Analyst Predicts Android Overtaking iPhone In 2012

Market watcher Gartner is claiming that by Q4 2012 Google's Android smartphone OS will have overtaken Apple's iPhone. Currently only the sixth most popular phone OS, Android is set to rocket into second place behind Symbian if the predictions are to be believed. The reason for the changing of the guard is that "many handset makers are betting their futures on Android, while Apple is just one company." 2012 rankings place Symbian at the top followed by Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry."

Comments

I dont' see it this way

[fyngyrz]

The iPhone is ahead because of the apps and the highly capable hardware. If Android phones don't step up to the plate app-wise, AND touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise, iTunes-wise... then you're just going to have a lot of companies betting on the wrong horse.

OTOH, if Apple doesn't start letting other companies than ATT into the game so that rural areas can have the phone, there will always be an opening for other phones.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[crolix]

My bet is on Nokia becoming #1: http://maemocentral.com/2009/10/09/unboxing-the-nokia-n900/

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Is this another issue with dumbed down US market? I don't own an Android phone, but I played with one. Has touch, has accelerometer, has GPS, has compass, has apps. Fuck iTunes.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[cabjf]

This is just an analyst's prediction though. So a heaping teaspoon of salt is required while reading. Sure it's possible, but is it really likely at this point?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[rcolbert]

iTunes-wise...

QFT - Phones, service, apps, etc. are all fine, but iTunes is really the killer app or Trojan Horse depending on your point of view. I don't see any application out there to manage content that's nearly as robust and sustainable as iTunes. There might be desktop applications that are better at one thing or another, but the whole package is compelling. I believe most people trust that iTunes and the Apple store will be there years down the road, and are more willing to bet their music libraries on Apple's reputation. Show me the iTunes killer first, then let's talk about an iPhone killer. Otherwise, we're putting the cart before the trojan horse.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LWATCDR]

The iPhone OS is pretty nice but the lack of multitasking is annoying.
The hardware is good but outside of looks it isn't better than what HTC and others offer. The actual hardware cpu/gpu of the ZuneHD is much better than iPhones.
iTunes? who cares. I have an iPod Touch and I hardly ever use iTunes I do everything over wifi.

1. Apps. Android needs more developers for more apps. With more android phones hitting the market the developers will follow so will the apps.
2. Betting .Apple is not selling the iPhone OS to other companies so they can not bet on the iPhone so Android, S60, and WindowsMobile are the only games in town. Android seems like the best bet to me.
3. Hardware The new Samsung Moment, HTC Hero, and the Motorola Clik all look like very good phones and in some ways are better than the iPhone GS.
4. Carriers. Android is going to be available in the US on T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, and probably AT&T soon. Unlocked phones are already available in the EU so Android is available on a lot more carriers.

The iPhone is a very nice phone but AT&T is a lot more expensive than Sprint and Sprint's customer service has gotten a lot better. If I could get an iPhone on Sprint I would buy one but I will probably get a Hero or a Moment.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Raffaello]

how is this not modded insightful?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[alen]

iphone has the same hardware as most of the other cell phones, including the Pre. latest ARM core CPU, infeneon 3G radio, broadcom wifi chip.

iphone only became a hit with the 3G when it got Exchange support and the app store. before that it was another pretty thing apple made up with no features that the cult of steve loved

Re:I dont' see it this way

[sopssa]

As compared to US market, in Europe it has been pretty common to buy your phone from store and *then* get a contract for it (or prepaid, refillable SIM card). The "make a contract with us, get a phone and pay for it monthly" came maybe 4-5 years ago, and they're not still even locked the operator you bought it from - you can switch to another operator and just pay the monthly price for the phone.

Interestingly, iPhone changed this a little bit in Europe where people haven't got used to it. It was exclusively available from single operators per country and you had to make a contract with them too. A bad market for Apple.

I rather buy the phone once than get tricked in to paying more to it, but just monthly for a long time. Even more so if its locked to a single operator.

That is why Android will be a lot more succesful in Europe than iPhone is. And what comes to software and the phones supporting Android, theres still only a few phones out and software starting to come out too as the userbase grows. This is different from Apple's way who just made a single phone, so it takes more time to grow.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[dvorakkeyboardrules]

I agree, the Android may catch up to the iPhone in a few years, but Apple is way, way ahead.

I own both and the iPhone hands down is better, more intuitive, more fun, more interesting, etc etc, and every day there are a gazillion new apps to play with

I use the GPS on my iPhone constantly, and I love having instant access to the internet to look things up -- info, phone numbers, addresses, whatever. I don't really use it for games or movies, but it is nice having my music collection with me.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Stradivarius]

My view is a bit different although I think you're close. I'm not counting Apple out but my reasons are different.

The touch screen, accelerometer, music store, etc. are all things other phones have. Some phones even do some of those things really well. But the iPhone was the one that did them all really well, and did them first. So even though other phones have comparable hardware, few have the same polish and none have Apple's first-mover advantage.

What remains to be seen is whether the first-mover advantage will be enough for them, as the competition increasingly has feature parity and possibly lower cost. On the one hand, a widely available application base was hugely valuable for computers, and phones are increasingly just ultra-portable computers. On the other hand, most of the apps most people would want on a phone, aside from perhaps games, IMO are already available on competitors like the Pre (and Palm's tiny app store is just a faint shadow of Apple's).

The other thing not to forget is the Apple has formidable marketing skills, and that matters a lot. These are the folks who managed to create and sustain an almost fanatical loyalty among their Macintosh customers, even during a period of years when the Mac was technically inferior to other companies' offerings. If they can do something similar with the iPhone, which at present is king of the hill, they'll do quite well.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[znu]

Yeah. Isn't this exactly what we heard about Microsoft's PlaysForSure platform? "It's a whole multivendor platform. Apple is just one company. Of course PlaysForSure will win." How did that turn out again?

I'm not necessarily saying the iPhone will become (and remain) as dominant in the smart phone market as the iPod is in the music player market, mind you. But the specific reasoning behind this specific prediction is clearly faulty. Tech industry analysts tend to assume that there's something inherently attractive to consumers about multivendor platforms, but the consumer market has demonstrated several times that this is just not the case. Consumers don't care about multivendor platforms in any abstract sense; consumers buy products, not platforms. They'll only gravitate toward multivendor platforms because of the specific products offered within those platforms.

If, for most people, there is no specific Android product (i.e. combination of device and software) that is superior to the iPhone, there is no reason the iPhone cannot outsell all Android products combined.

Note, again, that I'm not necessarily saying this will happen, just that there's no inherent reason to believe it can't.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

My bet is on Nokia becoming #1: http://maemocentral.com/2009/10/09/unboxing-the-nokia-n900/

They allready are...

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Daishiman]

Where you see integration, I see a disgusting bloated mess of a mega-proprietary, slow app that wants to do crap I don't want it to (I really, really, hate having to load my music collection into iTunes to load into an iPod Touch) and tries to plug in products I have no interest in getting, not to mention an interface that has nothing to do with the OS I've used it in.

God I hate iTunes. I might consider getting an iPhone if it weren't for the fact that it's chained and encumbered to iTunes.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[**loki969**]

Androids advantage will be that lots of phone makers can use it for free. This means there will be >100 Android phones in 3 years, while Apple still only got one. Android may not be as refined as the iphoneOS in some areas but it kicks its ass in others. It will catch up eventually and the hardware evolves much faster on the Android platform because there are more phone makers.

You don't need to have a Mac for Android development, you don't have to jump through hops to add your app to the market and you don't have to wait for 4+ weeks to get your app approved or rejected, which means that you wasted your time writing an application for that platform.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[amicusNYCL]

Because it doesn't take a lot to write an application to manage media on an Android device, and by 2012 I'm sure Google will have something out that will have blown iTunes away. If you think that Google is not already working on something like that, you're naive.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[salarelv]

HTC Hero is quite popular in Europe. I am getting one on Thuesday. Some shop keepers told that they wondered how popular it was. Also I ordered the hero two days ago and already the price went down. Also the Hero has Flash 9 support.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

highly capable hardware

Is that code for "expensive?" I don't expect "highly capable" anything keeping a market lead, whether you're talking about cars or phones or whatever.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Adolf Hipster]

I really, really, hate having to load my music collection into iTunes to load into an iPod Touch Um...You don't have to do that. I just open iTunes and drop mp3s directly to the ipod touch. Works just fine without having to import them. On the other hand, itunes is painfully slow and crappy and has a horrible interface so that's not really saying much.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[JackDW]

If Android phones don't step up to the plate app-wise, AND touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise, iTunes-wise... then you're just going to have a lot of companies betting on the wrong horse.

But other handset manufacturers can't make iphones. They have to make phones with an OS that somebody is willing to licence to them. In itself, this guarantees that plenty of non-Apple phones will be manufactured and sold. Manufacturers have no choice but to compete.

It's just like how Mac can't kill the PC platform. Thousands of companies make PCs. One company makes Macs. If you want to build computers, they have to be PCs.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Thelasko]

The way I see it the company with the hippest music, multiplied by the number of famous people in it's advertisements will come out on top.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[jabithew]

In the UK the iPhone is no-longer O2 exclusive; Vodafone and Orange will soon have it as well, and there seems to be no reason all carriers couldn't have it, other than Apple's ability to keep pace with demand. Is this not happening in the US?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[dbcad7]

Because it's not, really. It's a rant on how someone loves their phone, and that no one could possibly make a better one. It's not insightful to ignore what is going on in the market. It's not insightful to ignore what's going on in the world outside your own. It's a comment from someone who most likely has never even used an Android phone.. most "iPhone will never be beat" comments are written by such people.. It ignores the fact that within a month, in the US there will be 7 Android competitors across various carriers, and that by this time next year it will be at least double that.. Maybe the iPhone is just that great, that it can outsell all these models across all these carriers.. or maybe the projections are understated, and it won't even take that long.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[poetmatt]

because itunes is a piece of crap whether you buy music through them or not?

there are lots of services way better.

Oh, and the G1 can do itunes.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The iPhone is a very nice phone but AT&T is a lot more expensive than Sprint...

Is it? I went straight from Sprint to AT&T/iPhone. I pay $10/mo. more than I did with Sprint, but now both my GF and I have unlimited data plans. (When I was with Sprint I had a data plan on my phone but not my GF's.)

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Bassman59]

...by 2012 I'm sure Google will have something out that will have blown iTunes away. If you think that Google is not already working on something like that, you're naive.

Obviously Google is working on something like that. Of course, don't expect Apple to stand still ...

Re:I dont' see it this way

[GooberToo]

1. Apps. Android needs more developers for more apps. With more android phones hitting the market the developers will follow so will the apps.

Maybe. Piracy is killing developers on a massive scale. Even the most successful Android developers barely make enough to scrape by (~63.00/day for two top selling apps). Piracy for Android exists for many reasons. One often cited is pay apps are not available in many markets; so people pirate simply because its not otherwise available. Once people start pirating apps, it seems many don't reconsidering supporting their developers once pay apps are available in their market. Even after excusing the pirates where because pay apps are not available in their market, piracy is still killing the platform.

Without the ability to actual make money on Android, commercial developer interest in non-ad driven applications will continue lag. On the other hand, ad-driven apps continue to grow on the platform while continuing to piss off the user base. After all, people are tired of bloated apps and seeing ads all the time. Those users pissed off about plentiful ad driven apps, blame your local pirate, or even yourself for not purchasing more applications. Developers need your support!

