Hacker News Reader

Comment by gxs | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I'll bite and humor the author.

The reason Microsoft can't do this is because Windows penetration is absurdly high- something in the mid 90%s of all desktop computers. Any action like this would be followed by immediate litigation from competitors crying monopoly.

The reason Apple can get away with this is because contrary to what you would believe from reading the HN front page, apple's penetration in the cell phone market is minute and not a monopoly.

edit: for the person that said apple smartphone market share is 88%, its 14% worldwide, I don't know where you got your figures though you claim wikipedia:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/smartphone-iphone-sales-200...

Having a stranglehold of 95% on an entire industry (desktop pcs) is very different than owning 14% of a subset of an industry (mobile phones in general)

View on HN

I keep trying to explain apple aren't in the cellphone business. Do you consider the ipod touch, which is outselling the iphone now, a smartphone? What about the ipad?

Apple are in the mobile computing with a centralised app store business. And according to my calculations (based off data from wikipedia) they have ~88% of the market.

Yes, the presence of the ipad is really hindering the slew of android tablets we are going to see this year.

There is a very good reason as to why Apple has the market share it does. Apple makes the market. Once it's been shown to be profitable, others then join the market, but Apple has used it's first mover advantage very well to create and domante a market.

It wasn't the first to make an mp3 player, but it remade the market. It wasn't the first to have a smartphone, but it remade that market too. In each case, they increased consumer choice by drastically advancing the state of the art. Look at the zune now. Look at the nexus one, the new blackberries. Would those even be here if it weren't for the iPod and iPhone?

So, they may have a big share of the market (as you define it), but they are hardly a monopoly force.

The important thing is it'd fuck Apple completely while it drags through the courts. It's a shame Adobe, Google, Novell, Unity etc aren't in a position to do anything about it.

Apple is definitely not "minute" in the smartphone market, although obviously how you define the market is key.

It is an interesting thought experiment to think about what would happen if the iPhone OS did start to head up in market share (e.g. if Apple actually released iPhone minis or something of the sort). As they approached dominance, there would be a whole number of things that they all of a sudden couldn't do. Blocking Palm from iTunes, exclusive App Store, this restriction, etc. Strategically if they started to head towards large market share it might even make sense to slow it down to preserve their freedom to operate.

They'd just raise prices.

Also, Windows doesn't have an App Store. How would Gates ban anything from the Windows platform?

Also, Bill Gates doesn't run Microsoft anymore.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that: the Pentavirate is now in charge. A secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentavirate, who run everything in the world, including Microsoft, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows. The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up.

Oh, I hate the colonel, with his wee beady eyes...

Malicious software removal tool?

Ironically, Windows XP Tablet has become the platform on which I run my FOSS software on a tablet.

It is a thought experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

A pretty lousy one. People are just going to focus on the obvious logical problems of making this comparison.

Thought experiments generally have the expectation that you don't quibble with them; Maxwell's demon doesn't make sense because demonic spirits don't exist, but that's not the point of the exercise.

Hm. I thought a thought experiment required some thought on the part of the person proposing it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com