
Apple dominated personal computers in the 1980s and then lost market share once PC clones came out. Apple has always had a really polished look and high quality products. That was true back when I had my Apple ][. The problem is that they were also more expensive and they were closed systems to developers. That's fine when there's a large qualitative difference between you and your competitor. Once that gap closes to where the difference isn't so big, other forces take over. For platforms I think a major force is the openness of the platform. Apple protects the platform very tightly which is great from a qualitative point of view, but as more developers make more things for open platforms (like Android) it draws consumers slowly but surely into it's wings. Why would I want to jump through all the hoops of a closed platform when I can just develop and publish and let the open market decide on the quality of my application. As a consumer I am wooed at the promise of "all these cool things." Apple's quality control will inevitably miss some critical apps that open platforms will vote up. I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that open platforms win over closed ones once price and quality are non-differentiating from a customer point of view.
There's no indication that Apple can't compete in the price war for iPhone, iPad, etc. But that's not really their culture.
One major wrench in this theory is iTunes. I have A LOT of iTunes stuff and it makes it hard to transition. iTunes is a kind of natural monopoly, but, again, there are some minor annoyances that make it weak to competitors of near-equal quality. For one thing, you can't re-download. Once Unbox got stronger, I stopped buying movies from iTunes. Although there are competitive music services, such as Amazon's MP3 service, they haven't really hit their stride yet... but I think that's coming as well. iTunes kind of holds me hostage, which is a steep price to pay for a very high quality, easy to use service. Once they're a almost as high quality, almost as easy to use service... why should I buy from iTunes... especially if that service is compatible with iTunes!
I can see the world of media moving to a floating-license-in-the-cloud type of environment. I buy a movie, a book, a piece of music or whatever and the RIGHTS to it are stored in some giant repository and then I can watch or read or listen to that media forever on any device anywhere at any time. I can't imagine this NOT happening. LIcensing is a huge barrier to customer satisfaction. Why should I have to buy a movie over and over again as technology changes and new devices replace old?
If I made "License Cloud Media, Inc" which promised you unlimited rights to any media on any device once you buy the rights to yourself one time, wouldn't you want that? Of course media companies and distribution companies don't want that, but that won't matter - they didn't want NetFlix or Tivo either. They will bend to the customer demand or break fighting it.
I want MEdia - things that I have that are mine forever and are versatile even within a changing technology framework. Thus, the companies that try to lock me into a platform are ignoring the future, in my opinion.
So how can Apple avoid this? Just make Apple MEdia Cloud and open up the platform, unify the digital rights and own the media universe... you can do it Apple!