It is more like Nike is a leader in athletic shoes, but not in dress shoes, casual shoes, etc. If you look at manufacturers, Apple is the clear leader of smartphones right now, regardless of OS. Apple enjoys (and will for some time) the top marketshare among all manufacturers.

Now, if Apple would let other manufacturers use their OS, I believe it would dominate the markets on an OS level as Android does. Android OS is larger mainly due to free or low cost phones, not the OS. I’ve heard too many people lament ” I wish I waited and bought an iPhone.”.

but why does that even matter.  the marketshare is relevant for the OS, not the manufacturer.  That’s like saying Nike’s marketshare and brand recognition matter because of the manufacturers they use.  Nobody cares who is manufacturing something.  If that were the case, more people would steer away from iPhones because the conditions in which manufacturers are working to put them together.

I don’t understand the relevance here – please explain.

There is no doubt that the iPad is going to be king of the tablet hill for a very long time to come.  After all, Apple created that hill.

But just like with the iPhone, which Apple created that hill as well, Google  will invest the resources to figure it out.  Right now they are struggling bad with having too many different Android OS versions.  More specifically, newer releases are not fully compliant for apps built for older versions.  This creates a problem not only with the Android reputation but also with developers.  After all, what developer wants to build an app for Android only to have it die when a newer release hits.

But like a said, and make no mistake about it, competitors will rise up and face the iPad, and in turn, take the marketshare that Apple is currently enjoying.

Same thing happened with the iPhone, and now the iPhone is in second place behind Android smartphones in the market.

It is interesting that “survey results that showed its enterprise customers activated more iPads in Q2 than they did Android tablets and phones combined.”