Recently, Apple has surpassed Microsoft in terms of market capitalization – the fact though does not mean that Apple is emerging as the Microsoft of mobile.

No doubt Apple iPhone is one of the most beautifully designed Smartphone of its time and took the world by storm; but Apple’s iPhone is not that advanced if its hardware or other platforms are considered; user interface and apps did the magic.

Going back to the times, when each system was termed new since compatibilty was an issue, IBM came with the concept of Personal Computer (PC) with Microsoft put inside. PC emerged as the standard for computing with Microsoft operating system; the desperation soon helped Microsoft to emerge as a contender that eclipsed even IBM in PC market.

Three decades back when computing was budding, Microsoft garnished it with its Windows.

In extreme contrast to the scenario projected above, iPhone is just an addition to the long existing terminology “Smartphone.” Microsoft defined the real era of PC computing; Apple today has just done the icing portion.

In the Open Mobile Summit in London, last week, cited related sources, the keynote was bit disappointing since it started with Apple iPhone that is not open at all.

The bottom-line of the discussion was that Apple could end up doing a Microsoft in the current tide of Smartphone computing; financial numbers are the supporting evidences for the same.

The scenario is not much changed; the difference is the focused product only. In earlier days it was targeted at IBM PC but now it is much focused to Apple since developers know that this platform could fetch them the ready market.

Considering numbers, Nokia is far better in terms of shipments against Apple but profit margins are narrower than the latter. This indicates that Apple is doing pretty well with its high margin Smartphones and for Nokia, this is still a pain market.

The way Apple close architecture is gaining traction, it is time for open source community to pull their socks. It will not be too long that Apple makes a mockery of open source architecture; otherwise also acceptance ratio for proprietary software is faster than the open source.

The parallelism with IBM PC can be accounted till this period; hardware platform at that time was open to innovations and tweaking but in context of Apple this is a big crime. Apple works in a closed ecosystem.

Apple might be doing the good job in Smartphone computing segment but still cannot be compared with how Microsoft redefined the PC computing world.

Renu Singh/ITVoir Network