Carriers. Android is going to be available in the US on T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, and probably AT&T soon. Unlocked phones are already available in the EU so Android is available on a lot more carriers.

All major us carriers will have a phone within the next six to eight months; with AT&T being the furtherest out. Within the next six months, Motorola alone should have ten Android offerings. Many other hardware manufacuturers are also jumping on the Android train. Both Garmin and Asus have both said they are dumping their other OSs and using Android. Most all carriers will have at least one Android offer. Several will have two or more. At least two will have three or more Android offerings within the next four months.

As for AT&T, don't get excited. It looks like they are working with Dell?!? to provide them an Android offering. Thus far, Dell's Android offering sucks to the extent, everyone but a carrier in China has passed. Unless Dell makes huge hardware improvements, AT&T will not offer an Android phone worth talking about.

Long story short, if you want good Android applications, us users need to support our developers by purchasing their applications. Of course, it doesn't hurt to kick your local pirate in the nuts for causing a long list of problems in the first place. Remember, purchased applications are supported applications. Applications which are supported are those which receive continued development.

One last note about piracy. If you have a pirated application on your phone right now, by keeping it installed you are assigning value to that application. By taking something of value to which you have no right, you are stealing. You are a thief, hurting the application's developer and damaging the platform as a whole. You can easily address the situation by simply purchasing the applications which you have installed. Go support your developers and the platform. Stop stealing.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Inakizombie]

Seconded. I don't need to attach my G1 to a computer to do any sort of updates or activation, and all the hardware features you describe have been in the G1 since day one. And yes, with the 1.6 update it has multi-touch.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[joaommp]

Isn't 2012 also the year the Mayans predicted the end of the world?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[tcc3]

Hee Hee. You think the compass is a real feature. How cute.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LWATCDR]

Piracy will decrease with popularity.
Most users will not take the time to root their phone anymore than they take the time to jail break.
Why steal a .99 cent app when you can just buy it from the store. That is the real key to piracy make it not worth the effort.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Inakizombie]

Actually the G1 had full compass capabilities on release. The iPhone didn't get that till the 3GS, which released a few months later. I know that one's really a technicality. And back before that, the old HTC Tilt had full GPS capabilities long before the 3G was released. Lets not forget MMS support, though the blame for that goes solely on AT&T of course. I do like the iPhone hardware, and Android is not without its faults, but there's plenty that Apple is not first in.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

This is just an analyst's prediction though. So a heaping teaspoon of salt is required while reading. Sure it's possible, but is it really likely at this point?

No but it does cause a lot of ads to be served on this site.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[GooberToo]

This is just an analyst's prediction though.

Its a prediction based on market trends compared to the iPhone. Android has matched the iPhone at each significant milestone, except in app sales. The iPhone established its trend in a booming economy. Android has matched it in a recession to borderline depression. Needless to say, once you factor in multiple carriers plus multiple hardware manufacturers, you really don't need any salt at all. Many are saying the writing is pretty clearly on the wall.

Hell, many of the new features provided in the 3GS (hardware and SDK) are thanks to Android putting pressure on Apple. There isn't an iPhone 3GS user that doesn't owe a heart felt thank you to Android.

It seems you only need salt if you choose to ignore what is right in front of your face - especially when you consider Android is a tiny market share but is already taking web (ad revenue) share away from everyone, including the iPhone.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LWATCDR]

No and it isn't likely.
Only T-Mobile and AT&T offer GSM in the US and T-Mobile uses a different standard or frequency for 3g than AT&T and the EU does.
Sprint and Verizon use CDMA and EVDO for their phones. I really like CDMA better than GSM since I don't get the GSM clicking when my CDMA phone rings. I can tell when anybody on AT&T gets a call in my office.
I just don't see Apple making a CDMA iPhone.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[znu]

I believe most people trust that iTunes and the Apple store will be there years down the road, and are more willing to bet their music libraries on Apple's reputation.

I mostly agree with your comments about the importance of the fact that the iPhone is part of the iTunes ecosystem. But it's worth noting that in this age of mostly post-DRM online music sales, one no longer has to bet one's music library on the continued existence of any particular vendor.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LWATCDR]

Sprint seems to be about $20 less a month for the Everything plan verses an iPhone data plan plus you get unlimited texting and navigation for the price.
Also now on Sprint all mobile to mobile calls are free which is also pretty nice.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[dingen]

1. Apps. Android needs more developers for more apps. With more android phones hitting the market the developers will follow so will the apps.

Or, more phones will mean more variety in specs, making it harder to create one app that runs on everything, obscuring the market and confusing the users, leading to less developers interested in this platform.

I'm not saying this will happen, I just don't think that more phones will automatically lead to more developers and more apps. There are loads of WinMo and Symbian phones out there, yet the platform taking the lead app-wise is the iPhone, with basically only three versions of one model from one manufacturer.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[RealityThreek]

If Android phones don't step up to the plate app-wise, AND touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise, iTunes-wise... then you're just going to have a lot of companies betting on the wrong horse.

Huh? Android phones have a capacitive touch screen, gps, and an accelerometer. A "compass" is an application that uses an accelerometer. And I'm surprised anyone would list iTunes as a strength. Android devices allow you to mount the sd card as a drive. And finally, I think we've determined in this case that the chicken comes before the egg. The apps will follow after the platform becomes popular. iPhone has lots of apps, because lots of people have an iPhone. Anyway, in a nutshell, I think you're completely wrong. :)

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Splab]

The GSM clicking???? Are you f***ing kidding? The 90's called, they suggest the US start using shielded electronics!

I haven't heard electronics being affected by a call in ages - only if I've been near some really _REALLY_ cheap electronics.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[GooberToo]

Piracy will decrease with popularity.

Maybe, no proof one way or the other.

Most users will not take the time to root their phone anymore than they take the time to jail break.

On Android, rooting is not required to pirate applications. Rooting/jailbreaking is only required for the iPhone.

Why steal a .99 cent app when you can just buy it from the store. That is the real key to piracy make it not worth the effort.

Several recent studies indicate many are pirating because they feel entitled and because they feel they are not hurting anyone. Price is generally not a factor in the equation. If it were, piracy would practically not exist for Android and the iPhone. Unfortunately, many pirates wrongly assume that stealing applications does not injure the bottom line for small developers; if for no other reason that because multi-billion dollar corporations can weather piracy and survive. The reality is, its putting small developers out of business and preventing new developers from entering into the Android market. Those who are entering, are generally not relying on sales to make a profit. That means value added services, ad revenue, or both.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[GooberToo]

I haven't heard electronics being affected by a call in ages - only if I've been near some really _REALLY_ cheap electronics.

That's still only true on the cheapest of the cheap phones. Pragmatically, no such clicking exists, and its certainly not true for any of the Android phones.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone is ahead because of a bunch of cultists and a couple years of lead time. 50,000 bad apps and 100 good ones does not make the Apple platform better.

Considering Android already has an accelerometer, GPS, and compass I'm not sure what you're getting at.

These other companies don't actually have the option of betting on the Apple platform. They have to release something or fail completely. They might as well use Android considering the alternatives.

The iPhone is a nice phone but it is tied to the Apple hardware and the whole Apple ecosystem. Not for me. thanks. I'll stick with my Android phone.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Really depends on what you mean by "#1". In terms of being "the best phone available", it'll probably shake down more or less as it does with PCs vs. Macs:

At any given moment, you can find PCs that have cutting edge features that Macs won't have for a while yet; but, while PCs run the gamut from superb to crap, Macs are relatively consistent and don't have a real low end. In the same way, iPhone specs are consistently better than average(touch screen that is actually functional, reasonable CPU/GPU/RAM/Flash, etc.); but lags behind the high end of the android/winmo handsets(no OLED, lowish end camera, slower CPU, and so on).

If you interpret "#1" in the sense of market share, or at least smartphone share, though, android could pretty easily meet that criterion. Android devices should cut through the "featurephone" or high-end dumbphone market with ease, and will probably also grab a decent chunk of windows mobile(unless MS can stop sucking at it) and symbian(unless nokia can switch over to maemo quickly and competently) market share. Plus, android pretty much has it made among those carriers who can't get iPhone agreements with Apple.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[GooberToo]

Sprints offers an unlimited plan for $70/mo in the US. The plan provides for unlimited text/data and something like 450 minutes plus nights and weekends. But real catch is, all calls to and from any other cell does not count against your minutes. For many, that's practically the same as unlimited call/data/text.

Generally speaking, Sprint + Android phone is pretty much impossible to beat anywhere else.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LWATCDR]

Well right now Android is still a techie's phone for the most part. The iPhone is an every mans phone. Maybe Google needs to make it just a little harder to put apps on Android outside of the apps store.
I do understand piracy and the problems. I hate to say that it is stealing because of the idiots that will respond on Slashdot that says that it is not.
If Android becomes more mainstream I think more people will pirate but it will be a much lower percentage. Right now you can only get an Android phone in the US on the number 4 carrier. That should change very soon. Let us hope for the best since I want to write some 99 cent apps for it.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[nielsm]

The "make a contract with us, get a phone and pay for it monthly" came maybe 4-5 years ago, and they're not still even locked the operator you bought it from

Not so in Denmark, I remember seeing operator-sponsored phones since the GSM network was first introduced 15 or so years ago, and I believe they have been SIM-locked as well most of the time.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Ah. The $20/month difference is for the unlimited texting plan. Anybody (like me) not needing that wouldn't even notice it.

Please forgive my ignorance, I don't do texting because I use the data plan for my messaging needs.

Thank you, though, that's the first time somebody's been able to show me the 'more expensive' complaint.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[jo42]

If you think that Google is not already working on something like that, you're naive

And it will be in beta for at least five years...

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, the Android phone would be a really bad iPhone?

What if I don't specifically want an iPhone?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[gilesjuk]

I don't get this multitasking argument. What sort of multitasking are you expecting?

Sure, having an MSN app in the background might be useful when browsing the web, but all of the IM applications use the push notification service so you get notification when the IM application isn't running.

HTC can't design a nice looking phone, every phone of theirs I've owned has been ugly or ordinary. At times flimsy and dust got under the screen.

So what if the ZuneHD has better hardware? Microsoft is failing to get anywhere with it. They've not even launched it in the UK.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[$1uck]

So much fail... and it's modded +5 insightful. Android phones are open which means less restriction on the apps being built for it (it will win that contest given time). The rest of your comparisons have to deal with hardware not the phone OS. Anyhoo the first android phone actually had a compass the iPhone not so much. They both have had GPS's, touch screens etc. but none of that matters, b/c Android phones can and will have multiple hardware configurations, the iPhone will be whatever 1 or 2 models Apple produces.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[zach_the_lizard]

I don't think it's a borderline depression; some of the BLS's unemployment statistics in the US (the U6 series) show an unemployment rate of 17% for September. If U6 is accurate, then this unemployment rate is greater than in 1940, and is in the same league as most of the rest of the Great Depression.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LWATCDR]

It maybe the band that they are using but I can hear GSM calls clicking on my compter speakers when ever anybody in my office or right outside my office gets a call. Yes even the iPhone does it.
It is not uncommon.
http://www.smartdevicecentral.com/article/that+crazy+gsm+buzz/199379_1.aspx
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/07/2111217

Here is the reason why it happens.
"The cause of this buzzing has to do with GSM's "time division" nature. The ever-knowledgeable Keith Nowak, spokesperson for Nokia, explains it as follows: "[[With GSM]] the RF transmitter is turned on/off at a fast rate, and that 'pulsing' is often picked up by nearby devices that don't have good RF shielding. In the case of GSM the pulse rate is 217 Hz, which can be easily heard.""
In the EU the must shield computer speaker cables which in the US really isn't needed as much since CDMA phones are a lot more popular and do not cause that interference.
Of course if GSM didn't use a pulse rate in the audio range that would fix it as well.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Xibby]

The lack of multitasking in the iPhone is an asset, not a shortcoming. It really reminds me of PalmOS.

