I don't think anyone else wants to make the bet that they could take a sufficient slice out of that pie to make the gamble pay off, given Apple's significant lead, and ~all of the likely-competitor tech companies with enough capital & expertise to try having cultures and existing lines of business that run contrary to such an attempt.
How's Google going to credibly do that, especially without going wildly into monopolist territory by freezing out ad & spying competitors while surely still allowing their own? Why would they when getting more eyes and ears on "their users" and defending against a rise of platforms that might hinder them was the point of not just developing Android, but making it free so that others would stop trying to do their own thing?
Microsoft could maybe try, but is running fast the other direction instead, probably for similar reasons of wanting to grab that sweet, sweet data (gotta feed LLMs, now; more reason than ever!)
To viably compete you need:
1) Software that actually works really really well (perfectly? Not even close. Wildly above the median in the world of consumer software, even from big vendors? Oh my, yes). Lots, and lots, and lots of such software. So very much. Operating systems, server-side systems of several kinds, an "office" suite, advanced camera-related software, mapping software, utilities galore (things like Preview and Digital Color Meter are great and are absolutely part of Apple's "moat")—maybe even a browser, if you want to approach things like Apple's real-world-use battery life on MacBooks. So much software. And it'll need to all work together well enough not to look pathetic next to the relatively-excellent integration that Apple's stuff has.
2) You're gonna have to have tight integration with probably-custom hardware across several fairly-different product lines to achieve a similar quality level on #1, and to approach their levels of profitability. That's a huge investment, and hard. Your organization needs to be able to S-rank procurement, logistics, packaging, and hardware design on some balance of a functional and aesthetic level—at least more often than not.
3) You're gonna need to be able to play the "privacy defender" card and not have your pants immediately combust—whatever you think of Apple's credibility on this, it's surely well above the other tech giants. That also means forgoing or abandoning other opportunities at income (Apple's tentative move into ads is... worrisome, for this reason)
> without going wildly into monopolist territory by freezing out ad & spying competitors while surely still allowing their own
You mean like killing off third-party cookies while retaining a way to track and advertise to users via FLoC-turned-Interests? You can argue Firefox disables third-party cookies, but they're not an ad company. >85% (last I checked) of Google revenue is advertising or adjacent to it, and their legal team signed off on an action that harms their competitors and helps the ad network with the soon-to-be most accurate tracking
How's Google going to credibly do that, especially without going wildly into monopolist territory by freezing out ad & spying competitors while surely still allowing their own? Why would they when getting more eyes and ears on "their users" and defending against a rise of platforms that might hinder them was the point of not just developing Android, but making it free so that others would stop trying to do their own thing?
Microsoft could maybe try, but is running fast the other direction instead, probably for similar reasons of wanting to grab that sweet, sweet data (gotta feed LLMs, now; more reason than ever!)
To viably compete you need:
1) Software that actually works really really well (perfectly? Not even close. Wildly above the median in the world of consumer software, even from big vendors? Oh my, yes). Lots, and lots, and lots of such software. So very much. Operating systems, server-side systems of several kinds, an "office" suite, advanced camera-related software, mapping software, utilities galore (things like Preview and Digital Color Meter are great and are absolutely part of Apple's "moat")—maybe even a browser, if you want to approach things like Apple's real-world-use battery life on MacBooks. So much software. And it'll need to all work together well enough not to look pathetic next to the relatively-excellent integration that Apple's stuff has.
2) You're gonna have to have tight integration with probably-custom hardware across several fairly-different product lines to achieve a similar quality level on #1, and to approach their levels of profitability. That's a huge investment, and hard. Your organization needs to be able to S-rank procurement, logistics, packaging, and hardware design on some balance of a functional and aesthetic level—at least more often than not.
3) You're gonna need to be able to play the "privacy defender" card and not have your pants immediately combust—whatever you think of Apple's credibility on this, it's surely well above the other tech giants. That also means forgoing or abandoning other opportunities at income (Apple's tentative move into ads is... worrisome, for this reason)