First Sight of Google Android

CorinneI writes "At the Mobile World Congress show, four mobile processor vendors demoed pre-production devices running versions of Google's Android OS — a Linux-based, open operating system for mobile phones that will sport Google applications. The biggest surprise of the demos was how well Android runs on slow devices. 'TI showed Android on a Motorola Q-like QWERTY handheld with its 200 Mhz OMAP 850 platform, where the user interface felt smooth and fast, even with little Apple-like animated transitions between screens.' HTC, Motorola, LG, and Samsung all belong to Google's Open Handset Alliance"

Comments

People Excited After The iPhone Marketplace Dud

[Anonymous Coward]

After the endless iPhone hype and the actual product turning out to be an overpriced and underfeatured commercial dud, cellphone users are anxious for something like this. With Apple having to hand out refunds to early adopters and slash their future iPhone shipments numbers for 2008 in half its clear that the iPhone hype only touched the hardcore Apple fanbase.

Hopefully the barrage of Apple iPhone story spam will come to an end as everyone moves on to better and less overhyped products like Android.

Re:People Excited After The iPhone Marketplace Dud

[MvD_Moscow]

Oh man, I hate when people *cough* Americans * act like nothing exists outside of their local surroundings...

While the iPhone was not a dud, it's commercial success isn't what Jobs & Apple fanboy club pimp it out to be. Long term prospects for the iPhone in particular are quite questionable...

I appreciate you linking to the Ars Technica article, but I wouldn't too excited about it. The 4 million figure has been approached with caution by many analysts. And what forecast are you talking about? I am not too big on following Apple's business dealings, but I don't remember any of the mainstream (Business Week, Economist) making any forecasts that would portray the iPhone's commercial success as phenomenal. Don't get me wrong, but what else did you expect from Apple? They are usually pretty good at making their product appeal to consumers and they have a lot of goodwill among it's primary demographic...

Your 20% figure is a load of BS. It's 20% of the US smartphone market, that's not that big of a deal, specially considering that Apple is extremely US focused. In developing markets, no one gives a fuck about Apple (although this is slowly changing), smartphones in general aren't all that hot. People who have just entered the middle class have better things to do than paying $200 premiums to have the pleasure of having a logo on your phone. The 20% figure is representative of sales of smartphones in one particular year, it doesn't guarantee that sales will be 20% next year. Again, I am not saying that no one will buy iPhones in 2008, I am just saying that there is more to this whole issue than the 20% figure.

Then there is the issue of market demographics, there is a strong possibility that Apple has saturated it's core market. I live and in university environment and I see iPhones all over the place. This doesn't mean as much as you think. While the Facebook generation is in love with the iPhone, this isn't the case for everyone else. When everyone in the Facebook generation demographic gets themselves an iPhone, who is going to buy all those 10 million iPhone that Jobs is going to excrete? We might think that browsing Facebook on your phone is cool, but that's obviously not the case for most consumers.

Finally, there is the issue of competition. Expect a lot more touchscreen based devices in 2008/2009. Any new iPhone that Apple releases is going to be competing with all those products and the original iPhone model (the Facebook generation doesn't have that much cash).

You need to stop eating into the Apple hype (on a business and a consumer level), Apple is just another company. Nothing less nothing more...