When using a Windows PC today, it’s easy to take for granted that the software will just work. If you need something new, just pop in a CD or download it from the Web—there’s usually no question of whether it will work or not. With the combined market shares of all available versions hovering around the 90 percent mark for well over a decade, Windows is effectively the standard that developers must adopt unless they have very good reasons for remaining available to only a small niche. It wasn’t always like this though, back in the early days of personal computers, multiple different platforms existed and it wasn’t always easy to share data between them, let alone entire programs. Software (including the operating system) became one of the main reasons you’d choose one platform over another, and when smaller players became unsustainable and the industry crystallized around the Windows and Macintosh, it was still software that differentiated them. There are various reasons for which the Mac platform didn’t gain as much popularity as Windows in the 1990s, but it’s always been a viable alternative.
Today’s mobile devices are in a similar situation. We have a number of completely different platforms, mainly differentiated by their operating systems and all mutually incompatible. Differences aren’t limited only to the look and feel of the hardware and software, but extend to the kind of situations you’d want to use each of them in. Some have been developed with no-frills business applications in mind, some with games and multimedia, and some trying to bridge the two worlds. In many ways, Apple is playing the same game it played with desktop computers—tightly controlling the hardware and software to give users a premium and polished—if somewhat constrained—experience. This time though, it’s had a clear first-mover advantage, arguably defining the modern smartphone experience on its own. Recognizing that third-party software is key to the platform’s success, Apple also created the App Store, which we now know to be the center of the iOS ecosystem. Google, on the other hand, is playing things the way Microsoft did twenty years ago: building only the software, and letting anyone who wants it use it. To beat Apple’s early advantage, they decided to make it free of cost to manufacturers, and it’s paid off. That’s how we have dozens of models from various manufactuers, and also why there are so many differences in hardware, power, and usability. Android’s reach is now arguably greater than iOS’s, but it comes at the cost of stability, predictability, and now also security—the hallmark weaknesses of Windows. If Android continues to gain popularity, it will become the default choice for software developers, and thus become the standard that everyone else must become compatible with. In such a world, iOS, BlackBerry OS, WebOS and Windows Phone would live on as niche minority options, or some of them would die out entirely. Who knows, if Android truly is the Windows of the post-PC era, it might even overtake its desktop-bound ancestor as malware authors’ favorite target.
