I think it is more about conflation / coalescence / convergence on one
device.
The more one can consume, interact and communicate on one platform, the
better, I think.
Ultimately there will always be two parallel markets: the walled garden and
the open, communal one. Google and Apple are two powerhouses large enough to
keep their own product portfolio going almost indefinitely without one
winning over the other. I'll always prefer the more open of the two (but to
be honest I'd rather not buy a product from either of them, I like buying
and building my own when it comes to computers :)
Apple will forge ahead and broker deals with the major publishing houses
largely due to inertia; the ubiquity of their iPod and iTunes has really
helped with that. However, they won't be top dog forever, and once the
next-gen open standards are more mature and there's mechanisms in place for
people to go direct to the publishers (in a fairly consistent way) for
electronic media, that will cannibalise 'marketplace' style revenue to an
extent.
That said, the curated shop / marketplace experience will always hold sway
with the 'just want it to work' segment of the userbase, so the lightbulb
moment will only happen for most users when someone/some company manages to
devise a definitive, cross-platform and platform-agnostic marketplace which
works well for all involved (and offers better returns than the iTunes /
iBookshop platform!)
This in turn will come about through market forces, amount of supporting
third-party hardware etc, because Apple will do their darndest to stop that
from happening! Everyone's still playing the wait-and-see game.
