Apple’s (AAPL) not in the mobile phone business, it’s in the perpetual-motion business. If past performance is any indication, the announcement on Sept. 12 of the iPhone 5 will lead to a rush of customers when the first units go on sale. Apple releases product, people buy product. Rinse, repeat.
There’s another company that would like to be in the perpetual-motion business, too: Microsoft (MSFT). The computing giant has some experience with this, having turned Windows into an indispensable part of the PC world for much of the 1980s and ’90s.The action has moved on to mobile now, and Microsoft has two wishes as it comes to that market with its line of Windows Phone 8 devices in the coming weeks: that there’s room for three companies in the battle and that it’ll be one of them.
Looking at the state of the mobile market, neither of those is a given. According to market-research firm ComScore (SCOR), Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system commanded 52 percent of the U.S. smartphone market in the second quarter of this year. Apple’s iOS took up 32 percent; Microsoft’s Windows Phone had 4 percent.
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