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Comment by wvenable | Hacker News Reader

Apple created the first (affordable) personal computer with a GUI interface and a mouse, too. Just because Apple created a new category doesn't mean they own that category. By your argument, the entire PC industry as we know it shouldn't exist.

I, for one, think the iPad is a little too limited for taste and I'm waiting for some other company to produce an reasonable alternative.

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Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Back in the early days of the iPod's success, company after company came out with iPod-killers that all basically flopped. Then, after the iPhone became a hit, everyone touted new smartphones as iPhone killers, which also flopped. Android is the only thing which has every reached the status of a legitimate iKiller. The Android tablet or some descendent of it might be your best bet for finding the tablet you're looking for.

The iPod was an MP3-player killer. And the iPhone was a smartphone killer. In neither of those situations did Apple create the market -- they improved what other players were doing. Outside of Android, there were no new smartphone designs to tout as iPhone killers. My WinMo phone's underlying design predates the original iPhone by a long time even though the device itself is newer. Microsoft is finally getting around to making their iPhone killer with Windows Mobile 7.

Actually I think the first 2 sentences here nail this for me.

If your aim is to own a category, and you have a chance at designing an awesome product.

If your aim is to dethrone the current market leader in a category - well your odds are a lot lower as your focus is off.

By the 2nd quarter of 2010, RIM was still beating both Android and Apple in market share for Smartphones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone

It's more like everyone else tried making Blackberry killers, and has yet to succeed.

Is Apple currently making more profit on its phones than RIM? (altogether, not per-unit; I know the answer there)

was Apple making more profit on Macs than IBM did on PCs? I bet they did. But that didn't stop them from going almost bankrupt when that war was happening.

I'm not really sure, maybe Gartner has some vague reports on that.

RIM does make money on the use of their Business Enterprise Servers (BES), so in corporate installations they're taking in large sums of money on a per-year basis. Given that, and my assumption of Apple's superior profit per-unit, it might be hard to tell who makes more money on their phones overall.

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