The Verizon iPhone Is Too Late?

Questions sometimes are more important than answers. One question might be whether the Apple iPhone can dominate the mobile handset market the way it dominates MP3 players. Another question might be whether Apple can dominate smartphones.

But one might wonder if a better question is what markets and segments does Apple wish to dominate. apple never has shown any desire to dominate the enterprise market. It never has wanted to have market share and volume at the expense of "premium" positioning in the market, or margins.

There will be huge demand for the Verizon iPhone, most observers seem to agree.

But Android has made big leaps forward in terms of quality and quantity: it recently began outselling the iPhone in the United States, for example.

Android phones are sold by dozens of hardware makers, the biggest being Samsung, Motorola, and HTC. There are lots of different form factors. Slider phones. Phones with keyboards. Big screens, small screens, midsize screens.

The iPhone, in contrast, is a bit like the situation people once had with Henry Ford’s Model T, where you could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black. With the iPhone you can have whatever Steve Jobs says you can have, some argue.

Apple likely only wants to be a highly-profitable supplier of high-end devices with premium positioning. It likely will succeed at that. Apple wanted to change the mobile handset business. It has done that.

Android, on the other hand, likely always aimed to be a mass-deployed operating system, and likely will succeed. The big question might be whether Symbian suffers more than others in that regard. Android can be used on lower-end devices as well as high-end devices, and will.

If one assumes that smartphones will, over time, become the "phone," then Apple never would have wanted to have the largest market share.

The Verizon iPhone Is Too Late - Newsweek