API Economist: The API Economist is very interested in your understanding and expertise of the smartphone market. What’s fascinating is that Apple is deriving the majority of profits from the iPhone. Yet Android devices surpass iPhones in total numbers. What does this mean?

Chia Hwu: Apple is very committed to their hardware platform. It's not going to go away anytime soon, because it’s where the company makes the most money, so Apple’s commitment to the iOS platform is in billions of dollars of revenue. On the other hand, Google, which doesn't make much money from Android, could decide to do things differently in a year or two. Google’s executives could decide, "We're not making any money on Android, so we're changing our mobile and now we're going in a new direction." That's one thing we think about at Qubop, since a mobile strategy should take into account how platform owners are making money.