Editor’s note: This is reposted with permission of the Author.  Gary Samuelson’s original post can be found here.

Forward

If you haven’t already done so I highly recommend you “tool up” for iOS (iPhone) or Android development. Speaking more on the Android platform with this point, but Android is based on Linux – meaning that the Android “smartphone” is a small, pocket-sized Linux computer. And, behind this tiny, touch-screen UI, we have an event-driven framework suited for wireless IO (communication) and  distributed client (end-user) services. This makes a good fit for BPM mobility as it applies focused, via platform constraints, user-to-process interaction.

So, in warming up to enterprise-scale BPM Mobility, I want to first walk through a few system architectures – this prior to diving into the details of Android computing. Goal being a build-up towards mobile device UI/IO requirements: from current state to future capabilities.

BPM Desktop Client: Web-portal, JSP Struts/Tiles

The portal has been with BPM practically from the very beginning and it exists today mostly in its original form as a JSP STRUTS/Tiles web-application.

Though somewhat dated in its technology, we must give credit as it has been and still is the BPM workhorse: delivering process execution, management, tracking, and reporting to our end-users. However, the portal leaves us wanting. Today’s users require a “rich web” experience – something beyond the reach of traditional architectures (form based: HTTP get/post). And, though the BPM Portal remains unsurpassed in features it simply cannot function as a mobile application.

For example, with the portal loaded into a 10″ tablet web-browser, there are just too many active features and UI elements for reasonable touch-screen interaction. I found myself constantly zooming in for navigation and then back out again to review effects and options. However, dashboard and charting elements do work well when broken out on their own as separate elements.

IBM-BPM v751 – Advanced: Dojo, Widgets, ReST API

Business Space enhances end-user experience with iWidgets and supporting dojo infrastructure.  Users now have rich web-applications without the downside of additional overhead costs required for custom in-house web development.

New BPM ReST APIs also opens the door to previously unattainable (within reason) web capabilities. Fully in-browser, JavaScript libraries now have direct access to process management. This leads to better performing web applications with reduced UI-interrupting side-effects caused by (legacy) HTML “post” and “get” operations.

Though very close, I’m not sure that we’re at mobile computing. I need to qualify this however because Business Space runs well on Tablets. The catch is that it requires screen real-estate, network bandwidth, and additional CPU. Honestly, these are negligible on today’s desktop/laptop computers. Even reasonably powerful tablets are fully capable of running Business Space over WIFI.

Business Space on a smart-phone though does spot-light a few problems.

Screen real estate is tight on smart-phones! Slow performance is also noticeable as the phone’s CPU just doesn’t seem to keep up and deliver on the same snappy performance previously experienced on both desktop and tablet execution.

Phones require their own native BPM application.

Mobile Applications for Mobile Process Management

Writing native applications feels counter-intuitive but it’s our only alternative given the constraints and limitations for mobile computing. Moving task services to Android (for example) significantly improves performance. Execution latency and UI “lag” disappear as timings drop into sub-second range.

With local execution, we’re looking at:

Reduced IO traffic via local application loading

• Discrete JSON server requests via ReST APIs.
• Native (java) run-time execution
• Local device data-storage. For example, Android includes a database usable for both caching and offline process execution.
• Local application services. These include: notification, document viewers, contacts, identity, and geo/mapping.

Conclusion

In working towards an architecture suitable for mobile BPM we take into account accompanying constraints and capabilities. We’re on a different path in that we’ve re-focused on building native phone applications.

Smartphones require discrete UIs, optimized coding techniques, and light-weight network IO. These challenges though are well worth the investment as mobility advances user-to-process interaction to near-personal proximity.

Acknowledging the tens of millions of new users purchasing smartphones, new expectations are set/re-set on almost a daily basis. Now’s the time to revisit our architecture and build-in these future capabilities.

There’s an ongoing debate between “open” and “closed”.  Chris Dixon has written what I consider the most thoughtful blog on the subject, as it relates to phones and desktop PCs, which I referenced here.

This argument seems to come up any time Apple’s iPhone comes up because it is often referred to as a “walled garden”. Of course, this is nothing new for Apple.  They were long criticized for keeping the hardware in-house rather than licensing their software to multiple hardware vendors, a la Microsoft.  This is certainly one definition of “open” – giving a channel of manufacturers the ability to leverage your OS and build hardware around it.  Another definition of “open” is releasing your source code for your operating system, a la Android, as Andy Rubin points out on twitter.  But for Joe Hewitt of Facebook, neither iOS nor Android are open:

How does Android get away with the “open” claim when the source isn’t public until major releases, and no one outside Google can check in?

