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Why the Google Android Phone Isn't Taking Off
Hugh Pickens writes "Farhad Manjoo writes in Slate that while the iPhone commands nearly 14 percent of smartphone sales and BlackBerry about 21 percent, Android has only 3 percent. And even though Android is far friendlier to developers, it has failed to attract anywhere near the number of apps now clogging the iPhone. Manjoo writes that Google went wrong by giving handset manufacturers and carriers too much control over the design and marketing of Android phones so there is no idealized 'Google phone' — instead, Android devices get names like the T-Mobile G1 or the myTouch 3G, and each is marketed separately and comes with its own distinct capabilities and shortcomings. 'Outside handset manufacturers lack ambition — -none of them even seems to be trying to match the capabilities of the iPhone, let alone to knock us down with features that far surpass those of Apple's device,' writes Manjoo. 'A smart handset manufacturer could build a top-of-the-line Android device that outshines Apple's phone in at least a few areas — better battery life, a much better Web browser, a brighter or bigger screen, faster or more functional controls... something that might help Android inspire gadget lust. But so far, that's not happening.' John Gruber echoes this advice and adds this advice to Android manufacturers: 'If Apple is BMW, you can be Porsche.'"
There's nothing, as far as I know, in any of the existing arrangements stopping Google from co-branding a phone with a manufacturer that's blessed as "the Google [whatever]". A Google-branded phone would probably be a stronger player--- moreso than a T-Mobile-branded phone that in the explanatory text tells you about how it runs Google Android.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I spent several months at a startup where we were going to make $$profit by writing and selling Android applications. The problem is that the phones are, well, awful. The iPhone has set the standard, and things like the G1 are simply uninspiring by comparison. We would try to raise money, and in a room full of tech-savvy investors, most people have iPhones. We would pass around the G1 so they could see our app. Bottom line, they were not interested in investing money in a product that ran on a phone that was ugly.
Consequently I now write SQL for a living and get paid by the hour.
Android has done some great things. The control the user can have, the security model, the interaction between apps are all well thought out. One of these days it's going to be significant. Probably right after Linux is ready for the desktop.
And even though Android is far friendlier to developers, it has failed to attract anywhere near the number of apps now clogging the iPhone.
I hear people parroting the first part of that statement, invariably without any supporting evidence. Please explain - I'm asking this seriously - why Android is "far friendlier to developers". If the apps aren't being developed, I'd argue that's at least one piece of evidence running counter to that assumption. The iPhone (and iPod Touch) seemed to have a significant number of third-party apps already available at launch, so marketshare can't explain it all away. Besides, as people love saying here, the iPhone's market share is not really all that big compared to some others (no, you can't have it both ways).
So is Android actually friendlier to developers, or is it just the old "it's on Linux and Open Source, so it contains the maximum degree of friendliness possible no matter how much a pain in the butt it is to use"?
#DeleteChrome
I find the Android ui to be kind of unpolished. It looks like something from several years ago. I know it sounds nitpicky, but it just doesn't have that "I want to use this" vibe.
Plus, how is Android more developer-friendly? The iPhone and Windows Mobile have nice SDKs, big communities, tons of code around, etc.
Wow, just stunning. If the lack of an idealized phone were the problem, WinMo wouldn't have anywhere near the marketshare it has. For Android to take over, one simple thing needs to happen - a wider selection of Android phones on a wider selection of providers, at a wide selection of price points.
Where is the market? AT&T has the iPhone, the phone. The one everyone wants to beat.
Sprint has the Pre. It's a pretty decent phone with a few build quality issues. Once Palm gets a brain and starts letting apps come out, it could be pretty good.
Verizon has... who knows. Standard Blackberries?
And then there is little T-Mobile with.. Blackberries.
I don't remember seeing many (any?) ads for the G1. I don't remember anyone talking about it except release day calling it "the google phone" when it's not Googly in any way. Basically, not many people care, because I don't think many people know about it. My boss has one, and it's quite nice. But it has no mindshare.
Why should it? It doesn't have an amazing app store (like the iPhone). It doesn't have sexy hardware (like the iPhone or many imitators). It doesn't have an amazingly cheap price. There is nothing to stand out about it other than running "google OS". And since Android doesn't have a reputation yet, that doesn't sell phones.
Great apps would help, but people won't build those until the thing is more popular. Better hardware would help a little so it doesn't look so blocky (the G2 should help here).
Microsoft has this same problem. When Apple wants the hardware to do something, it builds it. When Microsoft wants it, they push and prod and within a few years it happens. Dell (et all) don't make sexy computers, or at least didn't start until after years of Apple taking the "good looking" market.
Android could be something great, even if it takes the "low end smartphone" market. But it could take years to get there, and companies may not be willing to wait that long. If Google had taken some of the risk and co-developed a phone (a Honda or Acura to Apple's BMW, instead of the Ford Focus we got) Android could be in a better spot.
