Will the iPhone Meet its Match from a Modern Day DOS?

One fundamental difference between the early PC market and the current smart phone market seems to have escaped the author. The IBM PC and DOS were adopted by corporate IT departments - long before there was a mass market for PCs. In fact the dominance of the IBM PC format developed alongside a very healthy "home computer" market that ultimately collapsed and coalesced into the current games console market.

We have a healthy list of phone OS contenders battling it out for market share. As a developer, it would be nice to see one clear dominant winner but as a consumer I prefer choice.

>> Will Apple again lose its to early technical lead to a generic platform like DOS?

Isn't "Windows Mobile" a "generic platform"? Didn't that come out years before the iPhone?

Aside from that, the biggest looming threat is probably Android..

Does Apple mind losing its "lead"? If they continue to command a significant minority of the smartphone market, isn't this a viable business?

This graph: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/200... weirds me out how it suddenly overlaps in the last segment.