Michael Mace, formerly with Palm and Apple, noted in his blog last week that the other mobile platforms have such a primitive infrastructure that they appear pathetic compared to Apple. Apple has changed the rules of the game, and that’s the way to attack bigger, stronger competitors.

Mr. Mace is currently a principal at Rubicon Consulting. His background as a Chief Competitive Officer and VP of Product Planning at Palm and VP of Strategic Marketing at PalmSource gives him an authoritative, insider’s view of Apple’s current moves, especially regarding the iPhone SDK initiative.

It is as if the entire mobile phone industry was asleep at the wheel for a decade. Mobile applications have been hard to find and install, carriers took too much of developers’ revenue, so much so that Apple appears generous at at 30 percent cut.

Apple is building a third platform for mobile computers that just happens to also be a mobile phone. In addition, Apple has maneuvered itself into a position to become the leader in application development which will drive sales in a way that current smartphone technology cannot.

"The rest of the industry is still trying to figure out how to respond to the system design of the iPhone, and now they need to also figure out how to run an ecosystem as well," Mr. Mace observed. "Right now Apple is changing the terms of the competition faster than the other guys can react, which is exactly the right way to beat a group of larger competitors." [Emphasis added by iPO.]

iPO also notes that nearly a year after the iPhone introduction, no company has figured out how to develop an equivalent smartphone user interface, sell music and videos profitably on the device, engage developers, or integrate their phones well into the personal computer ecosystem.