History repeats itself: IBM vs Apple then, iPhone vs Android now
History repeats itself: IBM vs Apple then, iPhone vs Android now
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
George Bernard Shaw
Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 – 1950)
History, ironically, tends to repeat its self. This may be old news in political, economical or historical events but what happens in Hardware/Software industry ?.
While I was reading some articles on the web about the market share of mobile OS’s today/tomorrow, a “pattern” started to emerge before my eyes. There is something in this pattern that indicates what mobile OS will have the major market share maybe 2 years from now, or sooner. As I predict, near future of mobile phones will belong to Android Linux operating system.
Ok that may have sound like foolish… but please be patient and let me (try) explain what are the historical similarities between the war of IBM-Apple then, and Apple(iOS)-Google(Android) now and how will probably be the end of this fight over the market share pie chart. So grab a cup of coffee and open your mind !
Keywords: IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Linux, Open/closed source/hardware/architecture.
Historical events…
Before 1980s there was… chaos. Incompatibility, deferent platforms on hardware and software, less or no industry standards where some of the troubbles in the market. Despite the presence of informal standards which allowed a fair measure of interoperability between different machines from different manufacturers, no single company controlled the industry. Apple was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. Their hand-built, Apple I was first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club as personal computer kit that was just sold as a motherboard with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips. In December of 1979, Jobs and several Apple employees visited Xerox PARC to see the Xerox Alto. Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a graphical user interface, so he rapidly pushed the development of a GUI for the Apple Lisa computer.
Meanwhile, Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, called Xenix. However, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M OS, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, which IBM rebranded to PC-DOS.
The Board is set… and now the fun begins…
In 1981 IBM, finally entered the microcomputer market, with a machine that was very unusual by its standards, largely sourced from outside component suppliers, technically unambitious, ran third-party operating systems, and above all, had an open architecture (somehow this reminds me the way that a Linux distribution is built). It was called the IBM PC (Personal Computer).
IBM PC 5150
I repeat… IBM decided to go on an open architecture, so that other manufacturers could produce and sell peripheral components and compatible software without purchasing licenses. IBM also sold an IBM PC Technical Reference Manual which included complete circuit schematics, a listing of the ROM BIOS source code, and other engineering and programming information. IBM announced the PC on August 12, 1981. Six weeks later at COMDEX Fall, Tecmar had 20 PC products available for sale. Thanks to the open nature of the PC architecture, PC soon had thousands of different third-party add-in cards and software packages available for almost every imaginable purpose. This made the PC the only viable option for many, as the PC was the only platform that supported all hardware and software they needed, allowing the PC to snatch the business market, a market with very diverse software requirements from customer to customer.
Industry competitors took one of several approaches to the changing market, which was to build a machine that duplicated the IBM PC as closely as possible and sell it for a slightly lower price, or with higher performance. The two early leaders in this last strategy were both start-up companies: Columbia Computers and Compaq. They were the first to achieve reputations for very close compatibility with the IBM machines, which meant that they could run software written for the IBM machine without recompilation. This meant for software companies, that it was rational to write for the IBM PC and its clones as a high priority, and port versions for less common systems at leisure. Even thought Apple had the “beautiful” GUI desktop in Lisa (1983) becoming the first personal computer sold to the public with a GUI, it was a commercial failure due to its high price tag, limited software titles, and due to the “ugly” MS-DOS which was available for more machines named IBM PC clones. From around 1984, Microsoft were achieving enormous revenues from DOS sales both to IBM and to an ever-growing list of other manufacturers who had agreed to buy an MS-DOS license for every machine they made (PC clones). For the competing computer manufacturers, large or small, the only common factors to provide joint technical leadership were operating software from Microsoft, and CPUs from Intel. In essence, during the bulk of the 1980s and early 1990s, the main machines that were talked about in the press and in how-to guides, were IBM’s and IBM PC clones.
Nobody is perfect…
Even thought Open Architecture “was the way to go”, with many manufactures supplying the market with IBM PC clones “pre-loaded” with Microsoft’s MS-DOS and most of the market was buying faster and cheaper IBM compatible machines made by other firms, in 1987, IBM made a bold and ultimately disastrous business decision. IBM chose to “go the Apple way” and introduced their PS/2 line. The PS/2s remained software compatible, but the hardware was quite different, which meant that none of the millions of existing add-in cards would function. The new IBM machines, in other words, were not IBM compatible. In addition, IBM planned the PS/2 in such a way that for both technical and legal reasons it would be very difficult to clone it in a similar way that Apple produce its products. At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s IBM made a second disastrous decision by planning to replace DOS with the vastly superior OS/2. In response to this, Microsoft preferred to push the well established IBM PC clones industry in the direction of its own product, called Windows thatbecame the de-facto standard. IBM finally relinquished its role as a PC manufacturer in April 2005, when it sold its PC division to Lenovo for .75 billion.
By the early 21st century, the dominant ”IBM PC compatible (clones)” computing platform with millions of “homebuilt computers” that are assembled from available components, rather than purchased as a complete system from a computer system supplier, ensured the success of Microsoft Windows which had driven nearly all other rival commercial operating systems into near-extinction. By the mid 1990s for any manufacturer, introducing a new rival operating system had become too risky. Even if an operating system was technically superior to Windows, it would be a failure in the marketplace (BeOS and OS/2 for example). Microsoft continued delivering software to cheap commodity personal computers to the vast majority of computer users while Apple was delivering a richly engineered, but expensive, experience. Apple relied on high profit margins and never developed a clear response. Instead they sued Microsoft for using a graphical user interface similar to the Apple Lisa in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation. The lawsuit dragged on for years before it was thrown out of court.
The decade 2000-2010
By the year 2001, Microsoft holds approximately the 95% of the desktop/small business computers ” locked-in” on their technology. On the other hand Open Source projects are getting some attention and by the year 2000 Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) was founded as a non-profit organization supported by a global consortium tasked to “accelerate the deployment of Linux for enterprise computing”. Its goals included “to be the recognized center-of-gravity for the Linux industry”. Linux Foundation was founded in 2007 by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG). The Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux “by providing a comprehensive set of services to compete effectively with closed platforms”.
Microsoft did not like this, as Open Architecture PC (IBM clones and homebuilt computers) combined with the Open Source Linux Operating System could threaten their domination on the web. How that could happen ? Well, the same way Microsoft succeed their domination on the market:
Open Architecture was inevitably going to spread in the market by its nature (remember home-build PC’s versus Apple’s closed architecture Mac’s)
Microsoft didn’t do, by purpose, anything about pirated copies of Windows until Windows XP
Linux is by nature open source, so any company/individual could create a distribution for any purpose. Also the fact that Linux can be easily modified to run on any type of ” architecture” was the reason why the war over who dominates web/file servers, mission critical systems , data centers is
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