But the Pre is the weakest right now, in my eyes. They've had months and released almost no apps. You know what they just released in the last week or two? Out of the 4 or 5 apps, two were to help people with Jewish observances. Not exactly "phone moving" applications. Floodgates may not open until Christmas or later, and without some lower-level stuff there might not be good games. Some strong funded development in apps and some marketing could really help Android. More phones certainly would.
The question is, will this be the next DOS/Windows (good enough, builds up to dominance), or OS/2 (better than the common, but never achieves critical mass and becomes irrelevant)?
How about a series of ads showing how easy it is to navigate/use the phone, compared to the nightmare of a UI that Blackberries use? Aim for that market. Aim for consumers (not necessarily businesses) who want a smartphone, but don't want and iPod.
Of course, I wouldn't want to fight against a $99 iPhone. The only reason that thing hasn't destroyed the market is it's tied to AT&T.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
We have known this for ages and we still act as if this is somehow surprising?
Most Apple users believe they are somehow better than everyone else and that they are somehow elite because they own an Apple product. -1 Troll me if you like, but there are many people who truly believe that and one classic twitter posting complaining about the reduction in prices of Apple notebook computers really expresses what everyone else is afraid to admit -- that buying a particular brand of anything somehow says something about who they are. People buying Harley Davidson motorcycles for weekend rides or having their bikes transported on trailers to motorcycle rallies like Sturgis somehow makes them a member of a biker's culture? It's not true. Slapping a popular label on your ass does not make anyone cooler or better, and yet people still persist in believing so and why?
The power of marketing influence is great! But these Jedi mind tricks only work on the weak minded.
google is giving you a 98% tax cut, assuming even distribution among states for your sales. any billing zip code in your state you had better set aside and remit sales tax to the local authorities, but the other 49 states aren't your problem. if google collected sales tax they would have to collect on every transaction.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Tethering, VOIP, and Google Voice alone would far outpace the iPhones selection of farts and beer glass pouring apps.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm so sick of people making number comparisons between similar technologies that were released sometimes YEARS earlier than the others.
And for me, it's far better than an iPhone would ever be. Why, because it syncs to my Google Apps for your domain account, so I can access emails on my phone in a very efficient manner, because I have an app which throws texts back the other way so I can read them on my PC, because it does everything I want from a phone extremely well, and more. Oh, and a qwerty keyboard helps a lot too.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Well, you don't have to pay Apple money to develop for Android, and you don't have to get Apple's permission to distribute your app to users.
Those are nice factors worth considering but you didn't really answer the question. Is it true that "Android is far friendlier to developers"? I don't actually know the answer and don't pretend to know. I've certainly seen no compelling evidence that Android actually is meaningfully friendlier (whatever that means) or better meets the needs/desires of developers. It might be but the evidence seems to be lacking.
Quite simple: the cellphone companies give no discounts for buying the phone from another supplier. So, you just paid more for a phone and the only advantage that you may get is being able to break the contract at less cost. Since the cost of breaking the contract is limited, it's not an irrational decision to buy the phone from the carrier.
Futhermore, T-Mobile will unlock one phone every 90 days at no charge.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Let's wait until the end of the year to declare Android dead. After all, there are (as far as I know) only three Android phones being sold in the U.S. right now, with far more announced for sale before the end of the year:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_android#Forthcoming
Also, the U.S. isn't the only market for mobile phones. There's also Europe and the Far East.
HTC, the seller of 80% of Windows Mobile phones, was the first provider to start selling Android phones.
What's likely to happen is that, since it's free, Android will supplant Windows Mobile, which Microsoft charges for.
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Reading the comments I got the feeling I was reading a 9 months old article, I actually went to check the date on comments a few times.
Might I remind you that Android handsets have been released around the world, not only in the USA.
In France for instance, the HTCMagic (the G2 I believe) had advertisement in the metro and was labeled as a Google Phone (it's the Android name that doesn't pushed get out there, not the Google name). In Australia there are also ads for the same phone in phone shops.
Also, they are about 4 phones available right now running android (HTCDream, Magic, Hero and Samsung Galaxy).
Always going back to the T Mobile G1 is a little backwards looking and sort of like complaining about how the iPhone 1 doesn't have 3G.
The HTC Hero has an entirely revamped UI for instance, so things are also evolving outside the hood as well as under (even if the Hero's hardware admittedly isn't good enough and not future-proof).
So although I agree that Android lacks a killer app and the I want one factor that the iPhone has, saying that Android has problems because T Mobile's network sucks is really USA-centric.
From the different reports we've seen, the Magic has sold a million units since it was released in May. Now we're nowhere near iPhone numbers, but it isn't exactly a failure commercially speaking.
Considering another 15 or so phones running Android should come out before the end of the year (probably quite a few Samsungs, at least one Sony-Ericsson and some more HTCs), Android is gearing up.
I'm not saying it doesn't need a whole lot more marketing, a lot more see how easy it is to do this on Android type ads on TV to explain to non tech-savvy people why it's good, better form factors and gadget lust or some unified branding to avoid having a same phone have 5 different names, but it's nowhere near the catastrophe some seem to see it as. As someone said, it's going to gain momentum slowly, not become the next big thing overnight.
