- similar to the 80's: In the beginning of the 80's we had a large number of computer types (IBM PC, Apple II, Commodore, Acorn, Sinclair, BBC Micro, CP/M, etc). In the end of the 80's, only the IBM PC (and Mac) were left standing.

Today we have a large number of mobile companies. In 10 years time only Apple and Android will remain.

(Android is like IBM PC compatibles today: several companies, but they don't control anything as they have to follow MS rules, and they can easily be replaced with another company: see history of Dell).

Wow, I seriously hope not. I like having a real unix-like userland on my phone, and I want to keep it that way.

Today, Linux is a popular alternative to OS X or Windows on the desktop---but the market share is minuscule.

The platform of the day chases technology somewhat, but it's mostly a business-driven cycle: The entrenched winners on the current platform have little incentive to move boldly forward into a new domain where they have little advantage and little to gain by rushing forward.

Competitors face an uphill battle on the current platform, but much greater opportunity by rushing into these new domains and pitching them as an alternative or unambiguous step forward. (When nothing of the sort has ever actually been true.)

So now we roll on to a fight over the mobile platform. The simple analysis would be to assume that one company will again dominate and squeeze the platform. But if we look more closely at the battle over the internet, we see the very interesting fact that no-one won.

When we look to why, it's almost entirely due to the emergence of Open Source as a serious competitor. It became the vehicle whereby underdog competitors and jaded customers could gang up against the favorite to prevent any one company from truly controlling a platform.

That's why Google took the Open-Source route with Android. Not because it's necessary, but because they saw the iPhone coming and they knew that with an Open approach, everyone would help them fight Apple or any other would-be dominant.

(As in other areas, Google's underlying strategy is: we'll do fine as long as we can compete and don't get marginalized by someone else controlling the platform and writing us out.)

So my guess is that no-one will "own" mobile either. There will be some large-ish companies that together dominate much of the space, but it will be more like the MS/Google/Facebook share-split on the net than the MS/Apple split on the desktop. Also, as with the internet, the roster of the major players will be far more fluid.

(I don't buy "the cloud" or "services" as a distinct platform unto themselves. They're just the continued maturation of the last platform, the same way the desktop continued to get better even after the fight over the network was well under-way. They're being pitched as a companion feature in the mobile fight the same as integration to particular desktop software was pitched as a companion feature in the network fight.)

As for the 'next' platform, that tends to be something laying in plain sight while the current cycle thunders on. Something promising but clumsy. Exposed as necessary, but still nascent.

My guess? Personal area networks; specifically to effect less-awkward Augmented Reality and end the proliferation of redundant sensors.

Anyone with a powerful laptop, smartphone and/or tablet has wanted a way to sync session, state or data streams between these devices without waiting on a slower, spotty intermediary. Does each and every device I own need its own (mostly lame) camera? How about one camera on my necklace/ear/glasses and a data stream? How about my phone's GPS stream and net connection gets naturally shared to my tablet?

The clumsy stabs at this so far will pale to the ultimate platform the same way the first forms of the internet pale to the web today.

And the refinement of it, after the PAN fight settles down and everyone starts to look at the next big thing, promises to be truly the stuff of science-fiction.

Wow that was long. Sorry.

That's a pretty big if. I don't think more than 20% of all computer activities can be exercised in that 'walled garden', that's consumers only, and mostly media consumption at that.

There's a very large world outside of that.

(And 8-core desktop-class machines with 64-bit address spaces were obviously popularized by the need to run Eclipse, but I digress...)

Also, even Apple does not think everything falls into their 'walled garden', so they'll continue to develop and sell normal computers for the other 80% of activities. But these new kinds of products reflect the shift in the set of activities that dominate modern computer use. The shift allows them to create a viable product that mostly ignores 80% of computer activities, and moreover, by omitting those other things, different design decisions can be made (e.g. walled garden app store) to make it much easier for them to meet the new set of requirements demanded by these media consumption type activities (e.g. battery life, appliance-level reliability). Those design decisions don't work with normal computers, as the requirements are different (e.g. completely general purpose use very important, battery life less important or unimportant [desktops]). So I think it is a mistake to think that even everything from Apple will be walled.

Of course everybody is shifting, IT is a moving target and that will not stop for a long long time. The really interesting question is what it all converges to in the long run, and if that can be 'owned' at all.