Because Apple's business model isn't selling an OS to a third-party OEM, it's selling you a piece of hardware using a proprietary OS as a selling point. And has been for decades.

Both companies are in the business of monetizing apps in an app market. That is what they are about- money through apps.

One company (Apple) chooses to restrict the hardware they let their app platform run on so they can have more control over the experience.

Comparing the use of one app platform to use of a competing app platform is a perfectly reasonable comparison.

Apple monetizing apps is ancillary to their monetizing of hardware. The real accomplishment is how Apple has managed to dominate market share while competing against a gamut of OEMs with a free OS and much lower price points. Apple may not be the leader in market share going into a refresh of iPads, but that's a temporary problem and not a reflection of the trend.

So? If Apple's goal is to increase total number of devices running iOS, then they have a good model to follow (Android). If it's to eventually end up in second place again in yet another market they should have owned, then they can feel free to keep on keeping on. There's nothing but their business model keeping them from doing it.

Apple's goal is to make money and the last time they licensed out their OS it didn't turn out very well for them.

But from a developer's perspective, what matters is where the customers are. I still think in the near term, paid apps are a bigger market on the ipad but if your application is free, then android may be a better bet for initial deployment.

>>There's absolutely no reason that iOS couldn't be just another tablet OS.

There are many reasons. The primary one is that having the OS run on your own hardware allows you to have much tighter control over the user experience. After all, user experience is one area where iOS has always dominated Android.

No disagreement about user experience, but this constant goal post moving "it's total numbers!" then when that shifts it's suddenly "this is comparing OSs to devices!" is unbelievably tiresome to see played out over and over again.

Next up will be some other metric that will be overcome like profitability, or total apps purchased or app store size or whatever. Apple has simply made a decision and stuck with it and the result is that it limits their share of the market over a more versatile platform.

> After all, user experience is one area where iOS has always dominated Android.

I don't think that's true at all. As of ICS, Android is much better. Especially considering the horrible state of notifications on iOS and the siloed nature of apps. And usability took a serious hit in the move from iOS 6 to 7.

I think the parent's comment is better phrased as "There's no constraint preventing iOS from being just another tablet OS."

Apple consciously refuses to decouple their hardware from their software (and I agree with you that the iOS experience is better than the Android one, although I don't think it's an objective truth).

Comparing iOS adoption to Android adoption is not some universally indicative metric (I'll bet all the money in my pockets that many more iPad owners know what "iOS" means than Android tablets know what "Android" means, which is incredibly important when you're, say, trying to build an ecosystem) but it is still important (I'm a developer with limited time resources! Do I spend X hours building an Android port?)

>>and I agree with you that the iOS experience is better than the Android one, although I don't think it's an objective truth

Of course it is.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/167040-iphone-5-vs-gala...