“Arguments of whether Apple should license its operating system are almost as old as the company itself… Even now, some commentators call on the company to license the OS in order to build market share. Such arguments seem to be based around the argument that in order for Apple to be truly successful it needs to be matching its Seattle competitor in market share. Not so,” Seb Janacek writes for Silicon.com.
“Apple isn’t pitching itself against Windows – that’s just an easy and recognisable target for its marketing. It’s more accurate to say it’s competing against PC makers – Dell, HP, Lenovo and the others. Even its ‘Get a Mac’ marketing is misunderstood in this respect,” Janacek writes.
“Will Apple license the OS X? Not a chance. It makes its margins on hardware, not software. Licensing the OS would dilute sales of high-end Macs and the company is selling more of those than ever before. If the hardware is ‘what’ the company makes its money from, the operating system and the software is the ‘why,'” Janacek writes.
Full article here.
Janacek’s argument makes sense. Ten years ago. iPhone and iPod revenue would allow for Apple to weather any revenue hit that cloning the Mac in whatever fashion (from limited to one partner to wide-open OS X licensing) would inflict. Macintosh is not Apple’s sole source of revenue anymore. And, even with cloning, Apple would still sell Macs. We’re not arguing that Apple should license Mac OS X, only that Janacek’s argument fails when you look at the sources of Apple’s revenue today, as our own SteveJack explained over three and a half years ago: iPod success opens door to Mac OS X on Intel – March 04, 2004