The end of iPhone

Prediction: this will be the last holiday season that iPhone dominates.

We are on the brink of an Android break-out. I make no claim about the relative performance of one vs the other, but some points are clear:

* Many manufacturers will be producing Android phones. Only Apple will be making iPhones. Android phones will, in short order, offer a lot more features for less money.

* Every network will offer Android phones. In the US, you must have AT&T if you have an iPhone. That in itself is huge, because when you buy a phone, you usually buy a network too (for a year or two). Hardware lock-in to AT&T is a competitive disadvantage for iPhone. Every iPhone user at my office has to go to the other side of the building or outside to make calls. This is in the middle of New York City; I can only imagine how badly the rest of the country suffers.

* Enough dissatisfaction with iPhone itself exists to allow competition. The primary one is battery life.

* Android apps will explode as the user base increases. That may not seem like a big deal, but I think apps (and not hardware or features) are the real strength iPhone has over all other phones on the market.

Perhaps Apple will end its exclusivity with AT&T. It is not a choice they would easily adopt, or else they wouldn't have suffered with AT&T's network over the past year. I have no idea when their agreement ends, but Apple would likely take a big hit to future earnings if they go that route. Other networks have not been willing to fork out the cash that AT&T pays to carry the iPhone.

Their ideal strategy would be to dominate the market so thoroughly that the other networks eventually come crawling to them, begging to be let in to Apple's party. Unfortunately for Apple, Google is today's monopoly buster -- just ask Microsoft. (Tomorrow, they very well could be the monopoly.)

In short, many always beats one in a competitive market. And open always beats closed.

Expect iPhone to have a lovely holiday season, but sometime next year, its market share will peak.