Compare the Android “open source” model to Firefox or Linux if you want to see how disingenuous that “open” claim is

Until Android is read/write open, it’s no different than iOS to me. Open source means sharing control with the community, not show and tell.

Clearly, from an OS-developer point of view, neither Android nor iOS (nor Windows, nor Mac OSX) meets the bar. (There’s a more complete writeup from Hewitt here)

From a Telecom Carrier point of view, Android meets the “open” claim: a carrier is free to jam pre-load it with proprietary software (good or bad).  The handset manufacturers consider it open because they, too, can customize to their needs.  Though, as Hewitt points out, they’re at significant disadvantage because they only have source code at major release points and have no way of getting their improvements back into the main branch of code so that it will survive into the next major release.

As an application developer, both Android and iOS are open at development time.  For a small expenditure ($100 or less) I can equip my laptop with the software I need to develop my own Android or iOS application.  I can even load the application on my phone to test it. I just can’t hack the OS on iOS.  But if I’m writing applications, I don’t particularly *want* to hack the OS because I want my OS to look like everyone else’s (my customers’) OS.  Open “source” for the OS is something that developers (the Experts) want.

Interestingly, I never heard people complain that RIM’s Blackberrys were “closed”.  I suspect this is because the volume of developers for Blackberry was much lower and not in the mainstream (ie, Silicon Valley), and because the approval process for apps was dictated by each carrier in each geography, not by RIM.  So the complaints weren’t targeted at RIM, but at carriers.  Apple’s platform was clearly more open than RIMs in that the carriers couldn’t block your apps anymore.  Apple had an approval process, but this process did not have a “negotiate payments” step in it – it was all about your application, not about holding you over the barrel for financial terms.

Apple (and Steve Jobs in particular) argue that the real debate is not open vs. closed, but “integrated versus fragmented”:

We see tremendous value in having Apple rather than our users’ be the systems integrator. We think this is a huge strength of our approach compared to Google’s. When selling to users who want their devices to just work, we believe Integrated will triumph Fragmented every time. And we also think our developers can be more innovative if they can target a singular platform rather than a hundred variants. They can put their time into innovative new features rather than testing on hundreds of different handsets.

So we are very committed to the integrated approach, no matter how many times Google tries to characterize it as closed. And we are confident that it will triumph over Google’s fragmented approach, no matter how many times Google tries to characterize it as open.

I like Steve’s re-framing of the discussion, the poles in the debate.  But since I’m not marketing for Apple, I think the real debate is between the Experience and the Expert.  Balsillie of RIM complains that “We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple.”  But Apple and Jobs aren’t telling customers what to think, or developers.  They’re explaining how Apple thinks – Apple has to defend against this notion of “closed” because the point (for Apple), isn’t to address the Expert-  it is to address the Experience.

Apple is oriented around creating a user Experience that “just works”.  They don’t always succeed, but that is what they’re after (if I had a nickel for every time someone at Apple, or NeXT before that, said “and it just works” I’d be a very rich man).  Meanwhile, the Experts are worried.  The Expert wants to be able to see the source code, compile it themselves, contribute to the project.  The Expert wants to decompile and find the internal APIs and write apps that leverage those unpublished APIs.  The Expert wants to be able to install unverified code and run it (perhaps his or her own code, developed on their own laptop).

I think many Experts are concerned that Apple is dumbing things down.  But certainly no more than Mac OSX did – for the experts.  For the Expert, I can still write my own apps and install them on my own phone.  If I want to sell them, there is a walled-garden channel for doing that – but “buying” is something non-Experts do, and Apple has built a streamlined Buying process within their iOS ecosystem.  Experts don’t like it, but non-Experts love it.  (No viruses? I like it).

There’s also an argument that “open” proponents make, that open wins out over closed over time.  But the real question is what is the target market?  Open source projects have often won over experts, but there are fewer examples where “Open” has won in consumer markets where the average consumer just wants their products to work.  Linux has made huge inroads in corporations as a trusted server operating system, and open source operating system cores makes up the core of many other product offerings (including Mac OS X).  But Linux desktops have never made much progress (don’t believe me? read Gosling’s article “Desktop Linux: the Dream is Dead“).   It is both an economic problem (free), and a user experience problem (too complicated for the average consumer).

