Where is the Eco in the Mobile Ecosystem?

Companies like Microsoft, Nokia and Apple have started marketing what they call “ecosystems”. Now the term ecosystem comes from biology and means for me a system of plants, animals and their environment. For the scientific definition, just Google around, for example Wikipedia gives a good explanation. There are for example rain forest ecosystems, or prairie ecosystems, lake ecosystems, basically an endless number of possible ecosystems. There are also artificial ecosystems, call them man made ecosystems, like aquariums, zoo’s and the like. 

But what would a mobile (smart) phone ecosystem be? Of course for marketing purposes it creates these “green” associations, must be good for the environment to have a smart phone. On the other hand it refers to the network of users, data, applications and devices. In real ecosystems there are flows of matter and energy, in these mobile ecosystems there are flows of information and data. Real ecosystems are made up of organisms which are interrelated, like deer eating grass, wolf eating deer, crows eating dead wolf. In biological systems there are also cycles of matter, carbon being fixed and released, the hydrological cycle of evaporation, rain, flow to the ocean and the process starts again. 

I do not see any relationship between an Android phone and the iPhone, more than the ability to connect to people speaking using these phones as phones. And that could be done already since Bell invented the telephone in 1876. Any mobile telephones can send SMS text messages; SMS was invented in the 1980’s in Finland, and is widely used all over the world. Smarter phones can send and receive electronic mail, which makes it possible to get information send from computers and tablets. Smart phones can also connect to the internet, through WLAN connections or GSM connections. The internet possibility brings the telephone nto contact with other devices and data stored anywhere on the planet. 

So it might be possible to see some resemblances between earth ecosystems and the internet, as the internet connects people (organisms), there are many interconnected devices and there are flows of information and energy (electricity). Dot eco (.eco) has also been proposed for a top-level internet domain, like .org and .com. However to speak of an Android or Microsoft mobile ecosystems goes too far. I have never heard of canine ecosystems, although there are many different dog breeds.