“Much has been said about the original iPhone’s success factors: an innovative multi-touch interface, a never-seen-before combination of cell phone, iPod and Internet ‘navigator,'” Jean-Louis Gassée writes for Monday Note. “All good, but missing one crucial element: removing the carrier’s control on the iPhone’s features and content.”
“The iPhone’s 10th birthday was a happy opportunity to look once again at Steve Jobs’ masterclass in storytelling and positioning, and to contemplate, with incredulous gratitude, the enormity of the consequence,” Gassée writes. “More specifically, we owe Steve Jobs an enormous debt of gratitude for breaking the carriers’ backs (to avoid a more colorful phrase).”
“He wasn’t going to allow mere carriers to control what the iPhone did and contained. Although the iPhone boasted only Web apps at the announcement, there were native apps, an iPhone SDK, and the App Store gestating and waiting for the freedom to deploy. Letting a carrier dictate — or, worse, design — the apps that would run on the iPhone and manage content… That was unthinkable,” Gassée writes. “To Be Sure™, Jobs’ way isn’t the only path. Carrier control over Android handsets didn’t prevent the Google platform from becoming wildly successful…and wild it has been: The Android proliferation comes with fragmentation and low adoption of fresh versions and security fixes. For example, the most recent Android version (last May) had 7.5% adoption versus 84% for iOS 9. In addition to a “free” business model that gets nowhere near Apple’s revenue numbers, Google has long been frustrated by the slow, carrier-throttled updates and crapware…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Currently, as measured by the App Store on January 4, 2017, 76% of devices are using iOS 10, 18% are iOS 9, and 6% are earlier versions (mostly older devices that cannot be updated).
MacDailyNews Note: Today is Martin Luther King Day in the U.S. and the markets are closed. As usual on such trading holidays, we will have limited posting today.