"Sounds like those roads diverge"
Hmmm. Quite a while back I mused about this and the reaction was a fairly universal thumbs down. Will the reaction be the same if Apple goes this route with the idea emanating from god-Steve?
Would two versions of the OS be entirely for technical reasons? Anyone think Apple is planning to begin charging for major upgrades to OSX iPhone in the same way it charges for upgrades on the desktop? I suspect with the introduction of iPhone Rev. B / v.2 will mark the point where iPhone unit sales volume begins to pull away from PC unit sales. Apple already has begun to lay the groundwork for charging for OS upgrades on iPhone. It's not hard to imagine a $79 or $99 OS upgrade annually as Apple will be able to add attractive new features or bundled software with each upgrade sufficient to make the installed base envious. I suspect we are inside of 24 months from an installed base of 50 million, give or take. Which is roughly double the PC installed base at the time Leopard was released, which I believe added $250+mm in high margin revenue.
And of course that creates additional upgrade incentive ... a "discount" on simply replacing the old phone rather than paying for the upgrade to the old one.
One other item, not much discussed these days ... control of installation. I'm fairly certain if Apple locked down OS installation disks with unique serials, we'd find out there are a great many more upgrade OS installations than there are unit sales. I'd guess the number is at least double. Given the greater control on the iPhone, I suspect the upgrade sales/revenue would be even greater relative to the PC OS.
BTW ... while the roads diverge, it seems to me they're setting up the overhauled .Mac as the bridge between your "home base" computing and your mobile computing. .Mac sales have to be extremely high margin in nature. And it wouldn't take much to grow them exponentially, given the smallish starting number.
I wonder how many analysts have factored these two "new" revenue streams into their models?
