The first, of course, is the personal computer. Apple computers was one of the largest producers of computers in the late 70's and the early 80's, culminating in the 1984 Super Bowl commercial for Job's pet project, the Macintosh. The Macintosh was the first computer with a graphical interface- an idea that changed computers forever. Though Mac OS as it was called never achieved true dominance in the industry by way of market share (it only ever got up to around 7%)
Apple itself was one of the largest manufacturers of computers. But with products that regularly tipped the scales price-wise, and a lack of innovation on the design front, Mac market share took a steep dive, nearly sending the company into bankruptcy- a decline that was only reversed when Jobs returned.
In the beginning of 2009, the thinnest Android phone was the HTC Dream at .67 inches thick.
By the end of 2009, the thinnest Android phone was the Samsung Galaxy at .47 inches thick.
In 2009, the thinnest iOS smartphone was the iPhone 3GS at .48 inches thick.
In 2010, the thinnest android smartphone was the Samsung Galaxy S at .39 inches thick.
The iPhone 4, Apple's 2010 release was slimmed down to .37 inches thick.
Android was catching up. But 2010 was nothing compared to what 2011 has been so far. Apple has not released another iPhone, and while the thinnest Android phone overall is only .3 inches thin, the thinnest dual core Android phone is the Galaxy S2 at .33 inches thick. Android phones continue to grow slimmer than the iPhones, making them more aesthetically pleasing to consumers.
But slimness isn't enough. The phones need to be super fast to compete with the iPhone:
The first Android phone, the HTC Dream had a 528mhz processor. At the same time, the iPhone 3GS had a 600MHz processor.
But by the end of 2009, the Acer Liquid A1 featured a 768 MHz processor. Android was pulling ahead in power. And just a month later, in January of 2010, HTC and Google released the Nexus One, with a processor clocked at 1 GHz. Apple's iPhone 4 had a 1GHz processor suspected of being underclocked to 800 MHz. By the end of the year, Motorola's Droid 2 Global edition featured a 1.2 GHz processor.
It is now past the middle of 2011 and the year has seen the release of numerous dual core smartphones, including the previously mentioned Galaxy S2, the HTC Sensation, and the HTC Evo 3D, all of which feature processors capable of 2.4x the speed of the iPhone 4. And the iPhone 5 is suspected to only feature a 1GHz dual core processor, making the 1.5 GHz dual core processors on other upcoming smartphones look even more desirable to consumers.
But power and thickness are only a couple characteristics that are nothing compared with the biggest of them all: Data speed. Data speed in smartphones follows a similar trend to that of the previous two catagories:
In 2009, the iPhone 3GS contained a 7.2 mb/s 3G radio. At the same time, multiple Android phones were able to reach the same data speeds on T-Mobile.
The iPhone 4 featured the same cellular radio as the 3GS, still allowing only for download speeds of up to 7.2 Mb/s. The HTC Evo 4G was the first phone to offer WiMAX 4G, and offered theoretical data speeds of up to 40 mb/s. By 2011, HTC's Thunderbolt LTE phone was the first to offer that protocol, offering the same theoretical speeds of up to 60 mb/s. Here are some real world tests showing data speeds on the different phones.
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iPhone 4
HTC Evo 4G
HTC Thunderbolt
All of these factors contribute to Android's market share increasing, while Apple's remains stagnant. I don't think that Apple's market share will really decrease in the near future, unless, of course, development of the platform's hardware stagnates and can't keep up with that of Android manufacturers, which is a trend that is already beginning.
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