Is Apple Repeating It's Mistakes ?

I was reading an article the other day about Android and Apple's iPhone OS. The point of the article is that Android's share of the smartphone market is 28% compared to Apple's 21%. That got me thinking, is Apple repeating the mistakes it made during the mid 80's ?

Apple in the early to mid 80's was a market leader in personal computers showing how easy and cool it was to own a personal computer. Apple provided a cutting edge OS that was tied to equally cutting edge hardware. Microsoft then came along and licensed their OS to any manufacture that was making a clone. The result is that Windows has an 80-90 percent market share.

Where Apple tied its OS to their own hardware, Microsoft licensed their OS to run on thousands of different manufactures platforms. You had a choice of hardware unlike Apple. I think people liked the choices and made Windows the dominate operating system because of the choices of hardware.

I think that Apple is in the same boat again today. Google developed Android and licensed it to any cell phone manufacture that wanted to release a phone using the Android OS. If you want Apple iOS 4 then you have to have an Apple iPhone. There are today many more choices of smartphone running Android that gives the consumer more choice. Apple only releases a new iPhone once a year. We see the major manufactures releasing new iterations of Android based phones several times a year and quite frankly, the OS is update more often than iOS. Apple users are then forced to wait for the next iteration to catch up with the functionality of the current crop of Android phone.

Based on Apple history, I think Apple will again repeat the mistakes it made in the PC business and the iPhone will become a small part of the smartphone market. Android is destined to become the market leader just as Microsoft did with it's Windows OS. Why, because the operating systems is offered on more choices of smartphones.

Now before anyone slays me, a bit of disclosure is offered. I have owned 3 generations of the iPhone and currently use a new iPhone 4. I'm not offering my opinions on which I think is best Android or iOS 4. I could care less about who has what market share.

I just want to point out that yes the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone category just like the first Macintosh revolutionized the way we interact with computers. It is because Apple is a hardware and software manufacture tied to its own brand that it will by nature be a small player in the technology market place. And I don't necessarily see that is a bad thing.