iPhone OS 2.0: The New MS-DOS

With Apple's launch of the new App Store, the iPhone has become a full-fledged mobile computing platform. Much like Bill Gates and Microsoft introduced a new, relatively easy-to-use operating system in the 1980s amidst the many incompatible software platforms that were available, which quickly became the standard in the computing industry, Steve Jobs and Co. have introduced a new, extremely easy-to-use, yet advanced, operating system (and being that they're Apple: exclusive hardware to run it on) that certainly has the potential to become that Windows of the mobile devices industry. With Apple planning to sell 10 million iPhones this year and analysts expecting 40 million devices to be sold in 2009, the iPhone would be right on track to greatly surpass RIM's Blackberry, the current smartphone market share leader. The iPhone already accounts for around 0.1% of all web browsing, from both standard desktops and notebooks, as well as all mobile devices combined.

Sure, even at 50-some million iPhones by the end of 2009, the iPhone would be nowhere near the number of Windows PCs in the world, but it would be at a similar market share among cell phones and other mobile devices. Apple has most certainly done a fabulous job with the iPhone and as long as they continue to improve it and maintain their humongous lead ahead of the competition, the iPhone has the potential to not only stir-up the mobile industry as it has already, but truly revolutionize it and become that industry itself. We may very well be witnessing personal computing history unfold with a brand new leader/standard for mobile devices.