> This is still early days in the market, nobody has a lock on it. How old was the mobile MP3 player industry when Apple introduced the iPod?
And now that there is an iPod, how many credible challengers have we seen? None, really. So Apple is able to lock down a market. The question is whether or not the competition is catching up or falling farther behind. Android is a great platform in principle, but the high price of hardware may be a barrier to entry for mainstream buyers.
You make the mistake of thinking that the iPad is the iPod of tablet computers. While MP3 players require only a minimal featureset this is not the case for tablet computers, there is still a lot of room left and a lot of market left. Apple could lock down this market, but the market has not even fully developed yet so it's silly to imagine that they have done so yet.
> This is still early days in the market, nobody has a lock on it. How old was the mobile MP3 player industry when Apple introduced the iPod?
And now that there is an iPod, how many credible challengers have we seen? None, really. So Apple is able to lock down a market. The question is whether or not the competition is catching up or falling farther behind. Android is a great platform in principle, but the high price of hardware may be a barrier to entry for mainstream buyers.