Even though Apple sales have dropped over the last year, there is no denying that it is one of the leading brands when it comes to smartphones and computer systems, especially in the premium category. For most people still go by the phrase that if you don’t have an iPhone, you simply don’t have an iPhone and even the Mac users swear by their laptops and systems that there is no other like Mac. The iOS by Apple is exclusive to iOS users, unlike android which is available across multiple platforms. But have you ever wondered why Apple never let other companies use iOS
Well here are excerpts from some of the best answers from Quora that will give you an insight into this very important question
70-80% of Apple's revenue is earned through the iPhone. Apple makes most of
the chips used inside the iPhone(most because Samsung makes some too) and
assembles the iPhone to give the user a complete mobile usage experience.
The way iOS is made, it utilizes memory and disk space in such a way that it
optimizes the functioning of apps by freezing up memory from apps no longer
needing them. Android, on the other hand is not very efficient at memory
management. That is the reason new iPhones score much higher on
benchmarks like AnTuTu even after having a third of the RAM and much less
processor power in terms of sheer numbers.
Having said all this, if Apple makes iOS open to other mobile phone
companies, it won't be long until phones with much higher memory(primary)
and processor capability start performing better than the iPhone. Imagine how
lovely iOS would look and feel on an AMOLED display instead of the
traditional LCD display used on iPhones till now.
Another user makes a remark on the company’s history which strongly promotes their reason for the current strategy
In the 80s, there were hundreds of clones of the Apple II, which were actually
illegal, as they copied the firmware. Those ate into Apple's sales, as much as
IBM saw their PC being copied by everyone until today.
When they created the Mac, the firmware was way more complex than that of a
70s computer such as the PC or the Apple II. In fact, a good part of the original
Mac OS functionality was enclosed in something called “Toolbox”. This made
copying one of the first Macs very difficult.
In order to make a Mac clone without pirating their software, one would have
to go to a very difficult process of reverse engineering the whole Mac OS. This
happened twice: From a Brazilian company called Unitron, which had a full
clone of the Macintosh 512, and an American company called Nutek, which
had a semi-compatible machine. I am not aware of any of them being ever sold.
Some companies made cheap Mac clones which used Apple's ROM from old
machines (yea, you had to remove some old Mac's rom to sell that crap). Later,
Apple started licensing their rom for a while. This was discontinued when they
switched to PowerPC.
Some five years later, with Steve Jobs out, some beancounters decided that
having more market penetration would be a good thing, and in the mid 90s,
Apple decided to make a quick buck by licensing both the rom and Mac OS.
Some companies started making official clones, and Apple would get some
money from each clone sold.
Of course, the clones were way cheaper, and were eating into their core
business: selling computers with a high profit rate, especially on the high end,
with the best margins.
As soon as Jobs comes back to Apple, he decided to stop the licensing thing.
Turns out that the licenses were tied to the OS version, so they released a new
Mac OS, with all the niceties they have been building with IBM at that time,
and which ended the clone program. (oh, and it came with HFS+, the default
file system on Mac OS 8 until Mac OS 10.12 Sierra, and all version of iOS until
version 10.
There is a long history of Apple and their operating systems in other machines,
one that goes back some 40 years. Now that they are the biggest company in
the world, they are sure as hell to never license their stuff ever again.
And last but not the least, the more practical issue based on user behavior is what we agree with the most
Because this would mean giving up their key competitive advantage. What
Apple sells, is not a device, it's a bundle of hardware (iPhone) + software (iOS).
You can't pick just one. If you like the iPhone because of how it looks, you will
have to use iOS. If you like is because it's easy to use, you will have to get the
iPhone.
There are several reasons why they're doing this. One of them is that OSes are
doing a much better job at locking people in than a sole physical device can.
They create high switching costs that retain users.
If you have always used an iPhone, you got used to the user interface (i), you
took a lot of time to add all your contacts and useful files (ii), and you have all
your favorite apps on it (iii). You could do the same things on any Android
device, but it will take you some time and effort to do it all over again.
This is preventing you from switching to the competition even though Android
phones' design look increasingly more like the iPhone (cf. OnePlus 5 below).
But what if you could get iOS to run on a cheaper Android phone tomorrow?
Then you would be much more likely to churn because you could just import
everything from your iPhone and move on. Switching costs would be
dramatically reduced.
See, it's very easy for Apple's competition to offer a design that is very similar
to the iPhone's. What they can't do, is to offer a phone that has the exact same
OS. Giving them this advantage doesn't make sense from Apple's standpoint as
it would kill their market share.
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