Android already surpasses iPhone

[Snowreap]

Still, the switch to Intel so that Macs could run Windows seems like an admission within Apple that if push comes to shove, they will live on as a hardware company rather than continue putting all their bets on their own OS. If Android does take off, I don't think it will kill iPhones, but it might cause Apple to relent and come out with an iPhone that comes with the Android OS!

I think the reason for the switch is that Intel did so much more volume (due to Windows) that the hardware was cheaper. Intel and AMD can spread out the development cost of their CPU's over a very large market, and they do enough volume that they can bring newer CPUs to market every year. the only thing Apple is admitting with that move is that PowerPC CPUs will always have a worse MIPS/$ ratio than Intel/AMD (and a worse top-end performance), because the volume is so much lower, making it harder to recover the development costs. IBM doesn't sell enough PowerPC chips to be able to match Intel and AMD's pace of chip releases and clock-speed improvements.

I don't see something similar happening with phones because the costs are a lot lower, and the engineering economics are different (for example power consumption affects all kinds of things in ways that don't apply to desktop PCs).

-ken