Comment by joakleaf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joakleaf | Hacker News Reader

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How is it Windows all over again?

Windows 3.0 and 95 were built on top of DOS which already had the majority of the market. Apple never had a large portion of the world-market in the 80s and 90s.

Samsung doesn't make the operating system but only the phones. Google doesn't profit directly from Android. So neither of those two companies are similar to Microsoft of the 80s.

DOS was incredible strong in the enterprise sector and that's how Windows really grew. Mac was weak in that sector. Android isn't built on top of anything similar to DOS. It also isn't stronger in the enterprise sector than iOS.

The battle between Windows and Mac was not about "free" versus proprietary. Hardware vendors didn't get Windows for free. Microsoft made its money selling Windows.

Windows didn't "win" because of just one company. Although IBM did push DOS, they didn't push Windows. Windows "won" because of many companies.

Apple wasn't the largest IT-giant in the 80s and 90s. It is now. It has a fortune in the bank and plenty of smart people.

It isn't really Android that has the majority marketshare. It is Samsung! I.e. one hardware company.

So it really isn't anything like Windows and Mac from 80s and 90s. This is something different.

It is however a battle of marketshare involving Apple, and right now they are losing share to something that looks similar to iOS, just like they lost to Windows that looked similar to Mac in the 90s. However, the situation and premises are not the same.

What will be interesting now, is if Samsung and Google will continue to get along and if Samsung will want to differentiate themselves more from stock Android. I think they'll have to, in order to compete against even cheaper phones in the long run; The Android market could implode in a massive price-war with profit margins dropping to 0 everywhere.

Apple can also still fight back. iOS is a reasonably solid foundation, and right now Samsung is their only real competitor. Traditionally, these devices compete on Software, design, and hardware capabilities. Apple is a much stronger software and design company than Samsung... So who knows how this will end?

>Windows 3.0 and 95 were built on top of DOS which already had the majority of the market. Apple never had a large portion of the world-market in the 80s and 90s.

The Apple II predated the IBM PC. Apple had virtually the entire market in the '80s.

This is untrue. They had the people who made the most noise in the 1980's and barely touched anywhere outside the US.

It was tough selling the Apple II in a lot of places because there were cheap Asian clones at a fraction of the price.

That lasted until Apple started suing them. Then the Asian manufacturers switched to making PCs and peripherals.

Here's how:

Android = Windows = An OS that runs on many different brands of hardware.

iOS = Mac OS = An OS that runs on exactly one brand of hardware.

Does every facet of the Android/Windows ecosystem have to match for this huge similarity to have major effects on the market? No. How can you deny that this makes a difference? Where would Samsung be without Android?

Not that it matters, but - Google does profit from Android (directly, indirectly - who cares?) by giving support and early access only to those device manufacturers who play ball by installing certain Google apps by default.

The reason the windows comparison fails is the strength of the developer platforms and markets. Windows 'won' because it had the lions share of the apps. Platforms exist to run apps. What's happening with phones isn't directly comparable though because phones primarily exist for calls, messaging, browsing and apps. Apps are only one facet of their functionality, but its the one where Apple is still very dominant. If you stop looking at the smartphone market as a phone market, and focus just of the smartphone (browser and app) functional usage Apple is so dominant it's not funny. It is still comfortably ahead in overall developer revenue, web usage share and premium app availability. So as a smartphone app platform, iOS is the Windows here. Even if Android overtakes iOS as an app platform, which is conceivable and may even be inevitable, the health of the iOS platform is strong enough it's hard to see how it could become so marginalised as to threaten its viability for a very long time to come. Certainly it's not facing the existential threat MacOS did in the 90s.

I think you got it backwards. Windows only obtained the lion's share of apps because Microsoft had the right hardware strategy.

When Apple released their graphical OS, Windows had zero market share. Windows wasn't even a product, but even when it was - people didn't buy it to run DOS apps, they bought it to run Windows apps. It was cheaper and it worked well enough.

That's why Android is comparable to Windows here. It was released later than iOS which already had market share, any hardware vendor can integrate with it, like Windows...and it's more developer friendly, like Windows (compared to the Mac OS). It's also better than good enough, like Windows. And those will be the direct reasons that will eventually let Android overtake iOS as an application platform.

Those are all good points, so +1, I think the situations then and now are just too different to directly compare. In some ways iOS compares best to Windows in the 90s, in others it compares best to MacOS.

What made Windows viable was Microsoft's heavy investment in providing first class Apps with the Office suite. Arguably Google did this with email and maps apps for Android, but even feature phones have those. They're not a platform differentiator. With iOS you had Garageband, Pages, Numbers and even some first class thirdarty apps out within days of the launch of the App Store. Even now iOS has far more high quality apps and games than Android. If you were to look at comparative app availability and quality between iOS and Android now, and compare that to similar comparative metrics for Windows and Mac OS at similar stages in the 90s, iOS would look a lot more like Windows that it would look like MacOS, whatever you think about 'developer friendliness'. Android being more 'open' may make it more like windows in some ways, but so far that has still yet to translate into it moving ahead as an app platform, and even if/when it does that will no more spell doom for iOS than iOSs current success there spells doom for Android now.

You're right that apps are a definite factor in the success of a platform. I think we can both be right here, so +1 yourself buddy :) Without any good apps, I think a more open hardware strategy is worthless - but a more open hardware strategy can translate to lower prices which make up for poor application performance, bugs, etc.

In any case, I hope that everyone can get what they want. For me personally that means: Give me absolute control over what is running on the device.

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