The Dog That Didn’t Bark
Here’s John Gruber on the Apple vs Google slugfest for dominance in smartphones — and eventually, in consumer electronics:
It’s exciting, vicious, fun to watch, and ultimately should prove to be excellent news for consumers. Competition drives innovation and innovation raises the bar for everyone. And the bar, for smartphones, is rising quickly.
Like any great rivalry, there are striking differences between the two competitors. Apple and Google are jostling to shift the comparison between the two platforms to their very different strengths. Apple’s strengths: user experience, design, consistency. Google’s strengths: the cloud, variety, permissiveness.
He’s right. But what’s interesting is who isn’t mentioned: Microsoft and Sony. Those two behemoths have been pretty much shut out already, and the contest is only just getting underway.
Don’t you just love a free market system of competition? Competition makes life better for everyone. Crony capitalism cries, “Monopoly!” The Free Market responds, “Build A Better Mouse Trap!”
Apple and Google keep building better mouse traps.
Microsoft and Sony are has-beens in the consumer electronics wars. The only Sony products that are interesting these days are the PS3 and their ultra-light notebooks. Their consumer electronics and home theater gear are overpriced, mediocre-quality crap and have been for about ten years now. Microsoft is already down below 7% of smart-phone sales and sinking like a stone. Blackberry will be next to go – they have an edge in corporate device management, but their corporate server software is unbelievably atrocious, buggy, and expensive… and Apple is probably going to more or less reach feature parity with them in about two weeks.
Would a hybrid be as beautifully lethal as the Ripley-Alien ?