It's unlikely any of the Android phone OEM's will make the kind of profit margins Apple is making, but they're clearly making a lot more profits selling Android

It's unlikely any of the Android phone OEM's will make the kind of profit margins Apple is making, but they're clearly making a lot more profits selling Android smartphones than they were before Android. The feature phone market is drying up. All the growth (and the profit margins) is in smartphones. So what is a company like HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc. to do? Symbian has been on lifesupport for ever. IOS and BlackBerry OS aren't available to them. They could try to build their own smartphone OS... but what are the odds that'll be successful? Basically they need Android or WP7 to survive. The profits in making Android or WP7 phones may be less than what Apple makes, but it's much better than any other alternatives open to basically every phone maker but Apple and RIM. Which incidentally, like you noted is a lot like the situation has always been between Apple and everyone else in the PC market.