Multitasking on Windows Mobile is a joke. Very few of the handsets have the resources needed to multitask well. Missing a phone call because you have too many apps running sucks. We rolled out a number of PalmPre recently, and most users didn't like them. The few who did took time to read the manual and learn how to properly use the device. Don't have any experience with Android myself.

The great thing about the iPhone is that it remembers that it's a phone, and the functionality of the phone has priority over other things. If you're in an app and someone calls you, the phone takes over.

Windows Mobile is a Windows OS first, with software to run the phone hardware bolted on. The phone portion of the device competes equally with the other components.

The PalmPre is an iPhone competitor first, so competing with the iPhone is prioritized above everything else. Palm hasn't exactly figured out how to compete with the iPhone, so the bulleted list for feature by feature comparison is the focus here.

My feeling is Android is a Google Project first. It's own kind of beast due to the open nature I think.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[vijayiyer]

No it's not. The iPhone 3GS has a MEMS magnetometer. That is not an app that uses an accelerometer, and works when stationary.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[markkezner]

The compass isn't implemented using the accelerometer, it only senses acceleration (as well as acceleration due to gravity). The compass data comes from its own dedicated magnetic sensor.

Incidentally, the G1 (HTC Dream) had compass functionality months before it was introduced in the iPhone 3GS.

But hey, the facts be damned, my (phone | OS | console | party | religion) is clearly superior to yours, and if you can't see that you must be ignorant.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[zach_the_lizard]

I have some old but serviceable computer speakers (like, 1990s) that I still use. They will pick up my phone's signal and I'll get an annoying buzz.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Abreu]

The main reason why I don't own an iphone is because of itunes, you insensitive clod!

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you explain the increase in sales of iPhone since the days of 2007? The recession only slowed down the already strong momentum of the iPhone. It would have sold more if there were no recessions.

Your suggestion that the Android put pressure on Apple to create the SDK is a fallacy. The chief reason why there's an SDK for iPhone is to extend the iPhone platform in the form of the AppStore. It's hardly Android's SDK is the catalyst. Windows Mobile and Symbian has been present with their own dev environment long before Android. The dev platform on a mobile device is not a model Apple used directly from Android. You might even say that Android imitated the Windows Mobile in terms of offering an OS for a smartphone.

Any sort of pressure Android put on Apple means that it would be penetrating the mobile market in a way that competed against iPhone for some time. Android's theoretical wide adoption is just starting now.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

A depression describes a contraction in GDP which occurred last year IIRC.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[GooberToo]

Well right now Android is still a techie's phone for the most part.

Unfortunately that is the perception despite the fact is hasn't been true with pretty much every phone post-G1. With phones like the Cliq and Hero, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Maybe Google needs to make it just a little harder to put apps on Android outside of the apps store.

Or they could provide copy protection like they promised developers they would. Thus far, they blatantly lied and everyone seems content to ignore it. Pirates sure are not in a hurry to complain. ;) Besides, locking the device down is only going to anger users and developers - ask would-be iPhone developers and users.

If Android becomes more mainstream I think more people will pirate but it will be a much lower percentage.

I sincerely hope you're right. Right now, piracy as a ratio, depending on the applications, is in the many thousands of percent higher than actual sales. That means for every actual sale, dozens if not hundreds of illegal copies are currently installed. If piracy ever reaches single or double digit percentiles, only then does Android as a platform stand a chance. Without commercial interest, I do not believe Android is sustainable in the long run.

Right now you can only get an Android phone in the US on the number 4 carrier. That should change very soon. Let us hope for the best since I want to write some 99 cent apps for it.

You're not alone there. But don't get your hopes up. I read a developer's account on IRC about after many months he finally had made enough to take his GF out to dinner.

On a brighter note, rumor has it at least one carrier is to allow carrier billing. If true, that one feature may do wonders to help turn the market around. Numbers I've read elsewhere suggest maybe as few as 20% of Android owners currently have a Google Checkout account. Right now, without a Google Checkout account, you can't buy anything. Even worse, Google's Checkout is fairly limited in its supported payment options...which is also supposedly an improvement to be announced right around the corner.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you don't have to load your music collection into iTunes to load into an iPod. Just select the "manually manage music" and you can just drag and drop your music files into the iPod.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Solosoft]

The bliping and blaping you get from the iphone can be solved by turning on 3G for the most part. If I leave my phone on edge it beeps and blips everything near by but a SB settings toggle to use 3G does decrease the battery life but stops this blip blap.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Aqualung812]

I'm an iPhone 3G S user, and I AM thankful for the Android.

However, this analyst doesn't see what you pointed out, reaction to pressure.

If Android starts offering things software-wise that Apple does not, Apple can (not sure they will) change their App Store policies pretty quick. Starting with getting out of the exclusive AT&T arrangement, I'm sure we'll see some changes between now and 2011

Thankfully, I'll be done with my 2 years in 2011. If Android has the same share of apps that iPhone has, I'll get to make a hardware and moral (F/OSS) choice. However, if developers don't embrace the Android, I'll be getting a iPhone 4GXXX

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

App-wise: The only thing Apple has in this respect is a head start. If they keep annoying their developers and more Android phones are released, making a bigger market, this advantage will be lost.

Touch-wise: The Android OS is perfectly capable, touch-wise (apart from fears of Apple suing them for multitouch, which as I hear is going to be dealt with soon).

Accelerometer-wise: I can pretty easily write an app for my G1 that'll use the on-board accelerometers, and they're quite responsive. You don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about, do you?

GPS-wise: An Android app I've designed and currently maintain relies very heavily on GPS. And it works. Now it's not just that you don't know what you're talking about, you plain and simply refuse to know what you're talking about, right?

Compass-wise: The G1 had compass support in it long before the iPhone 3Gs, the first iPhone with a compass, was released. You're a troll, ain'tcha? Who's a cute widdle twoll? Who is? You are! You are! Awww!

iTunes-wise: Okay, at this point your argument effectively devolves into "if it's not Apple, it's inferior to Apple, because Apple is superior to not-Apple solely by virtue of it being Apple", given "iTunes-wise" requires Apple to actively decide to allow iTunes access to Android phones. I find the Amazon MP3 store (comes with the G1) to be quite usable.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[rickb928]

"If Android phones don't step up to the plate app-wise, AND touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise, iTunes-wise... "

My Android phone has touch, acclerometer, GPS, and a compass. They all work magnificently, except the compass, which if you have a magnetic clasp on your iPhone case, you have similar issues.

If iTunes was let out of the box by Apple, then that would be a non-issue. Oh, wait, it is anyways, since I do not want or need iTunes. In fact, iTunes is not the only source of music. My G1 hooks up with Amazon, though I acquire my music the old-fashioned way mostly. So a non-sequiter for me. Or something like that.

Now for apps, I have a few thousand apps to choose from, everything from games to fart apps. How many fart apps are there in the iPhone store? And how many are free? The iPhone store suffers from app bloat in a big way, with countless copies and duplicates of mortgage calculators, fart apps, stupid phone tricks, and such. The raw count of apps isn't nearly as important as the variety of unique and useful apps. I suspect Android is already very close to the iPhone in that regard.

The reality is that Android is doing pretty well, and is damned good.

Now for the bad.

So far, every OTA update has caused me to do a factory wipe, and I lose data from apps that don't give me the option to save it. I don't see this changing.

The Bluetooth stack is somewhat flaky, and A2DP is very poor - reception and streaming cutout problems. Interested? I may start a blog dedicated to this. I'm understanding the hardware limitations. But I bet the iPhone has some of the same issues, which makes it a BT problem.

My G1 doesn't have enough RAM to do what I really want it to do. Sadly, it was too little, too soon. Ask some iPhone 1st Gen users how they feel. But I do like the keyboard. Sometimes, buttons are better.

I'm betting before 2012 Android will surpass all other platforms. It's free, as in beer. Just add a few developers, and you are jammin with your new models. Motorola grokked this, and will save money both in licensing and staff.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[remmelt]

Also the Hero has Windows Mobile 6.5.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[osgeek]

So, three years ago would you have predicted that Apple would be a dominant cell phone manufacturer?

Didn't even know about the iPhone at that time?

Hmmm... you think that's air you're breathing?

Things change. I'd doubt that Apple is just going to sit on its hands for the next couple of years.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Gilmoure]

you don't have to jump through hops

Wait, iPhones can make beer? Sign me up!

Re:I dont' see it this way

[salarelv]

Hero has Android not WinMo.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

And it has ScummVM.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Serious Callers Only]

In addition to the shortcomings on Android hardware (or perhaps linked to that and the limited time they've been out), the market for Android apps just isn't there yet. This is an interesting comparison of revenue from a game developer:

http://larvalabs.com/blog/iphone/android-market-sales/

One example he gives is Trism - $250,000 sales on the iTunes store, $2000 earned on the Android store.

Android is a great first effort though, and it'll be interesting to see what they do with it - the best thing they can do in my opinion is to set themselves up in opposition to Apple as a more open, welcoming alternative, which is on the side of the consumer and is not indifferent to users and downright hostile to outside developers (as Apple occasionally is).

Re:I dont' see it this way

[koolfy]

And it will be in beta for at least five years...

So should be Vista.

Google's Beta is Microsoft/Apple's post-Rock-Solid-Stable equivalent. Really, and for the last time, versions and release names are nothing but subjective marketing data.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[SBrach]

Through explorer or through itunes??

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's cute that you think it's not. Lack of imaginative engineering possibilities on your part? Awwwwwwww

Re:I dont' see it this way

[sakdoctor]

A common misconception.
It's actually the year the Mayans predicted as the year of the linux desktop.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he IS just a fanboi. But if you look back, for pretty much it's entire history, Apple has been "about to be crushed/destroyed/made-irrelevant" someone or another.

IBM
Microsoft
Sun
Gil Amelio's incompetance
Dell
Palm (most recently)
and now Google

So, where all the other would-be asasassins have failed, why *should* anyone believe that Google is shortly goins to bring about the demise of Apple?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, except that Android phones are garbage.

In other news, unnamed analyst says linux will surpass windows on the desktop in 2012.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[JAlexoi]

Apple marketing is not that discrete. The will not call iPhone 4GXXX, they will call it iPhone 4GPorn. And it will have your favourite porn video streaming application installed by default :)
Let us not forget that not only Apple made a deal with AT&T, but AT&T where the people on the other side. They have definitely something in there for their own benefit.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Arykor]

In Android, you can buy your music using the Amazon mp3 app. Standard format and non-DRM means even if Amazon stops selling music you still can use your files. You can also create a ring tone from your mp3s using the Ringdroid app. All on your phone. No need for any iTunes-like software for that. If you really need to connect it to a PC for file management... Windows Explorer? The SD card storage is mounted as a drive. No special drivers or proprietary software needed.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[PitaBred]

The iPhone is a product, though. Not a technology. The iPhone (and it's tying to AT&T) is not for everyone, and the fact that it has such a relatively low penetration into the market relative to what the iPod had compared to other mp3 players is what will make this game different than PlaysForSure. Android is simply an OS... any company can make a phone with it that will run the same programs as all the other android phones. That's a HUGE win over what the iPhone promises. You can get a cut-down, cheap android phone if you don't need much, or something that's much more featureful and faster than the iPhone. But you get a phone for YOU, not the phone that Apple tells you that you want. It's the same problem that Apple runs into with their computers... they don't segment the market enough, so they only compete in a few niches. They make very nice hardware if you happen to be in the "more money than sense" niche, but that's not what most people are looking for.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Fallen Seraph]

The lack of multitasking in the iPhone is an asset, not a shortcoming.