Even in the corporate world, some industry titans are evaluating an integrated approach – in order to create a better experience for the customer.  The thinking goes that they can offer better integrated products – better tested, simpler integration, and simpler maintenance.  Of course, to make that strategy work, Ellison’s Oracle has to offer an integrated stack in which each component of the stack keeps pace with the industry’s cutting edge.  With the ecosystem of suppliers that feed the computer industry, this is easier to do today than in the 1980′s, when the vertical components would (mostly) be manufactured in-house.

The focus on experience is something that many people understand… but that many more do not.  I highly recommend reading Sachin Agarwal’s blog post about Posterous, recounting an argument with someone who thought Posterous was doomed due to smaller share, and fewer features, than some of its rivals:

I asked this person directly: do you have an iPhone? Nope. Do you use a Mac or a PC? PC. There you go. You don’t get it. Until you use an iPhone, a Mac, drive a BMW or Audi, you don’t even realize how great the experience can be or how much it can drive the success of a product.

[...]  My entire life, I fought for Apple. I tried to get my friends to use Macs. But they didn’t. It’s not because they thought their PC was better than my Mac. It’s because they didn’t know something better could exist.

[...]  And they don’t measure products by what they do, but by how well they do them. You won’t find a matrix where Apple compares their product to a competitor by feature. They measure products by the experience.

We’ll return to this topic again… focusing on BPM.

There’s a real interesting battle for mobile phone supremacy or “smartphone” supremacy right now. As the NYT notes,

In the six months ending August 10, Android phones accounted for 32 percent of the smartphones sold, Nielsen said. By comparison, iPhones accounted for 25 percent of devices sold and BlackBerry handsets for 26 percent. A month earlier, the three types of devices were in a virtual dead heat.

(I believe these numbers are US-only).  Clearly, from a marketshare point of view, Apple needs to get out of its exclusivity with AT&T to improve its US numbers.

However, it is worth noting that Google’s share of smartphones is… pretty much zero.  They don’t sell phones.  But some other folks DO sell phones that run Android:

• HTC
• Motorola
• Samsung
• LG
• etc.

One would think, as they’re selling so many of these Android phones, they must be killing it in profit, just like Apple, right?

Not so fast.

Check out this article from Horace Dediu which reveals the velocity of profit and market-share changes in 3 simple charts:

The change in 3 years is astonishing

The dramatic nature of the change is all the more apparent looking at his last chart, which really shows the velocity of change:

Profit Share Growth is telling

So, if Android handset manufacturers are killing it in volume, surely they’re making a hansome profit as well, right?

Wrong.  Over the last 3 years, none of them has profit share growth north of 10%, and it looks to me like HTC is only barely above 0%, and Motorola might be about 1%.  The others are negative.

Meanwhile, Apple’s profits from the iPhone are soaring… and Nokia’s profits are plummeting.  So how is Apple getting all the profit when it has such small market share, and isn’t even the leader in market share growth?

First the obvious items:

1. Apple’s iPhones are still considered the creme de la creme and therefore fetch a higher price from service providers like AT&T.
2. Apple is selling every phone they can make – in a sense right now they are build-to-order – which means, no inventory going stale on store shelves.  That usually enhances profit considerably, though it also often means they lose out on some marketshare.

The less obvious items:

Apple benefits from laser focus – having essentially one model every year means that all the engineering focus can be on one model.  All the sales focus. All the support focus.  Yes, they still sell the 3GS, but this pattern of selling last year’s model at a lower price is a pretty simple model to sustain and support.

By leveraging common components and commodities across several device categories, Apple gets “scale” in certain components they might not otherwise:

• The A4 chip (iPhone4, iPad, and AppleTV)
• Flash Memory (NAND) – they are the biggest buyer by far, buying 20-25% of the world’s supply!  This gives them a huge pricing and availability advantage in the market.
• Touch screen R&D
• Touch screen components – Apple is already the largest purchaser of capacitive touchscreen glass screens.
• Leveraging iOS across multiple devices… and iOS itself leverages much of OSX.

