While I agree with your overall premise, I'm not so sure it translates to good news for Apple.
The problem is that Apple's OS goes on Apple hardware.
The other OS's are designed for (and being used on) hardware made by a wide variety of manufacturers.
What it looks like to me, is a situation that's surprisingly similar to the early days of personal computing.
In the beginning, Apple dominated the market, but that quickly changed once the multitude of manufacturers began building platforms that ran MS-DOS, and then Windows.
Apple nearly went out of business then, primarily because of their (Jobs') policy of maintaining tight control over hardware and software. Their market share dropped to the floor.
Apple's current success lies in their introduction of ground-breaking products; but other manufacturers are moving into those markets, especially as competitors to iPhone. Apple's share in that market is going to drop, just like it did back in the PC days.
Agree.
Just look at how fast Android came on.
As I point out at my very large software company: Android went from 6% market share to 26% market share faster than we can change a price of one piece of software.
http://hothardware.com/cs/forums/t/52864.aspx
“the WP7 app store is growing at a faster rate than Android’s app store when it launched, so there’s definitely positive news to go around. But it will still be a few quarters in our mind before we can tell if WP7 really has traction in a world already dominated by iOS, Android and BlackBerry.”
>>> The other OS’s are designed for (and being used on) hardware made by a wide variety of manufacturers <<<
That’s all vey well and good for a general computing platform, but when you’re talking about shrinking everything down in size and going mobile, then the equations start to change. Sure iOS only runs on apple hardware. They designed it for apple hardware, and that’s why it runs so well.
I’ve had an iPhone (3GS) since ‘09 and an iPad since April ‘10. I’ve had nary a hiccup out of either of them. Battery life is good on the iPhone, and absolutely phenomenal on the iPad.
The things just work. And when a new version of the OS comes out; I don’t have to wait for my hardware vendor to catch up and decide when theyre going to have it ready for their platform.
Eventually my 3GS won’t be able to keep up. But that’s okay. It will still run the old version just fine, and if I find I need or want the new features that my phone can’t deliver because it doesn’t have the oomph to run the new OS, I’ll upgrade to new hardware.
Umm, no, in the beginning, CPM and TRS-80 dominated the market, followed by Atari, and then Commodore, then the IBM PC and derivatives. For example, in the first year of sales, Commodore sold more computers than Apple had ever produced. The TRS-80 was the first computer to break 100,000 in sales, in 1977, when Apple had sold less than a thousand kits.