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Comment by caiobegotti | Hacker News Reader

I totally agree with Icaza's points and they are the reason I'm still an Apple happy customer but there's another side to this that of all the players that could fight Apple it just happened that Epic was the first one to gather momentum (and have the actual balls). What I am saying is that it's a bullies fight and just because the one pointing fingers is an old dirty bully at the school yard we can't ignore the uncompetitive bully Apple is right now. It's easy to forget this after all the arguments of the article.

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very true and this scenario can play out like this, when Google is broken up and we are left with only Apple for mobile solution, what do you think Apple will do then if not checked right now ? If we are looking at a future of Apple only mobile phones then it is good to check em.

What reasonable scenarios do you see that would lead to a world where only Apple made smartphones?

Google being broken up

So if Google broke up (and you give this a high probability of occurring?) you think every smartphone manufacturer besides Apple would fold?

yeah because you lose Google Maps, Gmail etc etc....all the other services that make Android. Without that all those other manufacturers are making bricks.

Google is facing anti-trust with the DOJ looking to split them up, so its a very certain future.

That future is already there with tablets and smartwatches

Ok, so in your scenario it’s not a break up. But a nuclear strike. Everything Google has ceases to exist if this happens and no one else steps up to take over or fill the gaps?

There are no other email providers? There are no other map providers?

email sure, who else other than Apple maps comes close to Google Maps ?

Maybe Open Street Map? But if your fear is that Android would die without Google Maps I’m reasonably confident a replacement could be found that isn’t an Apple hardware device.

The same is true for the other services that Google provides.

There's openstreetmap and Here maps (used to be Navteq).

Push messaging would be the trickiest thing to replace, because every app backend that pushes needs to be able to push to all the push services (or do their own long connect/periodic polling), which could be a lot of services to integrate if there's not a manufacturer consensus.

If the SDK forks, that's even more diversity in the system, but Android is already super diverse so...

Suppose Google is broken up and Android dies (not a necessary consequence, also because some company could keep it alive.) Apple won't license iOS to other phone manufacturers and many people on the planet won't have the money to buy an iPhone. There could be a scenario starting with two or three mobile OSes, including a 100% open source Android, with an endgame of one of them taking the 80% market share Android enjoys now.

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