By developing a few key differentiators and then leveraging them to the hilt across their product line, Apple is moving up-market at the same time that Apple is growing share.  But from Apple’s perspective, quality is much more important than quantity.

A reasonable difference, however, between Apple eating Nokia’s lunch, and Apple eating “Android’s” lunch (if we can pretend for a moment that Android phones are one thing rather than dozens of companies), is that Android *does* represent a viable competing platform, whereas Nokia’s fractured smartphone strategy did not.

However, as long as Apple’s platform is seen as the premier platform, with a halo effect for those who write apps for it, Apple will continue to see the best apps first.  And the platform will continue to be not only viable, but defensible. To that end, we’re already seeing Apple leverage the platform (appstore/iOS) across more devices than just phones.  And they’re making these moves faster than the competition, and in a more rationalized way.  I think in this market, you want to be the phone provider that is making money, rather than the one that is taking market share, if you have to make a choice.

A measure of how Apple has changed the game: even die-hard advocates of a browser-first-and-last method for building applications is starting to second-guess their conclusions.  The Apple iPhone/iTouch platform has so many devices out there, that it is hard to resist developing for it first – even if it wasn’t the best-looking target environment to deploy software to.  On top of that, it *is* the best-looking target environment.  Even more troubling for other platforms: Apple has the “cool” factor working for it to.  You can develop for the most populous platform, that shows off your service or application the best, and also get a halo effect of the Apple cool-factor to rub off on you.  When’s the last time you saw USA Today take out a full page ad to advertise their Droid app?  But on Monday they had one advertising their iPhone app (or was it iPad?). And I didn’t even look at it as USA Today being a pretender – it just made sense to me that they’re targeting this platform.

But there’s another factor that analysis like that offered by John Arnold overlooks.  The mobile website experience is significantly degraded by the quality of your 3G or Edge signal.  It makes some web applications nearly unusable, even though they were specifically designed for Android or for the iPhone.

Cameron Moll gives a similar critique of the current state of affairs:

I argued that “smart clients” (lightweight apps installed on a device whose content is primarily fed by and stored in the cloud) would and should remain secondary to providing the same experience in the browser, again for the reasons mentioned above.

Since the release of iPhone and now with the release of iPad, I’ve gradually found myself questioning more and more the assumption I made. Apple has consistently proven that holistically controlling the entire user experience—inclusive of hardware to software and everything in between—has the potential to yield a more pleasant experience overall. Think of Mac OS + Mac, iPhone OS + iPhone, and now iPhone OS + iPad.

He wonders if HTML5 and CSS might still offer viable alternatives to objective-C on the iPhone, but I think without a fully “local” experience with the cached data, it won’t be good enough.  One of the things phone users are starting to value is how their applications behave when they’re offline (in the subway, on a plane, or just in a dead spot).

If I were writing my “mobile experience” for a product today, there’s no question I’d write it first for the iPhone OS.  Odds are it will have the best overall user experience and set the stage for positive reviews and buzz – as well as reaching the largest number of people.  People on phones other than iPhone and Android phones simply don’t use the mobile web – it doesn’t truly work for them.  Android is gaining steam but it is still a distant second, and has a fractured marketplace for me to publish my apps to.  In fact, I’d probably write the iPhone App first, then the mobile web app.  And then evaluate market demand for Android.

But that’s just me.

Interesting developments in the land of “tablets” and “netbooks”.

It isn’t really my area of primary interest but because I like following Apple’s product direction I follow the news.

First, there’s this article from the day after the keynote, in which Andy Ihnatko goes into great detail with his iPad experience.  I like that he took the time to actually use the device rather than rushing to get a story out and cutting short his time to experience the device.  I’ll note that most of the journalists who stayed and laid hands on it actually had a more positive impression than those that didn’t.  That’s surprising (usually expectations meeting reality is a set up for disappointment).  And it says something about Apple’s attention to detail.

Some of the comments that jumped out from Andy’s review were that it “felt right”.  The “rightness” of products is something Apple has really been excelling at in the last few years.  Another was his commentary on its speed – that it actually feels like you are moving something – not just gesturing and waiting for the phone to move it – a much more complete experience, if you will.

The implications for the iPhone are that Apple may be able to squeeze its A4 (or similar) design into an iPhone and offer this kind of speed in the smaller form factor.  I think there’s limited runway for SPEED to differentiate with phones – and we’ll hit those diminishing returns faster than the 20 years or so it took with PCs -  but right now there’s a lot of room for improvement over my iPhone 3G, and it sounds like Apple has a chance to do that – and still preserve battery life.  That’s impressive.