No wit here.
"One of these days it's going to be significant. Probably right after Linux is ready for the desktop."
Are you actually that clueless?
I find it impossible for someone to actually be posting in a story about cellphones, claiming to actually have worked at a company focused on cellphones, and yet...is pretending to be ignorant that
THE ENTIRE CELLPHONE MARKET is rapidly standardizing on Android.
Every damn cellphone manufacture in the world other than Apple, Palm, and Blackberry are coming out with Android based phones.
Android is so popular with hardware manufactures it is spreading out into media devices, netbooks, sub-netbook devices, etc.
Companies like Motorola have created a 200 person team dedicated to...you guessed it...Android.
Google's Android has effectively wiped Windows Mobile right out of the market and taken its place as the default cellphone OS.
So, yeah, nice story about the startup. Has absolutely nothing to do with the reality that Android isn't just a success. It's an astonishing success to have taken over so quickly.
The iPhone and the Blackberry are the two phones that every single other manufacture seeks to emulate. They set the gold standard for cell phone interfaces.
I don't know of a *single* person in my circle of friends who owns one. I dont know a single person who has ever mentioned wanting them, thinking about them, or seen them. In fact, outside of slashdot, I've never really heard about the Android. Pretty popular indeed.
The current cell phone oligopoly needs to be broken the same way the Bell system was busted. There was a time when you could only buy your land line phone from Bell, there was only one directory (Free -white pages, advertised - yellow pages), and they owned the system from handset to handset. Costs were high, service was slow, and innovation was non-existent. There was a time when having two phones in the same house was the province of the ultra-rich. Then it was broken, you no longer had to rent your phone from Bell, but could go to the local store and buy one. Plug into an rj-11 jack and go. Soon every house had a phone in every room, you could buy answering machines, plug in a modem.... heck it wasn't too long before phone companies started to innovate and provide other services like caller ID. Sorry for the history rant, but we need the major cell and network providers to stop owning us handset to handset again. Apple shouldn't have had to convince AT&T to carry its phone, there should be a generic standard like RJ-11 where we can plug our phones into their network, and they move the bits. If they want to innovate on top of the bit moving, great, but don't their ownership of the devices is the problem that is stifling the market.
What part of "don't have to pay Apple money to develop for Android" and "don't have to get Apple's permission to distribute" did you not understand?
Free (as in beer) is nice but that doesn't prove "friendliness" or the lack of it. Being cheap doesn't cause something to be of good quality or well designed or well documented. It's not hard to find crappy software and being free doesn't make it less crappy.
As for needing permission to distribute, that is potentially annoying I'll grant you though to be fair it's not without some benefit to both developers and users. It has the potential to keep a lot of bad software and (probably) malware out of the platform which is a good thing on balance. Nevertheless I'll agree that it has the potential to be frustrating. Does Apple abuse their position sometimes? Yep - so that is one strike against Apple but not by itself conclusive proof that Android is more friendly to developers.
on the Android platform, replacing core apps with your own version is *encouraged*, and in fact *designed into the platform*.
Again, none of this *necessarily* means "friendlier" to developers. Freedom (as in speech) is only a part of the equation. If the development tools suck or the platform is hard to write for or the documentation sucks, developers won't care whether you can replace the core apps or not. You are talking about how open the platform is which is just one factor in determining how friendly a platform is to developers. Android might be the best thing since sliced bread but you are providing little evidence to prove that assertion.
...but as a developer platform and ecosystem, the only thing Android is missing is higher handset sales.
Really? Are the development tools better and/or more mature? Is the interface easier and/or faster for developers? Is the documentation thorough, easy to read and clearer than the documentation for the iPhone? Is the hardware platform more stable and well understood? Are there more developers actively developing for Android than the iPhone? You assert that it is "better" but you provide almost no evidence to back up your argument. I'm willing to be convinced either way but please make a decent argument.
Basic engineering, the more complex something is the more likely it is to fail.
Exactly - sliding things are far more complex. Chips are just silicon, and the whole board in a device goes through a burn-in - it's just simply going to work until something alters it mechanically, since there are no moving parts to fail.
As for it still working as a phone - unlikely since usually devices with sliding keyboards rely on them to function.
Or think of it this way. The iPhone has circuits. The HTC has circuits plus moving parts. By definition it has more complexity - which as you note leads to more failures.
My HTC has survived a trip to a hardwood floor
Unimpressive since all hardwood floors have some give and are softer than metal casings.
The accepted failure of the iphone rate is 10%
The "accepted rate" is by SOME GUY IN A FORUM? And you couldn't even find modern figures at that, you had to go way back to the original launch from years ago in 2007!
I give up, you are obviously a troll. No-one is really that stupid. You can post the final response, I've stopped reading as I'm sure everyone else has. We had a good laugh at your expense though with that whole "electronics are more prone to failure than mechanical devices" thing though. Classic.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley