In the last decade, Apple nearly quadrupled its market share in the US to about 10%. With no widespread virus outbreak whatsoever! The iPhone went from 0 to 20+ million in 18 months with zero virus propagation. So there’s no historical trend analysis that could possibly give you the license to speculate on such unlikely scenarios.

For the better part of a decade in search of features and market dominance, MSFT paid no attention to security in Windows, as Bill Gates himself has stated recently. There are tens of millions of Wintel machines around the world pre-dating XP/Vista virtually unprotected that can never be really secured. Until that massive and fertile ground for virus propagation dies off not much can be done about security in that ecosystem. That simply doesn’t exist in the iPhone world.

I cited some barriers that would render virus spread on iPhones very unlikely. I’d be glad to get into details, if you’d like.

Other than pure drama, because it may be fashionable to be snarky about AAPL these days, is there any other reason why your prediction is justified in the least?

Given the many comments I’ve received from enthusiasts about Apple’s security lately, in hindsight it might have been better to say the most widespread app in a *smartphone*. Would have been easier than trying to explain “dramatic license”.

On the other hand, the ability to force Apple to activate that kill switch, and shut down an application–perhaps even the most popular one–in every iPhone in the world sounds like a pretty powerful infection to me.

Do you have a link where Apple’s PR dept officially claims that? Didn’t think so.

Do you understand the fundamental difference between hacking an iPhone a la yellowsn0w and a virus?

Do you understand why some of the limitations Apple has put in (including app segregation and little/no access to dock, carrier I/O, app-specific file space, inter-app I/O, etc), coupled with pre-screening in the App Store make it highly unlikely for a virus to spread before Apple activates the remote kill switch?

While there’s no 100% security and a virus can be introduced into the iPhone ecosystem, there’s no way it would become the “most widespread app.”

For a tech exec, one would have hoped you’d be better informed about what you write.

I’m willing to take on the bet. You name the bar in Darien.