The truly impressive thing Apple did was leverage the App Store to make the iPad instantly relevant instead of making it a platform in search of applications and utility.  The Kindle and other single-purposes devices suddenly pale in comparison.

Also, regarding the most oft-reported shortcoming (no Flash support):

Months ago, I installed a browser plugin for Safari called “ClickToFlash.” It blocks all Flash content. You’ll see a placeholder image in the webpage and if you want to view the content, give it a click and it’ll load in. I have not noticed any drop in my ability to enjoy the Web. What I have noticed is that my browser is faster and more responsive, and that I can leave a couple of dozen tabs and windows up for weeks without having to force-restart my Mac.

Interestingly, I do this as well, and it doesn’t diminish my experience one bit – in fact it enhances it.  Granted, I do like the option of turning on flash for, say, streaming stock quotes.  But HTML5 can handle that level of animation and is “more standard” than Flash… I think Apple has done the smart thing here by protecting their platform and brand image, and putting pressure on Adobe to step up and make Flash a better product, or get out of the way and make way for HTML 5.

Next, the North Temple blog has an interesting post: On iPads, Grandmas and GameChanging, but I would have called it, so a Grandma, a Technophobe, and a Luddite meet in a bar… The short point here: people he never expected to be interested in a computing device are interested in the iPad.  I had a similar experience when my parents told me they were “buying each other iPhones for Christmas.” And then they asked me if they should get the 3G or 3GS… seriously?  I was tempted to tell them 3G just so they wouldn’t leap frog me technologically.  Then, I find out they’re Netflix subscribers.  When my parents start buying something technical – it is going to be big – because they are NOT early adopters anymore by any stretch.  But they are influencers.  My dad proudly tells of all the guys at the golf club who now have gone out and gotten iPhones to keep up.  And hey, they like the big numbers on the phone.

On a surprising, but I think intelligent response to the advent of the iPad, Acer says it will not release a competing device per se.  I think it is refreshing that Acer is sticking to what it does best.  Honestly, I think this is what RIM should do – make the keyboard experience better and better, rather than try to be a touchscreen phone company.  Acer understands that if they make a tablet it will lack the advantages of Apple’s iPad, but it will have all the same disadvantages.  So they’re punting (for now). Smart move, in my opinion.

Many pundits surmise that Apple won’t have a 2 year lead this time… but I think they will have at least 1 year before a competing system (an Android tablet?) will come along that can leverage apps (android apps?) that even come close to putting it in the same league.  And Apple is also adding pressure by having what looks to be better performance that will be tricky to match in the short-term. The key points from Lin of Acer:

Lin pointed out that designing an iPad-like device would not pose any technical challenges for Acer, but said such a product does not fit into Acer’s business model.

Apple is able to support the iPad through its iTunes ecosystem, while few other makers, including Acer, have comparable experience in operating an online store, Lin noted.

Astute analysis.

Now, StevenF argues that the iPad is a signal of the New World, versus the Old World.  Gen X being smack in the middle of old world computing, and the New World being targeted at those both older and younger than Gen X.  I’m not a big fan of generational themes like Gen X, but he has a point.  If computers in the future will “just work” and reduce the expertise required to use them, they become accessible to more people, and become more important to our society.  I’m constantly trying to get people (rather, the people who ask me IT questions) to switch to Macs because the number of IT-related issues is so much less (as judged by how often they ask me for help).  But an iPhone? I never get questions about how to get some driver installed or printer to work with it… !

I especially enjoyed reading how stevenf railed against the iPhone’s closed system at first -but a month later came back and used it full time.  Because it is just a better phone / smartphone experience, and the open/closed argument doesn’t really matter outside of technophiles like me.  And even I can see that it shouldn’t matter to 99% of the world’s population.  When it is your phone, or your car, you just want it to work. Period. No BSOD. No crashing.  To that end, foursquare can you please fix your app? It crashes more than any other 3 apps I use combined.