No, I assure you, it's a shortcoming. Palm's WebOS did multi-tasking the right way (hell, even the iPhone's browser manages tabs in that way). And when I get a call on my Pre, I've never had an issue with "having too many apps open to take a phone call" as you imply. And when I recieve a phone call, it takes up half my screen to inform me of it. You say you rolled Pre's out to your user base recently and they didn't like them, but you fail to tell us who your user base is, and as such, give us no way of knowing if the iPhone, a Blackberry, or anything else for that matter would've fared much better.

I'll say this, after owning a Pre for about 2 months now, and having nearly all of my friends own iPhones, both definitely have their benefits and issues. There are things the Pre has which my friends wish their iPhones had (updates over the air, no need to use iTunes to sync, proper multi-tasking, etc). And conversely, there are things the iPhone has which I wish the Pre had (a more developed app store, better graphics acceleration, better functionality in landscape mode, etc).

I can't honestly say that one is necessarily better than the other, and they can't either from the many conversations we've had on the issue. the big questions is what happens from here, though. Palm's already moving onto their second WebOS powered handset, while Apple's still plotting their next move. I know many of my friends are planning to switch to Android once their contracts are up unless Apple actually does something of substance with the iPhone again. But the bigger point is that thus far they have ONLY the iPhone and nothing more. There're no options. I, for example, didn't want one because it lacked a physical keyboard, and I didn't want to use AT&T. Android, by contrast, is taking the buckshot approach wherein they're basically tossing a multitude of different handsets by different manufacturers onto different carriers, many of which look vastly different in their GUIs, but all of which will share the same core app store and capabilities.

The iPhone recently tried a new marketing campaign wherein they claimed "There's an app for that." By the looks of it, Android is essentially running with "There's a phone for that."

Re:I dont' see it this way

[rcolbert]

The main reason why I don't own an iphone is because of itunes, you insensitive clod!

I am simply stating the market realities. There is no need to get personal. I am sorry if iTunes is a sensitive subject for you. I truly had no idea.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[KingMotley]

OTOH, if Apple doesn't start letting other companies than ATT into the game so that rural areas can have the phone, there will always be an opening for other phones.

I don't think apple is all that concerned the rural areas, to be honest. There just isn't the justification to let go of a lock like they have between AT&T and Apple for the measly few % of people you are referring to.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mino]

Huh? Android phones have a capacitive touch screen, gps, and an accelerometer. A "compass" is an application that uses an accelerometer.

Uh... no. Android phones (at least, I think all the ones on the market currently -- I don't know if some will be released later without, can't see why though) have an inbuilt magnetometer -- an actual compass. The 3GS added the same thing to the iPhone range.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[speaktruth]

Not so. My colleague and desk-mate has an Iphone while I had a T-mobile G1 (imported to Canada) and now have the HTC Magic. Almost everyday I do something on my phone that he is jealous of either because he can't do it, or my phone just does it much better. There may be some technical aspects to each that makes the Iphone "better", however, the consumer market doesn't give a crap about that, they care about whether it does this or that at all, and especially better than someone else's.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[znu]

As far as cut down cheap Android phones... at least in markets where handsets tend to be subsidized, this is not really an issue. You can get an iPhone for $99 in the US, and I think even the 3GS is subsidized all the way down to free in Japan.

As far as "you get a phone for YOU, not the phone that Apple tells you that you want", this is a benefit for Android... to the extent that it actually applies to any specific user. But while one might imagine a situation where Android Phone A is better than the iPhone for User 1, and Android Phone B is better than the iPhone for User 2, and all in all this leads to more people choosing Android, what might end up happening is that the iPhone is better than any Android phone for 70% (or whatever) of the smart phone market.

This is basically what happened with the iPod. Sometimes most of the people in a given market just want basically the same thing, and all the diversity in the world doesn't do anything for a platform if one of those many options doesn't happen to be the best implementation of that thing.

Being single-carrier in the US is hurting the iPhone platform, I have no doubt. But is only running on sole-source hardware hurting it? I haven't seen any compelling evidence of that.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple IS NOT the dominant cell phone manufacture, never was, never will. Nokia IS the dominant cell phone manufacturer.

The reason Apple will NEVER be dominant is because Apple plays for a specific audience, not the whole planet. Nokia appeals to the whole planet with a range of hardware and software affordable to budget constrained people and feature full (read: pricey) enough for more demanding customers.

Sure, Apple plays an important role today and will continue to be relevant in the future, but calling them "dominant" is a little exaggeration.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary customer for Android is not the consumer, but rather the handset manufacturer: it gives them a standard, royalty-free platform that they can modify to be anything they want. I expect Android to soon be the top mobile OS for this reason.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[SputnikCopilot]

Yeah, just like Gmail, and we all know how unsuccessful that was.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LWATCDR]

Actually I would bet that there a lot more apps for WinMo and Symbian than the iPhone.
The problem is that they are not all found in one nice little app store.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Apotekaren]

True, but don't be surprised if the N900 and Maemo take off, and Nokia drops Symbian by 2012.
One of the reasons suspected for Nokia keeping quiet about he N900 and Maemo is to secure their top spot with Symbian until they're ready to launch a full line-up of Linux phones.
For now it's only the more in-the-know guys that are going to pick up this killer phone, and I'm going to be one of them within a month or two.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LWATCDR]

My wife has a pre and I have an iPod Touch aka an iPhone without the phone.
She loves the multi tasking. She can and does keep several applications open and once and flips between them.
It is a pain to exit one app on the touch to go to another app. I would say that you don't know until you have a phone that multitasks well.
It is funny but the lack of multi tasking comments sounds way too much like the people back in the DOS days saying that multi tasking was usless because they had TSRs.
Your feelings on the HTC phones are your. Engadget, Cnet, and a lot of other people do not agree with you.
As to the ZuneHD vs the iPhone. The Tegra cpu gpu can actually support 1080p video and is very powerful and power efficent combination. It will be in many smartbooks soon. I don't care that it isn't selling well. Many things about the software stack are really not great when you compare it to the iPod Touch but the actual hardware is very good. The statment was other companies have to step up to Apples quality of hardware. The iPhone's actual hardware is nothing all that special.
Right now the iPhone's best features are.
1. The developer community.
2. User interface.
And I think the Pre has as good of a user interface. And since I have an iPod Touch and use my wife's Pre I have seen them side by side.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[bmwm3nut]

Gah! I thought I had cleared all of that TSR hell out of my head, and there you go mentioning it again. I'm going to have nightmares tonight.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

But the beta will be a fantastic, working program, it will be free, and anyone will be allowed to be a "tester"

Re:I dont' see it this way

[PitaBred]

The iPhone is a big phone. Some people don't WANT their phone to be that large. Or they want keyboards. Or just a touchpad. Or a rollerball. None of those things are available with the iPhone, all are available with Android phones. The original iPods are selling as well as the new iPod Touch. Why didn't Apple kill off the old iPods? Because they were a different interface that people preferred. Same thing with phones.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[recharged95]

iphone's ahead because of:

a. more R&D spent by Apple (the closed ecosystem actually sped up development time)

b. 1yr head start (related to above. and look at openMoko, started 6mos before Apple and they still can't get the startup sequence right!)

c. copied the WinMo approach (water down a version of OSX and slap it on a phone!)

d. 1 hardware builder (part of the closed platform).

Otherwise, it's undeniable the appstore is crucial to making apple better than the other platforms. But iTunes syncing apps, 100MB+ apps and $5 crappy apps such are flooding the market.

To the OP, please tell where an android falls flat on "touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise, iTunes-wise.."... cause I must be stupid as my 1.6 donut does those functions equally or even better thana 3GS (and considering the compass was on all Android phones before it was on the iPhone). Sure it may not have the eye candy or glitzy fad-ins when it comes to UI design, but it works, has the same features and is rock solid...
Otherwise, your fanboy post has FAIL written all over it.
And don't worry: you guys forget the native/JNI layer recently added to Android, slap a snapdragon processor and it will be very hard for Apple to touch with dumping a lot into R&D to create any game changing features (when really the game changers to them are: multitouch, video!?, cut-n-paste!?, MMS!?, appstore).

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Mr2001]

I don't get this multitasking argument. What sort of multitasking are you expecting?

Here's some multitasking I've actually done with my Android phone:

Listening to Last.fm while doing something else in the foreground. (There's a Last.fm app for iPhone, but since it's not made by Apple, it can't play in the background.)

Running a background service that automatically changes settings like WiFi, 3G, ringer volume, and screen brightness based on things like GPS location and battery state.

Sure, having an MSN app in the background might be useful when browsing the web, but all of the IM applications use the push notification service so you get notification when the IM application isn't running.

Push notifications are a substitute for some forms of multitasking, but not all.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

And it will be in beta for at least five years...

And during those five years, it will be a higher quality, more usable product than anything offered by anyone else.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[beelsebob]

Pardon? The Zune HD is based on the ARM 11 used in the iPhone 3g, the 3gs is about 150% of it's speed. Not forgetting that the 3gs is clocked at 800Mhz, compared to the zune's 600Mhz.

Stop spreading FUD.

Wait no, this isn't FUD, it's just misinformation.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Mr2001]

The Bluetooth stack is somewhat flaky, and A2DP is very poor - reception and streaming cutout problems. Interested? I may start a blog dedicated to this. I'm understanding the hardware limitations.

I had a lot of A2DP cutouts with 1.5, but 1.6 seems to have cleared it up.

On the other hand, that could be because 1.6 got my phone stuck in a reboot loop and I had to do a factory reset. Maybe the cutouts were caused by some app that I haven't reinstalled.

I do still occasionally have cutouts for a few seconds, where StreamFurious says it's "playing" even though I'm not hearing anything, but the frequent clicks I heard under 1.5 are gone now.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, you will be unique in you choice of a phone, just like every other iphone user :), just because it's a nice gadget first phone second, doesn't mean it appeals to everyone, some of us would like a nice small phone that does the phone part well, and has some of the added gadget stuff.
People buy certain brands rather than others because:
1. service provider,
2. size, yes, unlike guys women have smaller hands, and an iphone can seem a genuine brick to a lot of people
3. trendy factor, it was nice a year ago when it just came on the market, and just a few had it, a genuine curiosity, but now it's old and expensive
4. it's ugly, yeah, it is, sure it is "touch-wise", but compared to others on the market, long before, and after, it's still ugly,
5. too many gadgets, it can do a lot of stuff, sure, but do you think everyone is like you spending hours playing on a stupid phone instead of driving/reading/working/socialising
6. buy an iPhone, be unique just like everyone else

Re:I dont' see it this way

[onemorechip]

Touch but not multitouch.

On the other points I agree, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

I wonder what app is available for the iPhone that is not available for Android? (Other than, ironically, Google Earth?)

Re:I dont' see it this way

[amicusNYCL]

That's not exactly "informative". It should be clear to anyone that Google's definition of "beta" is vastly different than everyone else's. Think back to how long Google Search itself was in beta. It debuted in 1997, when was it final, 2002, 2003?

