Messrs. Zetsche and Lutz might want to meditate on Palm CEO Ed Colligan’s infelicitous words mocking the newborn iPhone in 2006 [emphasis mine]: “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
Apple was able to use the wedge of UX to convince customers to but their devices and gave them time to fix the gaps in their hardware and software.
Google first bought a software team and then partnered with HTC to get hardware for the first Android phone on the market - again it wasn't a pure "PC guys" "just figuring it out."
But the Colligan quote is well on its way to becoming historic out of context, like Olsen's and Gates's.
IMO, Apple will need another wedge and that car makers screw up in order to repeat their iPhone success. This is a possibility, but not a certainty, as some here proclaim.