Breaking the Chains: Apple's ecosystem

[ItaliaFerrari]

That statement would easily been true before the launch of WP8. But since they came out, in terms of specs, most WP8 devices aren't far behind higher end Android phones now. The newer Lumia's and 8X's and Ativ have 720p displays with Snapdragon S4 chips to drive them (same as the Galaxy S3, One X, Razr HDs, etc.).

I agree with the ecosystem though. But it seems MS is brute forcing themselves into it the best they can. I hope some of the kinks in Windows 8 get worked out, because once they get a good relationship going between their mobile and desktop platforms, it will be pretty enticing to a lot of people very fast. Google already decided to stop supporting Exchange/Outlook sync on personal/free e-mail accounts, which annoyed me highly. I don't see the logic in that because they are subtly forcing me away from them with restrictions on Windows. I hope they don't break anything else anymore.

I do have faith in WP. It's just that it's not up to par with iOS/Android yet. Yes, the hardware has caught up dramatically. The Nokia Lumia, Samsung ATIV and HTC 8X smartphones have been pretty successful with their competitive hardware specs, but they do nowhere nearly as well as their Android counterparts (this is especially true for Samsung and HTC). Why? Because of low awareness and people are too used to Android now and the market is basically saturated between iOS and Android. Actually I would say iOS and Samsung. Because Samsung dominates Android market share.

In three years time, things will start to change. WP may overtake Android (highly unlikely though) and by this time iOS would have lost a lot of market share (judging on how things are looking right now). I think people are not giving enough credit to HTC and Motorola. Especially HTC. I don't understand why HTC smartphones are no longer good sellers anymore. They have superior build quality and the best displays.

Samsung is also looking at differentiating its strategy and going with another OS. I think it's called Bada or something. This could be a game-winner for Samsung provided that they do things correctly and market it properly. In the short-term, Android will be the money maker for most smartphone companies. However as Google starts to favor Motorola more and more, it will be a better long term strategy to invest in their own operating systems.