I seriously can't find the answer to that question, oddly enough. But I bet you were more than happy to use Google Search those many years it was a "beta" product.

(for the record, I think you intended humor, not snark, and that the mods are lacking)

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mysidia]

They're the dominant smartphone manufacturer today, their product has more mind share than any of their competitors' latest products in that market.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[dangitman]

Android has matched the iPhone at each significant milestone, except in app sales. Android has matched it in a recession to borderline depression.

What the hell are you talking about? In what way has Android matched the iPhone's success? It's currently in sixth place, and nowhere near as widely used or sold. And why don't the bad economic conditions not apply to Apple as well? It's not like iPhone sales stopped when the recession hit, in fact a new model was released.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[obarthelemy]

iTunes.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed this from TFS:

"The reason for the changing of the guard is that "many handset makers are betting their futures on Android, while Apple is just one company.""

Instead of automatically inventing excuses for Apple's success, how about letting a little reality shine though? If all Non-Apple phone manufacturers decided to go Android, it doesn't matter how successful Apple is, unless Apple takes a bigger share than all those combined by 2012. Unlikely. Does it matter? No.

What's next, some more "Windows is ahead because of business PCs"? Last I heard, "# of product in use" is not the de-facto standard measure of success. I thought this was already apparent.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[obarthelemy]

he means that Android a sold as much as the iPhone 2 / 6 / 12 months after first launch. Since it was launched after the iPhone, it has not matched the iPhone, but the iPhone's milestones: it is progressing now at the same speed that the iPhone was at the same stage, reaching the same sales or marketshare at the same speed.

ahhh... fanboys ... always a delight....

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you never heard about Blackberry or Symbian then ...

Symbian has about 50% market share for smartphones and Blackberry around 20%

Leave your mom's basement for a moment and do a reality check once in a while

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here if you think someone calling you an insensitive clod is a personal insult...

Its a common joke here

Re:I dont' see it this way

[herojig]

That coward is on crack sbrach, it's true u can use finder or explorer to drag files to the ipod/iphone (must be in some form of disk mode), but ur not going to be able to listen to a music file on the iPod/iPhone unless you have iTunes or perhaps another iPhone app if using the Touch or iPhone.These devices are not 'drag and drop raw mp3 files and then listen" like so many cheap Chinese players. But you can use an iPod/iPhone as a thumb drive if you want:)

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mdwh2]

Indeed - I don't understand the way that discussion is only about Android and "Iphone OS", whilst ignoring the actual major players. Sure, Nokia don't have a branded name for their OS - but then neither is the Iphone!

So either we look at a comparison of off the shelf Operating Systems such as Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android - in which case, Iphone OS doesn't belong. Or we look at all phone OSs, in which case, sorry, but Iphone and Android are tiny compared to the hundreds of millions of phones sold by Nokia et al.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[dangitman]

Got any figures on that?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mdwh2]

So, three years ago would you have predicted that Apple would be a dominant cell phone manufacturer?

Ha haa haa hahahaa haa hahahahaha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahahahahaha haha hah ha ha ha.

Good one.

God, I wish I knew all these tricks back when I was advocating AmigaOS.

"Who cares what you think, Amiga are still the dominant computer manufacturer".

Keep it up.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mdwh2]

Apple trick #3167 - redefine the market to discount everyone doing better than them. As I said above, the Iphone is not a smartphone by any reasonable definition (if you disagree, please give me such a definition), unless you take one that includes all the other Internet capable Java phones anyway.

Nokia make smartphones, and they are still number one. Even if you mean by smart phone "expensive phones", they're still outdone by other phones such as Blackberry. And let's face it, the claim is as meaningless as that recent survey that claimed Apple sold the most successful computer seller in computers that cost over $1000 (or something like that). Well yes, hardly a ringing endorsement! Only an Apple fan could twist the expense of Apple's products into being a good thing - so they do fairly well at selling expensive things, so what? It's a minority of the mobile phone market, which sells billions.

Apple trick #3168 - backpedal from talking about actual market share, to talking about undefined and unmeasurable terms like "mindshare". Come back when you have a falsifiable definition, please?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[MeNeXT]

Not to burst your bubble but I bought an iPhone and found it lacking. Don't get me wrong it's one of the most advanced phone I have ever owned but I was very surprised that it lacks bluetooth support (no that lame crippled bluetooth that it comes with only seems to be able to connect to head phone). The basic file sync over blutooth or passing over a file/picture to another phone is missing. Has been with my Nokias since almost as far as I can remember. 32Gig and I can't use it. Makes it a crippled phone. I jailbroke it and it's almost useful. I own more than one computer and I don't want iTunes to my iphone sync with all.......... It's just not user oriented. It's Apple oriented. If Apple doesn't change its attitude it's probably the last one I'll ever own. I am not the only one with this complaint.
 

Apple is about to lose another market like they did back when they were PC. Jobs, what an idiot, the only time he has great ideas is when he is the underdog!

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

If, for most people, there is no specific Android product (i.e. combination of device and software) that is superior to the iPhone, there is no reason the iPhone cannot outsell all Android products combined.

Sure there is. It's called price. You can add to that little annoying things that Apple pushes in its OS updates that remove hw functionality (like recently with tethering) and you have two reasons.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[MeNeXT]

Amen to that. iTunes kills it unless the you're looking for a portable music player. My Nokia 5 year old Nokia E61 had all the features (and more, file browsing, bluetooth sync, phone to phone file transfer) of the iPhone but lacked the larger screen and the touch functionality.
 

iTunes will be the death of it. What a waste! Common Apple get your heads out of your a55es and stop getting in the way. If people want to listen to music they should use iTunes. If they wish to sync with a device they should use iSync and be able to transfer any file they so choose.
 

Re:I dont' see it this way

[jhol13]

With more android phones hitting the market the developers will follow so will the apps

Not necessarily. Java is by a wide margin the most widely deployed platform but it does not have correspondingly big developer base.

Partly this is due to differences in phones, partly lack of development platforms in past, and partly lack of resources (memory, cpu, in past again).

But I think mostly it is due to poor support in the platform. For example I'd like to run VNC viewer (application) through SSH (application) - most phones do not support running two applications at the same time.

It is similar to Symbian in many ways.

This has now changed due to Android and N900. And hopefully with iPhone in the future.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[jhol13]

Do you know what is one of the problems with Symbian and JavaME?

The keyboard and screen differences.

I hope Android has solved that, so that when I press backspace it behaves as backspace in my Finnish keyboard. And same with delete, ctrl-c (== copy), esc-f (=word forward), etc.

Furthermore I do not want to see "your screen is XxY, it is bigger/smaller than I expected, I will not run/be usable".

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want google to data mine my phone calls. I don't want my voice mail transcribed into indexible email format.

That's beyond data mining, that's gone to eavesdropping, and it creeps me out. With GPS they even track where I'm located.

I know Google's not the only company doing this, I just don't understand why so many people cheer for an advertising company.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mysidia]

Why would I give you a falsifiable definition? To make it easier for you to trash Apple? No. I'll stick with true definitions.

The iPhone has more market share and mindshare than other smart phones. Market share means more smartphone users are utilizing the iPhone than any other smart phone.

Mind share deals with brand recognition: it means that a larger number of people who recognize any smart phones recognize the iPhone than any other smartphone.

A smartphone refers to a device that has PC-like functionality, specifically smart phones:

• Can be extended by installing add-on applications much like PCs can have add-on apps, these extend additional features to the phone.
• Have a Calculator function.
• Have an extended alphanumeric keyboard, either physical or on-screen (e.g. You don't press number keys multiple times to type a letter)
• Have a web browser
• Have an e-mail client; you can send e-mail, and sync your Exchange and ISP mailboxes to the phone for mobile reading
• Allow you to download files
• Provider calendar, appointment tracking, complete personal organizer functions.
• Provide contact/address book management; allow you to store large numbers of contacts, sync contacts with PCs
• Provide media software, to allow audio files to be listened to
• Provide viewers for documents, such as .PDF files and .DOC files
• Recent smart phones have mapping or navigational software and (typically) GPS capabilities.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

has 10 minute battery life

Re:I dont' see it this way

[nixkuroi]

My bet is that by 2012, Apple will have released something better than the iPhone, completely changing the game again to the massive disappointment of all cell phones that are just catching up to the iPhone in overall usability.

I mean, every comment on here is talking about non-iPhones will catch up to iPhone and overtake them, but who really thinks Apple is just going to stop innovating? When I had my 60 gb iPod Video, I couldn't think of something cooler than that. Since I got my iPhone 3g, I haven't even taken the iPod out of the drawer except to back up files to it.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Esteanil]

I really love my HTC Hero. I've got all of the above, + IP telephony (through sipdroid, or Google Voice if you're in the US). I've been abroad for almost 2 months, and make quite a few calls per day back to Norway - and I'm usually around a WiFi spot :-) Can make do with just a prepaid subscription on the side - saves me quite a bit of money :-) Oh, and the next HTC Android - the Dragon - will have 1Ghz processor... We're talking about apps that'll make iPhone look slow and clumsy :-)

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LynnwoodRooster]

My Samsung i760 multitasks very well. For example, right now I am using it as a broadband router (via WMWiFiRouter - it is my only Internet connection), streamimg my Squeezebox audio from my laptop to my stereo through that same router (both connected to the i760), and am flipping between reading a David Weber novel (Mobipocket) and answering Slashdot (Opera Minibrowser).

.
Oh, and as far as remembering it's a phone, it does extremely well, even being so nice as to have REAL BUTTONS on the front for dialing. Simply start dialing a number and it kicks into "phone mode"; I don't have to hunt down some icon on the screen to bring up a virtual dialpad. No, I have real buttons to do that. Just like a real phone!

And I have yet to have a phone call NOT pop up the dialer, regardless of what I was doing - even when watching a movie, or answering e-mails.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mjwx]

Yeah. Isn't this exactly what we heard about Microsoft's PlaysForSure platform? "It's a whole multivendor platform. Apple is just one company. Of course PlaysForSure will win." How did that turn out again?

Yeah. Isn't this exactly what we heard about Microsoft's Windows platform? "It's a whole multivendor platform. Apple is just one company. Of course Windows will win." How did that turn out again?

The Windows to Android v Iphone is a far more apt analogy. All three are OS's, frameworks for allowing users to accomplish tasks. I take you back to the early 90's when a still young upstart challenged the traditional vertical integration business model of Software, Hardware and Service being provided by a single vendor.

Android will do for the smart phone market what Windows 3.1 did for the Personal Computer market. Android will provide a unified platform that could be run across a variety of hardware from several different while providing a consistent experience to the user. Android is a framework for allowing applications to run across different types of hardware (strange that, considering that is an OS) that will provide an identical experience to the end user.

Apple is doing exactly what it did in the 90's that led to it's demise. By locking down their offering they alienate developers and make it difficult and risky to for large scale investments in software development for that platform. Like Windows 3.1 Android is a platform that anyone can develop for and anyone can release for.

consumers buy products, not platforms.

And here is why Android will win, the iphone like all apple products is a consumer product. Android on the other hand is a business product. Business choose platforms, how many people buy Windows machines simply because they are the same machines they use at work? Business pick platforms and consumers often follow. Android will take a chunk from blackberry and WinMo before Apple because Android is competing in this space, Google is making a concerted push into the business world with Android, Docs, Mail and Wave, Apple is not much of a concern for Google and the Open Handset Alliance as Apple will prove by 2012 that they are their own worst enemy buy making their platforms expensive to acquire and hard to develop for.

there is no reason the iPhone cannot outsell all Android products combined.

