If you can't beat 'em, hope somebody else clubs 'em over the head for you. Microsoft must be chortling in not-so-secret glee over the possibility that the International Trade Commission (ITC) might ban importing HTC Android phones onto the U.S. market—because Microsoft, not Apple, would be the real winner in Android's collapse.
The commission will make its decision on Dec. 14, Bloomberg reports.
There's a certain domino effect assumed here. As patent analyst (and accused Microsoft partisan) Florian Muller explains, the patents over which Apple and HTC are fighting appear to be at the core of Android. Apple's goal isn't just to block HTC: it's to block the whole forward roll of Android, the nation's dominant mobile OS.
But Apple very well may already be satisfying the full national demand for iPhones. Android's most critical strength isn't its UI or rich app library. It's that it's available on an extremely wide range of hardware, so buyers can get Android phones configured in all sorts of ways that they can't get iPhones. They can get bigger screens, or smaller screens, or physical keyboards; they can get 4G LTE, or WiMAX, or the latest Nvidia processors for gaming. They can get them prepaid for $129, and they can get them on every carrier.
As long as Apple sticks to its one physical niche—touch-screen-only devices with 3.5-inch screens and 3G, at prices that only work well when subsidized—it won't dramatically expand its smartphone market share in the United States. ComScore has estimated Apple's U.S. market share as slowly creeping upward with the decline of RIM, but at a much more leisurely pace than Android's leaps and bounds. That's fine with Apple, which has always been focused on profits more than market share, and has been winning the profit race.
Carriers Need an Anti-Apple
Carriers will also do everything they can to prevent Apple from dominating the mobile market. iDevices are dangerous drugs for carriers: they stress networks and give up control of software, marketing, sales, and support to a company they've always suspected wants them to become "dumb pipes."
Nature abhors a vacuum, and a ban on Android (and a move away from Android out of patent fears) means that a bunch of big manufacturers will be looking for smartphone operating systems that let them deliver the phones Americans want (and that Apple doesn't want to build) at the right sizes, shapes, and prices. Carriers, meanwhile, will be looking for a way to balance out Apple's clout.
What's out there? Anything associated with RIM looks miserable at this point. Symbian is doomed. Samsung's Bada could play a role globally if Samsung open-sourced it. But Windows Phone 7 is positioned as the best alternative to Android for manufacturers and carriers, the two groups who would be hurting most if Android suddenly went MIA.
Why Windows Phone is Positioned to Win
HTC, Samsung, and LG all already make Windows Phones. They can come with physical keyboards, in various sizes, and it looks like Microsoft's notoriously restrictive hardware spec is finally opening up. Nokia has pledged to use ST-Ericsson processors for upcoming phones rather than the Qualcomm processors Microsoft has required so far. Can Nvidia and TI be far behind?
Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" is also an easy-to-use, appealing OS. Its biggest problem right now is a lack of apps, but that's a chicken-and-egg issue. If Windows Phone suddenly becomes the OS of choice for wireless carriers and Android starts appearing to be frozen out of the U.S. market, developers will flock to Microsoft's platform.
From a legal perspective, Microsoft is in a much stronger position than Google is, at least at the moment. Microsoft is suing Android manufacturers over patents, and forcing settlements; nobody seems to be suing Microsoft in a substantive way right now.
Microsoft has a history of being just as tough a partner to deal with as Apple is, but carriers are clearly hoping that by balancing Microsoft against Apple, they'll retain the upper hand.
Microsoft's major hurdle right now is the rolling juggernaut of Android, a shape-shifting, something-for-everyone OS whose flexibility pleases the real decision-makers in the wireless world—not (always) customers, but carriers and manufacturers. So while we wait to see if the ITC blocks HTC's Android phones, listen carefully: that quiet chortling you hear in the background is Steve Ballmer's.