Thanks to iPhone, its competitors are also doing better business. See here.

Competitors earnestly have reason to welcome Apple to the market. Sales show that what’s been good for Apple has been verrrry good for smartphone makers. Retail sales of the BlackBerry, for example, are up 38 percent in the year since the iPhone’s introduction.

Somehow, that’s not surprising at all. After the iPhone, other phone manufacturers started “innovating” with touch screens, fewer buttons, accelerometers, and the like. The article draws a valid parallel between how the iPod virtually created the portable music player industry, and how the iPhone is doing the same with smartphones.

However, wired.com doesn’t take the parallel far enough. It doesn’t mention that Apple today controls 65% of the portable music players market. In this span of eight years, a number of “iPod killers”, including Zune, have entered the market and struggled to survive.

There is every reason to believe that Apple will repeat the iPod story all over again. Like I said earlier every iPod user is eventually likely to buy an iPhone. By then, most competitors will be relegated to the position of  Microsoft’s Zune. Profitable perhaps, but lacking market presence as well as respect.