Legal and logistical.

1. Legal, this brings up antitrust issues.
2. Logistical, this require one company to out produce every other company in that market. Outsourcing to multiple companies presents additional challenges to Apple's already woeful QA to say the least and not to mention the differences between handsets produced by different vendors. In WWII, the US had multiple companies produce the same fighter designs and there were significant differences between the fighters that came from different companies (the F4 Corsair was a good example, they had a different designation for the Goodyear (FG4)and Voight (F4) fighters).

Remember that there are good reasons Mac's never gained much popularity after Windows took over, a multi-vendor solution always provided benefits that single vendor solutions would find impossible to compete with like providing a uniform framework for applications whilst having hardware manufacturers competing and lowering prices. The first Android phone (HTC Dream/G1) was cheaper to buy outright at it's release, the later phones (Magic and Galaxy) were even cheaper then the Dream.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[bemymonkey]

"These devices are not 'drag and drop raw mp3 files and then listen" like so many cheap Chinese players."

You say that like it's a bad thing... I was pretty apalled when I first tried to put music on an iPod (IIRC that was an iPod Classic back before they were called "Classic") and it never showed up. When I realized I'd have to install proprietary software just to get the music on the player, the whole iPod hype thing died for me.

Not everyone is a complete idiot who can't handle a 3-layer-deep directory structure or media file tagging themselves...

Re:I dont' see it this way

[bemymonkey]

To be fair, AFAIK iTunes has switched to DRM-free files as well... however, the stunt they pulled with not unlocking already sold DRM'd files (you would've had to upgrade them or buy them again, IIRC) was just insane. I don't understand why iTunes users continue to take it up the ass and like it...

Re:I dont' see it this way

[metaforest]

You raise a good point Sony's BetaMax system drown in a haze of pathetic VHS Consortium clones... By any reasonable measure it was a superior platform.... save one very important measure.... ubiquity...

YMMV

Re:I dont' see it this way

[obarthelemy]

i was just giving a reading comprehension class. i don't know about the figures, and, frankly, i don't give a damn.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[bemymonkey]

"And I have yet to have a phone call NOT pop up the dialer, regardless of what I was doing - even when watching a movie, or answering e-mails."

I have (HTC Prophet... 195MHz OMAP 850, I think). Some of the older devices just don't have enough free RAM to run newer applications (Opera 9.7 is problematic, for instance), and the device scrolls down to a crawl when you do - if I'm, say, loading a web page like Slashdot, and a phone call comes in, it can take 10 seconds from starting to vibrate to actually showing that someone's calling on the screen...

Of course, this shouldn't be a problem with newer models... not to mention I'm trying to run software that was written for devices with 10x the RAM and 3x the processor power.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[bemymonkey]

http://gizmodo.com/5293404/zune-hd-packs-nvidia-tegra-better-video-and-better-battery-life

Clock rates aren't everything. Whether Tegra actually makes such a big difference (supposedly 1080p playback is possible on the ZuneHD?) remains to be seen...

Re:I dont' see it this way

[minderaser]

Thankfully, I'll be done with my 2 years in 2011. If Android has the same share of apps that iPhone has, I'll get to make a hardware and moral (F/OSS) choice.

Interesting. You make "moral" choices based upon ... the length of your cell phone contract.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[tcr]

compass-wise

The iPhone gained a compass some time *after* the release of the G1. [Cite]

If you're going to make location-aware apps, it's sometimes useful to know which way you're pointing.
Lucky that Google and HTC were thinking.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[beelsebob]

Graphics power isn't everything either. The nVidia Tegra is, as I said, based on the ARM 11, not the Cortex design. This means that while it has margionally better video decoding support than the Cortex A8 (which btw is perfectly capable of decoding 720p, and given that the device is only 320p, that's plenty); it's also a much much slower CPU in almost all other respects.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[agnosticnixie]

That might be because there wasn't that much of an iTunes userbase before that, sure, they sold stuff (about two billion songs in five years) but since the drm-free announcement, two-three more key stores (Mexico, Brazil and a few mores this year), they've basically sold four times that in 2009 alone.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anarchduke]

Where in Apple's marketing history do you see heterosexuality?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anarchduke]

Yeah, wow. I haven't dealt with the TSR thing in a while. Now when I think about LOADHIGH, I am totally not talking about computers...

Re:I dont' see it this way

[bemymonkey]

So you're saying the reason they didn't unlock previously DRM'd files is that they gained user-base by starting to sell unlocked files?

I strongly suspect I'm just understanding you wrong... care to explain?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[TheSunborn]

It is unlikely that Apple will be able to make a cellphone with better hardware then the competitors, simply because most chips in the iPhone are made by 3.party companies and will thus also be available to all the competitors.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[agnosticnixie]

No, I'm saying the reason this move didn't affect them much in terms of user base is because to most of the user base, there has never been DRM in iTunes for them (yes there was, but they didn't use it then, so it was only in theory) - I do think a 30c overcharge was a bit of a dick move to get fairplay removed from DRMed older purchases, but from a purely user base point of view, they probably factored in favorable predictions based on new stores and the possibility of a lot of new customers coinciding both with the new sales of macs (Leopard was supposedly the most sold pre-installed version of MacOS) and the fact that a lot of people who avoided iTMS on principle might reconsider.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LordVader717]

One thing that the iPhone showed us is that it's essentially consumers who will decide whether a smartphone OS will make it. They don't give a shit about what carriers have the phone or what manufacturers use. If they want it bad enough they will consciously choose it.

Android hasn't had the many years of development and marketing that alternatives have had, but in the long run I see it as the only serious competitor to the iPhone.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[ScrewMaster]

Touch but not multitouch.

Wrong on that point, hardware supports it and so does the OS now. Besides, a key point here is that Android is open-source (yes, a bunch of Google's apps are proprietary, witness the recent Cyanogenmod debacle) and a bunch of third-parties are taking it well beyond what Google is doing. Apple's BSD-based iPhone will only advance at the pace that Apple sets: Android is not so limited. I'm running Cyanogenmod 4.1.999 on my G1 now, and it supports multitouch in the browser and has a number of other features not in the stock ROMs. More importantly, Google is not concerned about such third-party products, and indeed encourages and supports them so long as they don't include Google's proprietary bits. I can't see Apple taking that attitude, ever.

The G1 sports a magnetic compass and field-strength sensor, the iPhone has a proximity sensor. Both have an ARM-derivative CPU at 500+ Mhz. Regardless, the two are on pretty equal footing hardware-wise, and frankly I prefer my slideout keyboard to Apple's on-screen keyboard (personal preference though, can't really ding Apple for that, many prefer the OSK.) And that's just the G1 ... more and more Android devices are coming out, and the hardware specs are generally improving so Apple's lead there is already dissipating.

Fact is, Apple's lead in the media player and smartphone market is based upon initial technical superiority coupled with an excellent hype machine. There will always be rabid Apple fanboys so long as there is an Apple Computer, however that does not mean that their products will always be the "best", when critiqued dispassionately and without the hype. Other companies have seen the light (certainly we can thank Apple for that) and are investing significant capital in their own offerings.

I wonder what app is available for the iPhone that is not available for Android?

Oh, a lot of stuff exists for the iPhone that doesn't exist for Android yet ... the iPhone has been out for a lot longer and consequently has more developer support. That's changing though: more and more stuff is appearing in the Android Market every day. There are also a couple of non-Google markets (like SlideMe) although they don't have much in them yet: mostly seems to be apps that aren't allowed for a particular carrier (like tethering on T-Mobile.) At least Android doesn't have an issue with installing non-Market apps: Apple's approach there completely turns me off. I wouldn't take that kind of crap from a personal computer OS vendor, and I fail to see why I should accept it just because my PC happens to be in my pocket. Apple lost me right from the start on that point alone.

Given the momentum behind Android (and the fact that it is appearing on devices other than smartphones) I expect the number and quality of applications to continue to grow. Seems like a number of iPhone developers are porting their apps to Android as well.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mvdwege]

And this is why Symbian S60 wins, for me at least. It is a phone OS first and foremost. No matter what is running, the phone always goes through. I remember my colleague complaining about his HTC TyTN with WinMO 5, that would need to have the keyboard slid in to switch to phone mode, even on an incoming call, and take seconds for that transition.

Yeah, because of its nature, programmers coming from a PC culture hate S60 with a passion. Too bad. A phone is not a computer.

Mart

Re:I dont' see it this way

[bemymonkey]

That's just it though - I want my phone to replace my computer when I'm out and about, and I'll take a few missed phone calls (provided they'll show up in my missed calls list a few seconds later so that I can actually call back) over the restrictions of something like iPhone OS any day.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[ScrewMaster]

I know Google's not the only company doing this, I just don't understand why so many people cheer for an advertising company.

I agree with you, but put it this way: rather than just taking what isn't theirs (your personal information) they are trading you access to some really cool services in exchange for it. That's a lot more than anyone else is doing ... most data aggregators just take and don't give you anything for the privilege. And Android allows you to leave your GPS running but NOT tell Google where you are, and being an open-source OS it's not hard for people to guarantee that's the case. Of course, if you do that then a lot of Google's advanced services don't work as well, and obviously Google is betting that most people will want those services more than they want their location kept private. In that I suspect they're correct: most people won't care, but if you're, say, cheating on your wife you might want to turn that feature off.

It's a trade-off, to be sure, but at least Google is allowing the end-user to make that decision. I'm not sure that Apple or anyone else would be so reasonable about it.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[russbutton]

I'm sure most readers here are not old enough to remember the Betamax vs. VHS contest from 25 years ago. Sony Betamax was a superior technology, but like Apple, they were control freaks and wouldn't let anyone else build Betamax machines. They wanted the whole VCR market to themselves. JVC developed VHS, which wasn't as good, but the tapes ran longer and they licensed everyone else to make the machines, which in turn lowered the cost of the machines. VHS won out and Betamax faded out.

I call this the Sony Betamax model of marketing, which is why Mac OS had a 10 year head start on Microsoft, but still lost out on the desktop. This should have been a Mac OS world instead of a Windows world, but Apple was so tight on Mac OS and licensing because they wanted to own everything.

It'll be the same with the iPhone. It's hot today, but that's today. The public could abandon the iPhone and iTunes in a heartbeat for the Android platform if it costs less and does almost as much. You don't need 10,000 applictions. Just a handful that work easily and are cheap.

It's all happened before.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Homer1946]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone

Some choice quotes:

"Most devices considered smartphones today use an identifiable operating system"

"One common feature to the majority of the smartphones is a contact list able to store as many contacts as the available memory permits, in contrast to regular phones that has a limit to the maximum number of contacts that can be stored."

It hurts arguments to complain that the 'other side' is cherry picking definitions to make their point, and then carefully cherry pick your own definition to make your point.

I think the best and most meaningful definition listed in the wikipedia article is this one:

" For some, a smartphone is a phone that runs complete operating system software providing a standardized interface and platform for application developers."

But that is my opinion.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

Their betas are better than the releases I've seen on the iphone.

Not that the iphone has bad apps, it's just like that Verizon FiOS commercial--lotta little HD videos about folding a towel. App to order from Pizza Hut? Really?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[salesgeek]

The iPhone is ahead because of the apps and the highly capable hardware.

LOL. First, you've obviously not seen what us Android phone owners have: we have plenty of Apps. They also do things you can't do with iPhone because Apple will not let you (Google doesn't care about competition with their apps and we can run daemons -- resulting in much more useful software).

