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Indeed, the discussion becomes pointless at the moment where we start to invoke Apple's opinion.

You are saying that Apple have safety as their goal. I personally think that allowing people to install whatever they want instead of having them lick Stevie's boots before is not reducing security, as long as it's done properly, for reasons which are stated before. Taking this reasoning further, I think that this is not the reason why Apple did that, and propose a reasonable alternative explanation (companies all want to maximize their profit, no matter how jerkish the chosen option is).

But again, in the end, none of us know Apple's motivations. It's even possible that they had several reasons for doing that, including false beliefs of increased security.

A couple of points.

Its true we don't exactly know Apple's motivation's re the App Store model but they don't make a lot of profit on on it, I thinks economically its a bit like the iTunes music store that way. I saw recently a figure of $1 billion paid to developers in total so far which would make Apple's cut roughly 300-400 million dollars since the launch of the App Store. Given the scale of Apple's operations and profitability nowadays that's chump change for them. Remember that's only revenue not profit - the cost of the App Store has to be deducted. I wouldn't be surprised if it only just made a profit or even just broke even.

I think their motivations are mixed but probably include a desire not to see anybody else control the iOS development platform by getting between them and their community of developers (that's happened before in Apple's long history and its always been a disaster for them) and a desire to ensure a high quality end user experience by controlling as much as possible the whole product stack. The latter reason is probably the most important - everything I have ever read about Steve Job's says the guys is a product perfectionist and that what he lives to do is to make fantastic products that people want to buy.

In the end its all moot. The only thing that matters is what succeeds in the market place and it seems as if, for now, the consumers absolutely adore the iPhone (which includes its App Store model). Did you see those lines on the launch day for iPhone 4 or the pre-order numbers?

I don't think Apple are too obsessed with market share (although more aware of it since their defeat by Microsoft in the 90s) as long as the iPhone continues to grow sales and make huge profits for them. Their strategy re any threat from Android may well be similar to the strategy that Job's adopted when he came to rescue Apple in relation to the Windows threat. Then he realised that Apple's competitors on the desktop was the OEM desktop makers and not Windows itself, and now Apple's competitors is the other handset makers and not so much Android itself.

Could say more - fascinating subject but too tired and too hungary - so perhaps another time....