Steve Jobs loves control.

Just look at the iPhone: Apple makes the hardware, the operating system, runs the App Store, and approves every one of the hundreds of thousands of downloadable apps people have access to. Heck, Apple even has the option of getting into your iPhone and deleting apps if it so chooses.

For years, the iPhone has only been available thru AT&T.

Even through years of reception issues and angry Apple customers demanding that the iPhone be made available via other carriers, Jobs stuck with AT&T. Because the exclusive relationship allowed Jobs total control.

But now, Jobs is volunteering some control away.

According to multiple reports, he’s moving the iPhone to Verizon Wireless early next year. (AT&T will continue to sell it.)

Verizon is a completely different animal than AT&T. It will almost certainly demand to call more of the shots than AT&T has. Plus, it instantly doubles Jobs’ wireless partners in America. Less control. A lot less.

Why is he giving up this control?

Because Apple’s top smart phone competitor — all those Android devices — is flat-out outmuscling Apple.

There are now more than 20 Android devices in the US, available from every major wireless carrier. Android now leads the iPhone in market share. And it’s set to expand its lead over the next years.

The venture capitalist Fred Wilson recently wrote this, in response to a family member’s statement that Android devices lack the fit and finish of iPhones:

That is true.

Windows lacked the fit and finish of the Macintosh. But it didn’t matter. Because there were hundreds of Windows machines whereas there was only a few variations of Macintosh, all controlled by the same company and priced at a premium.

Steve Jobs is giving up control because he is getting outmuscled. It’s Windows all over again.

He refused to give up control with his Mac computers.

With smart phones, which is “the next personal computer” in the consumer market, he is applying the lessons of that experience.