You also are completely and utterlly clueless about the hardware that Android runs on. My almost year old fosil of a G1 has GPS, compass, accelerometer, can play more music formats, has a real keyboard, trackball, 2MP digital camera, touch screen (yes, it can do multitouch and is basically the EXACT same thing as an iPhone screen, except it folds out to reveal an actual real working keyboard), a user serviceable battery, expandable storage, bluetooth suport, and even came in a really cool cardboard box. The newer phones are faster, have more memory, better screens, etc... but the only place where iPhone is superior is internal flash memory... that was until I stuck 8MB worth of SD in (cost: $24) in my *removable storage* socket.

Oh, I'll spot you iTunes. I don't spend $391 per year on music $1 at a time.

The only reason iPhone is ahead of Android is it's been on the market for nearly 1.5 years longer Mr. Apple Loving Hipster Guy.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[salesgeek]

Mod parent up. Apple's advantage has never been the iPhone hardware - it's been software. Android reduces the software advantage in the same way that Win95 did when Apple finally lost the GUI PC war in the 90s. Comparing the Windows/MacOS 8 battle to iPhone vs. Androind is a bad comparison. Android is MUCH more capable than Windows was in it's early versions.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[salesgeek]

False. Market share is most often read as % of units in use. Blackberry and Symbian devices have been on the market far longer and have much larger market shares than iPhone or Android and have twice the market share of iPhone in the case of Blackberry and over four times in the case of Symbian.

iPhones are popular, but they are limited by Apple's rather stupid and short sighted arrangement with single carriers. In the long run, iPhone is facing a "Wintel" like competitor in Android where hardware manufacturers focus on better hardware and leverage Android to lower software costs and increase application market size. There was a time when Apple outsold Wintel.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[herojig]

I was not trying to be judgmental, just factual. But living so close to the Chinese border I tend to see more junk then most. iTunes is great if you learn/adjust to it.But I lean towards organized chaos on computers...

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mysidia]

Blackberry and Symbian devices have been on the market far longer and have much larger market shares than iPhone or Android

Units that have already been purchased in prior years are not part of current market share.

Market share is: the company's sales revenue divided by total sales revenue available in the market.

When more dollars worth of iPhones are sold in a given period than Windows mobile devices, the Apple product has more market share.

Hence, the iPhone has more market share than Windows mobile, etc..

Re:I dont' see it this way

[dangitman]

So, your post was based on nothing? As for reading comprehension, your interpretation wasn't clear at all from the post I was responding to, and we don't have confirmation that this is actually what was meant. It was merely your assumption of what the author meant. Perhaps you should have been lecturing him on writing clearly?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[salesgeek]

No. You are confusing marketshare/time with market share.

Just because you have the current best seller does not mean you have top market share.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[jipn4]

The iPhone is ahead because of the apps and the highly capable hardware.

The reason the iPhone is ahead is because it came out a few years earlier and has developed the usual, rapid, ignorant fan base that Apple products develop, like you're demonstrating.

In terms of actual growth, Android has been growing faster measured from its own release date than the iPhone.

If Android phones don't step up to the plate app-wise, AND touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise, iTunes-wise...

They already have, which is why I switched from iPhone to Android.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[onemorechip]

Wrong on that point, hardware supports it and so does the OS now.

I never said the hardware didn't support multitouch. We are talking about Android, not specific phones. As far as the OS supporting it, my understanding is they've got it implemented but disabled for fear of legal action from Apple (at least that was the case in February. If that's no longer the case, I still don't see it in the 1.6 version that T-Mobile pushed out to users in the last week (it looks like that push included an update to Gallery but still no multi-touch zoom).

The rest of your post is just preaching to the choir (yawn).

Re:I dont' see it this way

[onemorechip]

Sorry, I should have said "categories of apps". I'm sure there are thousands of specific apps that are available on one but not on the other. I have lots of apps on my phone with names like "Androbex", "LapseDroid", and so on. I bet they're not on the iPhone.

iTunes is #1 on the list of audio applications that I'm specifically not waiting for an Android version of.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Baki]

Same here. I even bought a mac book pro after my iphone, but I am really starting to hate both having to use itunes and osx (being an old time freebsd user I would have thought I would love osx, but in fact it is clumsy and buggy/instable as hell).

I hope that android will evolve into something good and drop apple in 1 year time.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[obarthelemy]

my post is based on the definition of milestone (look it up)

you, sir are an idiot.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[obarthelemy]

same here, but we're in a small minority.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[obarthelemy]

let's try again: do you grok the difference between speed and acceleration ?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[AvitarX]

Why is it that both posts attacking the statement "...Apple would be a dominant cell phone manufacturer?" replace the word "a" with "the"?

I wouldn't call Apple "the dominant" manufacturer, but it would be stupid to not put them in the list of dominant manufacturers IMO.

Apple is pretty much defining consumer smart phone, after recognizing the market (RIM was first in that market with the Curve I think). Other manufactures such as Nokia did not appear to see it as viable. Apple's marketing probably went as far as accelerating the growth of a market that was being largely ignored (with the exception of some feeble RIM effort) even though it was pretty much an inevitable market that we have been hearing about for over a decade (converged pocket sized device). In that market (which I would say is a niche, but a large and growing one) Apple dominates. This makes them a dominant manufacturer.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mysidia]

link:

Market share is the percentage of the total market that a company controls for a particular product or product category. Put simply, if the widget market is $100 million annually and Acme Inc. sells $25 million in widgets, its market share is 25%. Market share is also sometimes given in unit sales: If Acme sells 10,000 widgets in a 50,000 widget market, its unit market share is 20%.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

Insanity is defined as repeating the same error.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[salesgeek]

Investor glossary has it correct for commodities like corn syrup that are consumed rapidly and have regular repeat orders. Phones are not corn syrup.

Smart phones and computers are different as you are dealing with a product that has a life that exceeds three years. I own a software company. I'd fire you if you were a marketing analyst and told that Apple has the largest market share because it is the current best seller. Why? Ignoring the accumulated market share of competing technologies would result in a critical mistake in allocating money and people to iPhone development when Blackberry clearly has a strong lead and is holding in current sales.

Stop trying to be the smartest guy in the room and listen. You'll learn a lot more ... there are some pretty amazing people on Slashdot.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[mysidia]

Widgets are not corn syrup, and your argument is a straw man. Installed base is not part of market share, only new sales are.

Blackberry may have a bigger installed base, but they still have a smaller market share.

Allocating resources to iPhone development might make sense, but it has nothing to do with market share of the handset. Market share of a handset doesn't tell you much about the potential customer base of an app for that handset.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[dangitman]

Do you even know what milestone means? It doesn't mean "amount sold since launch". How do you know he was talking about hardware milestones and features, as so many of the other posts on this story are?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[obarthelemy]

because the title of the story is "Analyst Predicts Android Overtaking iPhone In 2012
".

Reading comprehension 101- line 1: read the title.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[LWATCDR]

Funny but I went from DOS to the Amiga and back to DOS again for work.
Now that was painful. That is proof that best doesn't always win.
A multitasking OS with a flat address space was beaten by a single tasking OS with a segmented mutant nasty address space.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, AFAIK iTunes has switched to DRM-free files as well... however, the stunt they pulled with not unlocking already sold DRM'd files (you would've had to upgrade them or buy them again, IIRC) was just insane.

Thank you, Sarbanes-Oxley!

Re:I dont' see it this way

[dangitman]

because the title of the story is "Analyst Predicts Android Overtaking iPhone In 2012

And since when did the title of the story have much to do with the content or meaning of slashdotters' posts? A cursory examination of the majority of posters' comments show that they have little to do with the story. Why should we assume that this post did?

Re:I dont' see it this way

[GooberToo]

I can't believe how many people have no idea what, "milestone", means.

Re:I dont' see it this way

[MacJedi]

Check out CyanogenMod. It has a ton of nice features such as wifi tethering and Apps2SD (which, while it doesn't magically increase your RAM, it does help a lot).

Symbian and Windows Mobile

[sopssa]

I wish Symbian would die already, its a horrible system and all apps require certification from Symbian if other users want to run them.

Windows Mobile I still except to stick around, it's quite nice system and you can run any apps on it (I have HTC so I only have experience with their modifications to it, but still)

However it doesn't really come as a surprise that Android is going to climb it's place up, and great that it is. Even if iPhone is a nice phone OS, it's way too locked down, only runs on Apple's closed phones and apps store.

Re:Symbian and Windows Mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

> I wish Symbian would die already, its a horrible system and all apps require certification from Symbian if other users want to run them.

This is not true at all. You will need a signing key IF your application needs to be able to interface with the phone book or such, but all other things like bluetooth or wlan/3g and everything else works without.

I do agree that Symbian C++ is terrible however. Or at least was before they ported STL to it.

Re:Symbian and Windows Mobile

[sopssa]

This changed in Symbian 9.1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_OS#Symbian_OS_9.1

Symbian OS 9.1

Released early 2005. It includes many new security related features, particularly a controversial platform security module facilitating mandatory code signing. Symbian argues that applications and content, and therefore a developer's investment, are better protected than ever; however others contend that the requirement that every application be signed (and thus approved) violates the rights of the end-user, the owner of the phone, and limits the amount of free software available.

Re:Symbian and Windows Mobile

[sznupi]

Wrong, some funcionalities require certification, not all apps per se (and it's actually quite trival to work around; at least on typical unlocked phone available in Europe, don't know how it is in the US...)

Better accept that Symbian stays - it still has almost half of whole smartphone market, and Nokia seem to be starting to push it into mainstream (true mainstream, occupied by S40 / feature phones now). Also...it might not be that bad, Symbian^3 or 4 will supposedly rely on Qt.

Re:Symbian and Windows Mobile

[e2d2]

And to add to that, having developed for both iPhone and Android - Android is simply a better platform to develop for. Not because of objective C, that's okay. It's the lack of features such as multi-tasking and simple cross-app data sharing that makes Android shine over iPhone OS. (Just my opinion!)

But I think I'll take the pragmatic programming approach and develop for both. Cross platform dev for both will be the hotness by then IMHO.

Re:Symbian and Windows Mobile

[xednieht]

Very true. Apples policies on apps is far from Genius. Even patches to existing apps that are already approved have to undergo their review process, meanwhile our customers sit and wait for bug fixes.

Go Android Go.

Re:Symbian and Windows Mobile

[athakur999]

Nokia is starting to release phones with its Maemo operating system. Maemo is Linux based and uses a Mozilla-based web browser. The new N900 is, I believe, the first phone to use it.

Nokia hasn't made any statements about phasing out Symbian in favor of Maemo but it at least it's a good start.

Re:Symbian and Windows Mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

Retarded.

Re:Symbian and Windows Mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

Symbian ? . ? . ? . Isn't that some kind of Uber Vibrator???

Gartner

[larry bagina]

You lost me at Gartner.

Re:Gartner

[tyrione]

You lost me at Gartner.

Exactly. Sorry, but I'd love to have these paid to make a report analysts put their reputations and jobs on the line when it is readily apparent that the iPhone market penetration has only just begun.

Re:Gartner

[NoYob]

Actually 30 years ago, Gartner, as in the Gartner got a reputation as having extremely accurate predictions and knowledge of the IT industry - this was in the 70s and the 80s. Of course, there wasn't as much going on in the 70s as there is now. He built up a reputation and a business.

Now, he has a bunch of associates working there doing the actual predictions and analysis. For what that's worth.

