[wolfzell]

I have been thinking about Windows Mobile and iPhone in the last days and in the end I concluded that the disadvantage of WM noted above (lots of different hardware configurations) might prove as an advantage in the medium term.

Think about the technical properties of the iPhone and the huge software infrastructure that gets built around it right now.

In 2-3 years Apple will need to introduce new technologies to the iPhone to keep it up to date, for instance just think about a higher screen resolution. Then they will experience the same trouble that WM had for a long time, since then they will have differing hardware platforms too and all those thousands of tiny applications will somehow have to take care of that.

So as long as the iPhone does not change in significant ways, Apple's approach will work fine, but that means that they can not simply change fundamental features of the iPhone without opening the same can of worms (hardware incompatibilities) that WM has to deal with since years.

It has been the same thing with Apple's desktop PCs. As long as they have been a closed system, they were nearly perfect. In the moment as the multimedia approach of PCs started, they had to open up the closed system and there they encountered the same problems as Microsoft had for a long time. So that was when the Macs started to get their share of problems too.

I am very curious how Apple will solve this dilemma with the iPhone. This will get interesting.

bye
Wolfgang