Google is to I-phone as the PC was to the Apple II
Yes. Google is proposing to break the back of the tied contract model of smartphone sales. If Nexus has features that reasonably match or exceed (see the Nexus camera, for instance) the iphone features, but is an open platform and is offered unlocked or with subsidies from multiple GSM providers, iphone will have to break its ATT monoculture.
Google may not win the market with this. (Remember when IBM went open source and Apple stayed closed source? Apple lost market share in a huge way, but IBM didn't win.) BUT Google will open up the market and that will be good for consumers--and perhaps, bad for Apple/ATT.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
