An interesting question has been asked by Jon Fortt over at Business 2.0. Will Apple license the iPhone OS so it can be used in other mobile phones, or do they keep it proprietary? My first instinct is no, they haven’t allowed MacOS on anything other than a Mac, so why should this be any different?
Fortt seems to believe that if Apple would license their mobile OS, that they could dominate the market. However, he goes on to state that if they don’t do this, others will come along and copy their interface and Apple will lose out on a great opportunity.
I can believe that Apple could sell a lot of licenses for this software, but they have plenty of reasons why not to. They like to sell the whole package, the hardware and the software. Things just run better when you know they work well together. Take MacOS, it’s far more stable than Windows. I feel that a great part of that is due to the fact that Microsoft can’t test every component that manufacturers put into a PC. When you control the hardware, you know it’s going to work.
Besides, they don’t want you running MacOS on a PC, why would they want you running their iPhone OS on a traditional Windows Mobile device?
Should Apple license the iPhone platform to allow iPhone clones? [via pbzone]
I think Apple have tried to secure the hardware/UI with enough patents that will keep their lawyers very busy for years of the multitude of violations that are likely to occur. Meizu for instance.
No. The OS that runs on the iPhone is actually Mac OS X. The same OS X that runs on desktops. The interface has just been customized for the iPhone. So as long as Apple is not licensing Mac OS X there won’t be any commercially available 3rd party phones that run’s the iPhone’s software.
Plus, a lot of the innovations, even though controlled by software, are technologies in the hardware, like multi-touch, various sensors, etc, that are patented by Apple. So you wouldn’t just be able to put the software on any Smartphone and have it be the same. The hardware would have to have the same technologies as well. As mentioned, part of why Apple products work so well is due to a seamless integration between hardware and software.