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Comment by bbuffone | Hacker News Reader

I have no worries about this, I can throw out my $199 iPhone and buy a new phone. The same apps I use (Planets vs Zombies, actually that is about it) will be available on the new phone shortly. Phones and its OS are dispensable. that is the great thing about them. As long as it can make a call and receive data the real utility of the phone will always be available.

The rest of it is just entertainment.

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This coupled with the emergence of storing data online will make phones and their OSes completely non-sticky, and therefore very competitive. I think there are probably 20 apps that every phone needs to have, but beyond that its long tail.

Virtually nobody I know goes to get the same phone they currently have due to any type of lockin. In fact, I've seen more often than not, that people want a different kind of phone. Because its almost like a toy for adults.

Apple is dominant today, but I fully expect that in two years there will be some new company that everyone will be watching, who today no one really takes seriously (or may have even heard of).

And what about the time and money spent by people developing skills for the Apple ecosystem — Objective-C, XCode, iTunes partnerships, etc? There's a network effect in play here and the more territories that Apple dominates, the easier it becomes to parlay with inertia...

Most of those developers hadn't heard of Objective-C just a few years ago. If something compelling enough comes around, they'll switch again.

The best thing about that is they can port the game and charge everyone again. Unlike console games that cost $60 dollars. Phone games are a couple dollars so people will pay that again.

They can even out source the development as there is a perfect spec of what to build (original game)

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