As Berin and I have noted here before (here and here), there seems to be no shortage of competition and innovation in the mobile operating system (OS) space. We’ve got:

1. Apple’s iPhone platform,
2. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile,
3. Symbian,
4. Google’s Android,
5. BlackBerry,
6. Palm OS (+ Palm’s new WebOS),
7. the LiMo platform, and
8. OpenMoko.

I am missing any? I don’t think so. Even if I have, this is really an astonishing degree of platform competition for a network-based industry. Network industries are typically characterized by platform consolidation over time as both application developers and consumers flock to just a couple of standards — and sometimes just one — while others gradually fade away. But that has not yet been the case for mobile operating systems.  I just can’t see it lasting, however. As I argued in my essay on “Too Much Platform Competition?,” I would think that many application providers would be clamoring for consolidation to make it easier to develop and roll out new services.  Some are, and yet we still have more than a half-dozen mobile OS platforms on the market.

Regardless, the currently level of platform competition also seems to run counter to the thesis set forth by Jonathan Zittrain and others who fear the impending decline or death of digital “generativity.” That is, technologies or networks that invite or allow tinkering and all sorts of creative uses are supposedly “dying” or on the decline because companies are trying to exert more control over proprietary or closed systems. Continue reading →

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