Smart phone? I agree smart phones are different. My somewhat glib inference was that the iPad could maintain the same market dominance as the iPod Touch due to similar reasons.
The iPad has no more of a moat around it than the iPhone does.
The iPod had a moat around it courtesy of the extremely difficult dynamics of dealing with the music cartels. Apple broke the cartels and came to dominate them; nobody else was able to. Such problems don't exist in either smart phones or tablets.
Re:The iPad Is Unbeatable
by tosseraccount on Friday March 09, 2012 @02:22PM
(#3685528)
Apple broke the cartels?
Actually it was Napster and bittorrent that broke the cartels.
Apple saved what was left of the cartels.
Consumers don't all want to own the same smart phone, in fact quite the opposite: consumers are completely unwilling to all own the same smart phone.
Then to top it off, the smart phone market is roughly 20 to 30 times larger than the iPod market. Which means a helluva lot more competition. There's also no simple blocking method available to Apple to own the smart phone market, unlike the iTunes + music licensing moat they had in music players.