And in a proper anti-trust environment, the app store (which Steve Jobs really resisted anyway) wouldn't have been permitted to act the way it did and probably make the iPhone too restrictive for most people to adopt.

So other consumer-driven solutions would have come about. It's not rocket science.

And how would it have been better for Android not to exist?

And yes it’s not rocket science, that must be why all of the other open source mobile operating systems given away for free have been so successful. Who was going to fund it in your hypothetical world?

Yes and in a “proper anti trust world” a manufacturer who at the time had 1% of the mobile operating system would have come under scrutiny because of anti trust.

On stage during the launch, SJ said their goal was to capture 1% of the market in the first year. They barely reached that by the time the app store was launched.

*points at Linux, C, algebra, writing*

> And how would it have been better for Android not to exist?

*points at Boot2Gecko, J2ME, PalmOS*

Also, false dichotomy. Android (or something like it) may well have still existed; just, it likely wouldn't've been so dominant (and its ecosystem wouldn't've been so reliant on proprietary Google libraries, which prevent people from running Android programs on non-Google systems).

> Yes and in a “proper anti trust world” a manufacturer who at the time had 1% of the mobile operating system would have come under scrutiny because of anti trust.

… Yes. In case you're not aware, Apple already had a rather special relationship with telecoms companies at the time; something (e.g.) Handspring lacked.

The point of antitrust isn't to break up monopolies after they've already done damage to the market. It's to ensure that market dynamics continue to actually function in the real world – to ensure that the free market at least somewhat resembles a meritocracy.

And the largest contributors to Linux are corporations. Are we really going to bring up the other irrelevant non sequiturs?

> points at Boot2Gecko, J2ME, PalmOS*

And they all failed even though they had much larger commercial backers. None of them were scrappy startups.

> which prevent people from running Android programs on non-Google systems).

Yet over 1 billion people use phones based on Android in countries like China without any Google services.

> Yes. In case you're not aware, Apple already had a rather special relationship with telecoms companies at the time.

Apple had a relationship with one telecom when the App Store was introduced - AT&T.

> Handspring lacked.

Palm phones were out before the iPhone existed.