Today Smart phone business is a two horse race. Apple and Google controls 99% of phone market share. But it was not always like this. Back in 2007, Nokia was ruling basic phones and blackberry was king of smart phones. Microsoft was selling millions of windows touch phones. In last few years, the things have changed . If you want to know the story how Apple and Google became dominant players in phone business , you should read Dogfight book.

This post reviews different aspects of the book.

##Vision

Steve Jobs turned around Apple using iPod. iPod was a big hit for Apple which propelled them from single digit Mac market to a digital consumer company. But iPod was not a run away success from day one. It took around 2-3 years before it really became the market leader. At same time Steve jobs also realized that mp3 players are in the great risk once the phone can play the music. Phone will become a great convergent device. So he wanted to disrupt the cell phone market himself in order to protect the great market share of iPod.

Same time Google wanted to put their search engine directly into the phone. Google always feared that Microsoft will take over search business when they integrate their search, windows live search, directly into the windows phone. Windows phone contributed to major part of the smart phone business at that point of time. So in 2005 they bought Android and thought they can build their phone which has the Google search engine built in.

In both cases, iPhone and Android, it started as defensive products for existing successful products rather than as a new product itself.

##Cultural challenge Apple never built a phone before. There were two different teams with in Apple competing to build a phone. One wanted to bring iPod OS to phone and one wanted to bring Mac OSX to the phone. So both team had their own version of Apple phone. Steve jobs being a canny leader embraced both and was seeing which way will win ultimately. Both teams work hard for few years before deciding on running Mac OSX in phone was much better than turning the iPod into a phone.

So in the book you will be able to get scoop into how these two teams competed against each other and it’s consequences. It had a great impact on individuals as it involved lot’s of dirty politics, team tactics and moreover when the whole thing completed a huge amount of people left because they felt betrayed and burnt.

Google’s approach to this was completely different. They never built an OS before or for that matter never built a consumer product before. They were all about web services and running those web services at scale. Even the co-founder Serge Brin had doubts about Android being gelled with Google’s culture. Google culture was all about openness. Anyone can look into code , any one can contribute and any one can extend. But when Andy Rubin, co-founder of Android, took over the Android development within Google, he requested for very strict access to code and no one knew what Android was up to,which was kind of different for the whole company.

##Technical challenges Apple never built a phone before which means they have to learn all about phones and interaction of phone with rest of the world. Being a secretive company, Apple din’t collaborate with other cellphone companies. They had high bar to achieve. The book gives the details. As an example, One point of time Steve jobs asked one of engineer to build whole phone casing with aluminum . For long time engineers tried convincing Jobs that they should not use aluminum as it blocks the radio signals. But over time, Jobs got what he wanted and engineers able to make a break through to make aluminum work with phones.

Google at same time was thinking about doing the phone business and Andy Rubin had exact experience of doing that. He already done that before with company he founded called Danger, which he later sold it to Microsoft. Still they had their own challenges with UI. They also have to figure out the interactions with different components. All those kind of things took them long time to figure out.

##The unveiling of iPhone Steve Jobs was master in unveiling new products. He was always proud of what his company builds.You can find very few CEO’s who are proud of their company products. So when Steve jobs unveiled phone , he promised the audience that Apple going to reinvent the phone and he did it. Actually it was beyond his own ambitions. It was not big surprise that Apple is releasing phone, as most of people were expecting it that time. No one expected the phone to be so good. Every one was blew away and so did Android team at Google.

When the iPhone got revealed, Andy Rubin was driving and watching this live video through his car. He just blown away. He knew that it was the future. He just picked up the phone and called team right away. “We have to reinvent the UI. Whatever we were doing to use physical keyboard like blackberry , we have to rethink now”.

##The dilemma Google started to work on Android to put it services on the phone business. Now with iPhone, they got their maps and Youtube,Search all on iPhone. With iPhone dominating in market place, Google got their dreams fulfilled and fear of Microsoft went away. So now the real question was what purpose Android going to serve?. There was a dedicated team from Google, headed by Vic Gundotra, who worked on iPhone applications and they thought android was just a distraction.

Steve jobs was hearing rumors about Android and he asked Eric Schmidt. Most of the time Google told it just a side project and nothing compared to iPhone.

So within Google there was a dilemma about future .. Is it great apps on iOS or build an OS which is going to rival with iOS?.

##Right time,Right thing Android was right time,right thing. It was till all other carries in US realized that they want a competitive product to iPhone,as iPhone was exclusive to AT&T. iPhone was huge and AT&T was making lot of money. Everyone wanted an alternative and only Android was viable one. The reason being it was touch ready, it was already built and backed by big company like Google. Suddenly there were people like HTC,Verizon wanted to build phone using Android. Google also realized Android going to be much more bigger than they imagined.

##Rivalry Steve jobs already went through a platform war with Microsoft. He din’t want to redo the same with any other company in phone business. He thought iOS software was 5 years ahead of any other mobile software out there. He thought if ever there was going to be competitor, its going to be Microsoft. Over the time, MS was becoming less relevant in consumer space, as they were concentrating more on enterprise. But the real competition came from somewhere else. It was similar kind of company called Google, where they put all their effort into Android. When the Verizon Droid got released, he got pissed off. He felt betrayed and called Android is just a rip off of iPhone.

So the book gives intimate view of things that happed in last 5-6 years where both Google and Apple in different ways created Gigantic smart phone market. They collaborated with each other for search,maps,Youtube and but they started competing in OS.Google was lucky to be in right place at right time.

This book goes beyond the details that you may read on Internet. So if you are interested to know the history of Smart phone this book is a must read. It’s repetition of computer war between Microsoft and Apple. When platform war happens, it’s one takes it all situation. Book is highly authentic as sources come from reputed blogs and court testimonies. So go and grab a copy of your’s.