Once the market is established, the barriers to entry for a new platform are formidable. Look at the desktop OS market. Today it's dominated by MS Windows and OSX. 10 years ago it was dominated by MS Windows and OSX. 10 years before that it was dominated by MS Windows and MacOS. 10 years before that it was dominated by MS DOS and MacOS. Apple and MS have had the market carved up between them for 30 years. Competitors have come and gone and barely left even a scratch on the market.
It's not about the bare OS, it's about the ecosystem. The reason NeXT never took of is that building an ecosystem in an environment dominated by existing ecosystems is almost impossible. But as soon as it was able to infiltrate the Mac ecosystem it took off.
Even Microsoft with all it's market power, tools and software businesses and mind share wasn't able to crack back into the mobile market once iOS and Android had got established. The article is right. It really is over. iOS and Android will dominate for at least the next 10 years, and probably the next 20 or even 30 years. The sky's the limit. They'll have to keep working hard and not totally screw up, but even given MS utter debacles with Vista, Win 8 and Win 10 and their awful developer story over the last 10 years they're still dominant on the desktop. Them leaving gaps in the market left space for OSX to grow but no opportunity for a new platform to get traction. That's how powerful an established platform ecosystem is. It has massive market inertia.
So why did Symbian, BB, etc die so fast? They weren't platform ecosystems in the same way. You couldn't build a ten billion dollar software and services industry on Symbian or BB or even the old Windows Mobile. Thousands of companies worth aggregate tens of billions live or die on Android and iOS. The same goes for Windows and OSX. A new mobile platform isn't competing just with Apple or Google. It's competing with those thousands of companies worth tens of billions of dollars in each ecosystem. Those are going to be around for a generation, possibly several generations.
Imagine going back to 1986 and asking someone who the two software companies dominating the desktop OS market would be in 30 years time. The Mobile market was at the equivalent point in 2010.
It's interesting that you consider OSX to be dominant when it's market share is closer to Linux than Windows.
It's also interest how the Android/iOS market split is so similar to the Windows/OSX split but the demand for developers doesn't follow. There's a much higher demand for Windows Developers than there are for OSX but the demand for Android vs iOS developers seems to be lopsided with a greater demand for iOS developers.
> It's interesting that you consider OSX to be dominant when it's market share is closer to Linux than Windows.
And yet for many years Apple has earned more profits in desktop sales than the entire Windows OEM community put together, and not by a little. Linux desktop sales aren't even a blip on the chart.
Linux will probably never go away (for some arbitrary definition of 'never), but it's just not a contender in the consumer market or in terms of commercial consumer software. It's just become synonymous with UNIX and consumed the niche occupied by Unixes.
I'm not saying Apple hasn't seen significant growth but Apple also has some of the highest profit margins in consumer electronics. So I don't think that's an apt comparison. How many units did they move relatively?
Linux isn't really a desktop OS. Nearly all of the installations of Linux are in non-desktop-OS contexts. But nearly all installations of OS X are as a desktop OS.
How many people are genuinely choosing between a Mac and a Chromebook. In round figured I'd say approximately zero. In which case they're not a threat to Apple.
You do make an interesting point and a good one, but Chromebooks aren't really an OS platform ecosystem. Its more like a feature phone OS for desktops. They're minimal single purpose browser runners.
That's a huge advantage because it's allowed them to completely bypass the incumbent advantages of OSX and Windows, but it makes them a product but not a platform. If they switch to becoming a distinctive platform in their own right then things could get interesting but there's no real sign that they will try that or if it might work.
I am not saying it's impossible for a new platform to establish itself, I'm just saying its a ridiculously hard task to pull off and refuting the idea that a disruption like that is trivial or even inevitable. Just ask IBM (OS/2), BeOS, Sun (NeWS), Microsoft (Win Mobile), Canonical and dozens of others.
>Even Microsoft with all it's market power, tools and software businesses and mind share wasn't able to crack back into the mobile market once iOS and Android had got established.
That's not quite accurate. The original smartphone and PDA (remember those?) market leader was Palm's PalmOS. Microsoft did manage to overcome Palm to become the market leader around the time of Windows Mobile 5.0, just before being blindsided by the iPhone and iPod.
What I wrote is I think perfectly accurate. I did however fail to also mention Palm attempting and failing to crack back into the market with the Pre and WebOS although I don't know enough about WebOS to know if it could ever have been a viable platform/ecosystem contender against iOS and Android.
It's not about the bare OS, it's about the ecosystem. The reason NeXT never took of is that building an ecosystem in an environment dominated by existing ecosystems is almost impossible. But as soon as it was able to infiltrate the Mac ecosystem it took off.
Even Microsoft with all it's market power, tools and software businesses and mind share wasn't able to crack back into the mobile market once iOS and Android had got established. The article is right. It really is over. iOS and Android will dominate for at least the next 10 years, and probably the next 20 or even 30 years. The sky's the limit. They'll have to keep working hard and not totally screw up, but even given MS utter debacles with Vista, Win 8 and Win 10 and their awful developer story over the last 10 years they're still dominant on the desktop. Them leaving gaps in the market left space for OSX to grow but no opportunity for a new platform to get traction. That's how powerful an established platform ecosystem is. It has massive market inertia.
So why did Symbian, BB, etc die so fast? They weren't platform ecosystems in the same way. You couldn't build a ten billion dollar software and services industry on Symbian or BB or even the old Windows Mobile. Thousands of companies worth aggregate tens of billions live or die on Android and iOS. The same goes for Windows and OSX. A new mobile platform isn't competing just with Apple or Google. It's competing with those thousands of companies worth tens of billions of dollars in each ecosystem. Those are going to be around for a generation, possibly several generations.
Imagine going back to 1986 and asking someone who the two software companies dominating the desktop OS market would be in 30 years time. The Mobile market was at the equivalent point in 2010.