So how are things going elsewhere in smartphone land?  Jay Yarrow of the Insider says that the Google Android app store is a joke… You don’t often hear Google described as “sloppy”.  The fact that Android developers feel they can make more money on the Apple App Store is not a good sign for Google/Android. And it is an indication that doing this stuff right is harder than many of us assumed.  From Skyhook Wireless:

In December, wireless firm Skyhook Wireless produced a report about developer frustration with Android. Skyhook interviewed 30 mobile application developers and concluded, “developers are not generating real revenue via Android apps.” As a result “developers are becoming hesitant to invest more time and effort into apps that do not pay off.”

Ouch.

Finally, some would argue that the iPad is a sign of the third revolution…

I’m looking forward to laying hands on the iPad. But more than that, I’m looking forward to iPhone 4.0 – I want to see if it is worth upgrading!

Apple’s net profit from iPhone’s exceeded Nokia’s by approximately 50% ($1.6B in net for Apple, $1.1B in net for Nokia). Its the first time Apple’s net profit in phones exceeded Nokia’s, and it is a dramatic reversal. Just 7.4 million phones generated this profit for Apple. Nokia sold 108 million phones to generate its $1.1B.

The way things are headed, Nokia and others may have more volume, but Apple and RIM will have substantially all the profit.  This is similar to what’s happening in the PC world, where Apple has a stunning 90% share of computers that cost over $1000, according to NPD reports.  Meanwhile the profit is getting sucked out of the rest of the PC business by netbooks and lower cost laptops.

Meanwhile, the AppleInsider has a really interesting comparison of the business models of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phone.  It points out that while Google’s model has some advantages, there are also some disadvantages – no control over the Android brand, for one, and lack of clear accountability to fix customer issues once they have an Android phone.  AppleInsider points out that one bad Android phone can tarnish the brand – which is true of the iPhone as well, but the difference is that Apple has control over what gets released with the iPhone brand, but Google can’t exercise the same kind of control over Android derivatives.  I can’t help but think that the fragmented market of Android phones will only be an advantage if collectively the phones can evolve faster and take advantage of new technology faster than Apple’s iPhones… but so far technology adoption hasn’t been the problem – user experience has been the problem.  And it seems like Apple still has the edge there.

In previous posts I pointed out how Apple made the right call in putting off all the me-too features in favor of the platform-  and then a followup post on the actual execution of that strategy once the iPhone 3GS was released.  The day after the latest Apple presentation seems like a good time to revisit the topic.

First, its apparent that the standalone iPod line is a little less interesting than it was, now that the iPhone and iPod Touch are here.  The incremental improvements are still there, but a little less exciting when you’re so many iterations into a product cycle that gets new offerings literally every 12 months.

But let’s take a look at how the iPhone is doing, shall we?  Oh, we could look at unit sales.  Or revenue.  Or profit margin.  But I just read a blog post that makes the point from the application developer’s perspective. Matt Hall writes in “Android Market Sales, Are Those Tears or is it Raining in Here?” that Android sales are dramatically lower than sales on the iPhone – more so than just the difference in units shipped would suggest.

Let’s take a look at the two charts that are pretty brutal:

Larva Labs Android Market Sales

Followed by a comparison of how their apps are doing on Android Market versus iPhone’s Appstore:

Larva Labs Sales Android vs. iPhone

Ouch.  Matt goes on to give a good critique (and advice) to the Google Android Market for improving their site from a developer’s perspective. But my thought is the key thing the Android Market is missing is that it doesn’t appear to be as focused on making buying decisions easy.  The iPhone/Apple App Store didn’t get everything right with their App Store, but they sure made buying apps easy.  Those customer-facing or customer-touching processes are really important…Matt remains optimistic about Android in the medium- to long-term and I think that’s valid – because the OS is good and it is free – it is likely to be adopted by a lot of phone makers and be in the hands of a lot of users.  But it also may get fragmented like Unix (see China Mobile’s plans for its oPhone and its own application market, powered by Android but not exactly “in” the original marketplace). There are also a lot of complaints in the comment feed about piracy (something Apple’s ecosystem makes harder).  There’s a lot of platform risk in the Android market… and not much (anymore) in the iPhone App Store platform.

And the strategy of building the network-effect marketplace behind a new software platform on the iPhone appears to be a big winner for Apple at this point.  No one else is even close to challenging its ecosystem in this respect.

Still not convinced?  Take a look at the Chart of the Day from the Business Insider:

Apple's iPhone Games vs. Nintendo DS and Sony PSP