I don't understand why that's a problem.
What's truly difficult is reduction. Removing "features" and simplifying the product. The success of the iPad and iPhone is not about what it-- it's about all the things it doesn't do.
If you want to believe there is nothing that can truly compete with the iPhone because of its magical UI or lack of features or whatever I can't prevent that. Yes, it's true, the iPhone is the only iPhone in existence. But in that sense nothing can compete with Android either. Nobody else is producing an open-source smartphone os even close to its quality. If you get specific enough, everything is in a category of its own without any competition.
My original comment has nothing to do with whether Apple has produced the perfect mobile os by reducing and removing features. It has to do with the statement that Apple has no real competition.
Of course. The problem the parent is describing is that the smartphone market, the person on the street with an iPhone, who doesn't have a clue what "objective see" is, has his/her own specific criteria for buying a phone, and so far they seem to line up with Apple's criteria pretty well.
Android can compete on features, price, openness, open-source, goat-teleport-count, or any other metric they can find. It won't be "real competition", in this sense, until ordinary people find reasons to actually buy it in large numbers.
http://industry.bnet.com/technology/10005344/android-unit-sa...
+1 for openness.