Gartner himself, I believe, is on a tropical private island and surround by beautiful naked women.

Re:Gartner

[macbeth66]

Gartner himself, I believe, is on a tropical private island and surround by beautiful naked women.

But, did he predict that this what would happen?

Re:Gartner

[Nerdfest]

30 years ago the future was whatever IBM said it would be, and Gartner just relayed the information.

Re:Gartner

[oh_my_080980980]

Exactly!

Earth to Gartner, cell phone users don't care about the OS that runs their phones. They care about the functionality of the phone!

Unless you can beat the iPhone, it don't matter what OS cell phone manufacturers use.

End of the world

[cld71]

Isn't this about the time the end of the world?
Maybe this is what ends it...

Just kidding...

I could see that

[wcrowe]

Sure, I could see Sybian at the top.

What?

Ohhh, Symbian... Uh... Sorry...

Re:I could see that

[sznupi]

When will you people stop this "Sybian joke"? Not only the toy is quite a niche/local product, generally not getting into the picture (mind?) when somebody hears the name "Symbian", but also...was this EVER funny?

Re:I could see that

[TeXMaster]

Sure, I could see Sybian at the top.

Actually, that's more likely to be at the bottom.

Re:I could see that

[Anonymous Coward]

Toke up

Re:I could see that

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? The humour is not so much that the name looks like the sex toy, but that no one, apparently, did any research on the name. It's like naming your operating system Deldo and then getting upset because people start making "dildo" jokes. It's bloody stupid.

What happens, for example, when some 12 year old goes to type in "www.symbian.com", and instead types in "www.sybian.com"?

So yeah, it's funny. Maybe not so much in a "yuk, yuk" kind of way, but more in a "wow, what a bunch of stupid twits" kind of way.

Re:I could see that

[Anonymous Coward]

Local product? Where do you live?

Re:I could see that

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, a normal cellphone actually vibrates.

Re:I could see that

[Anonymous Coward]

When will you people stop this "Sybian joke"? Not only the toy is quite a niche/local product, generally not getting into the picture (mind?) when somebody hears the name "Symbian", but also...was this EVER funny?

Actually, yes, it was funny, and still is.

You must work for the Symbian Foundation.

Then again, I'm in the seventh grade myself.

Re:I could see that

[sznupi]

I don't think anybody at Symbian was ever seriously upset. Heck, they even didn't chose to change the name depsite several occasions... (major new versions, Symbian Foundation)

It's just not particularly funny. At most Beavis and Butthead type humor.

Re:I could see that

[sznupi]

Outside the US, a.k.a. "rest of the world".

No Maemo

[Anonymous Coward]

Played with an N900 today. It is quite the OS.

Oh that's convenient

[commodoresloat]

Sure, we'll beat the iPhone.... in 2012, right after the world ends!

Suckers!!

Re:Oh that's convenient

[jmerlin]

Pretty sure that's what will cause the end of the Earth. Let's see if we can get the Discovery Channel to do a special on it.

maybe good phones ??

[Anonymous Coward]

if we can get decent handsets like the samsung i8510 / i8910 on android i'd buy one. 8.1-12Mpx camera, GPS, etc would be nice.

WinMo trap

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The problem with WinMo isn't the OS itself. It's that Microsoft never pushed OEMs to build much more into their devices than the existing apps and services supplied with the WinMo development kit. So it's a half-baked system sold as a complete solution.

Google Android has the exact same problem. Google is focused on developing a great OS, but the better the OS is out of the box, the less likely OEMs are to develop their own IP and create real differentiation, not to mention a truly user-centric experience.

This is where Apple's iPhone really shines. Since it is in itself a final product, Apple can exert a huge amount of effort in order to meet their own user-centric standards. The product succeeds or fails as a product, not as a delivery of middleware to handset manufacturers.

Re:WinMo trap

[LWATCDR]

But the iPhone isn't the top smart phone.
Blackberry is in the US and Symbian is in the world.

Android has the same advantage that Windows does on the Desktop.
Lots of vendors.
HTC, Motorola, and Samsung all have android phones. In the US you can get Android phones from T-Mobile with Sprint comming on line next week and Verizon coming soon.
LG I hear is also going to have an Android phone soon.

I wouldn't bet that Android doesn't come out with a bigger market share than Apple.

Of course I an still wondering why QNX never got into the smartphone market.

Re:WinMo trap

[sznupi]

Upcoming Android phone from Sony Ericsson shows quite some amount of UI customisation; it's not the only one from what I remember.

Re:WinMo trap

[EvilBudMan]

Where do I get me a paranoid android phone?

Re:WinMo trap

[RiotingPacifist]

Phone companies want to compete with the iPhone, android is just a tool that allows them to do that. I think the fact you have 2 companies 1 working on software to beat apple's, and 1 working on hardware to beat apple's is a strength not a weakness. What they need to add is a 3rd company to bitchslap apple's marketing into line. a TV campaign along the lines:
"Because we don't arbitrary reject apps our app store is growing faster than any other leading smartphone's"
"By putting unlocked devices in the hands of developers, our apps are fixed in days not months, allowing you to get back to work"
"When you buy a * phones, It's yours and you can run programs from or us, the choice is your"

Re:WinMo trap

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with WinMo is Microsoft's past behavior in the desktop market. Why would phone manufacturers want to empower them and their proven monopolistic tendencies by embracing WinMo?

Android is fairly open. So, compared to WinMo and Apples recent behavior if I was making the decision I would be backing Android. Palm and Webos are the unknown but they don't have multiple vendors on board.

Re:WinMo trap

[david_thornley]

Such an advertising campaign is going to attract geeks who wouldn't have bought an iPhone anyway, and be completely irrelevant to 95% of the market. App breakage isn't a big deal anywhere I've been listening, and people don't care about being able to shop around for phone apps for the most part. In fact, a whole lot of people will be happier with a one-stop app store that filters apps for security (among other things).

Re:WinMo trap

[Anonymous Coward]

This is where Apple's iPhone really shines.

But the iPhone isn't the top smart phone.

Who said it was? Did /.'s dumb threading strike again?

Re:WinMo trap

[RiotingPacifist]

I'm not a marketing guru so i wouldn't recommend using my slogans or going on an attack campaign, I just think that a lot of advertising, to make people aware that the alternatives to the iPhone are better than it (in some/many ways), would help. While I'm a geek and understanding "norms" is tricky I do think advertising competitors as giving you control of your phone would appeal to "norms", if done right. Perhaps just an anti-hype advert to nock iPhone hype down a notch would help (like an advert for tesco mobile(uk) that rips into marketing), but as I said I'm no marketing guru, I just think that a 3 pronged attack is needed as compared to just having better hardware/software.

Re:WinMo trap

[ThePhilips]

The problem with WinMo is Microsoft's past behavior in the desktop market. Why would phone manufacturers want to empower them and their proven monopolistic tendencies by embracing WinMo?

Don't be dumb.

OEMs *love* MS because they need not think about anything else but building the devices compatible with WinMo. They want to rely on somebody (e.g. MS) to supply full OS with all bells and whistles.

That is what surely MS promises them. How it works out in the ... Before we couldn't even say anything definitive about that because there were really few customizable phones. With advent of iPhone and Android now we can point the drawbacks of WinMo phones. Competition is good.

Re:WinMo trap

[tcr]

... plus Sony Ericsson, and now even Dell are joining the party.
 
IMHO, the iPhone looks better... but so did Betamax :-)

Re:WinMo trap

[JohnboyHolmes]

Yeah, short term they know that they won't have to think about anything else.

But long term they know they have just aligned themselves with MS.

Think long term and strategic rather than short term and tactical.

Re:WinMo trap

[hazydave]

At least 50% of HTC's phones will run Android by the end of next year. Samsung is delivering, and widely rumored to be building a WiMax phone for Sprint. Motorola is betting big on Android, with reported 250 people involved, and many different phone models. More a jumping in, and it's not just LG... Nokia, Panasonic, Sony/Ericsson, Dell, NTT/Domoco, Acer-Garmin, Kyocera, Huawei Technologies, BenQ, Archos, Philips, Asus, Lenovo, Yuhua TeleTec, Haier, QIGI, Kogan Technologies, Vobis Computer, and many others.

Carrier wise, T-Mobile in the USA will be joined by all other major carriers: Sprint/Nextel, Verizon, and finally AT&T, all selling at least one version of an Android phone. In Europe, T-Mobile, Vodaphone, Orange, and Telefonica/O2 have already announced major support for Android. Also NTT DoMoCo in Japan, SK Telecom in South Korea, and China Mobile (eg, the world's largest cellular subscriber base) and China Unicom in China. China Unicom is also supposed to be distributing the iPhone soon. Bharti Airtel is already selling an HTC-based Android phone in India, and Tata DoMoCo just launched a Samsung model. HTC's selling the unlocked "Magic" direct-to-consumer in Russia, as is the local Vobis with their "Highscreen" model. TIM Brazil is releasing an Android phone from Huawei next year, and América Móvil (4th largest carrier in the world... TracPhone in the USA) is releasing the Motorola "Cliq".

So many people in the US think Apple's that huge just because the iPhone has been so successful here, but that success isn't worldwide anywhere near the same level. Apple's trying, but the problem, versus Android, is that the iPhone is always going to be Apple's, and Apple's going to be taking extra fees, just as they do here. With Android, the local companies can customize Android their way... it will be theirs. Traditionally, they've demanded that capability, and had to pay phone providers extra for it. Now it's free, but for the development.

It's also true we've been the first to jump on full fledged Smart Phone systems, while in other parts of the world, they just sell more capable basic phones, so the demand for a smarter phone hasn't been that compelling. I believe an open apps market changes this in ways that we've seen here with the iPhone. But Android is already truly global... and that's it's pretty much already won; even if the numbers are there yet, the momentum already is.

Re:WinMo trap

[david_thornley]

What you, and most other Slashdotters keep missing is the question of better for whom? You and I are interested in being able to program our stuff. At least 95% of the population is much more interested in what they can use easily.

One of my rules of thumb: if you don't understand why the iPhone and iPod were so successful, or particularly if you think it's just hype and/or people wanting to be cool, you don't understand what the market wants.

Stupid.

[jcr]

The guy's just counting vendors, not counting users and apps. This is the kind of idiot who believes a spreadsheet jockey who says "if we spend enough on advertising, we'll make a fortune!"

-jcr

Re:Stupid.

[rwv]

spreadsheet jockey

CNN published a list of the best 50 jobs of 2009 today. I didn't see this one, though "analyst" did make the list. :)

Re:Stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

And even if the number of subscribers on Android are more than iPhone - that doesnt mean much. Cockroaches outnumber humans by 1000:1 or more - doesnt mean they are overrunning mankind!

Re:Stupid.

[Thaelon]

"if we spend enough on advertising, we'll make a fortune!"

Sadly, this works, more often than it doesn't.

Ever heard of HeadOn? Yeah...

Re:Stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at Microsoft and Apple, that seems to work wonders.

Biased like crazy

[mysidia]

"many handset makers are betting their futures on Android, while Apple is just one company."

Lots of companies bet their futures on Linux 5 years ago and are doing just fine, but has Linux surpassed Windows as top desktop OS?

Google is just one company.

Microsoft is just one company.

Just because some handset makers are betting on the future of Android, doesn't mean their bets are panning out.

Oh yeah.. and their bets can pan out without their OS overtaking the iPhone OS.

Re:Biased like crazy

[DragonWriter]

Google is just one company.

But Google isn't, and isn't going to be, making Android devices to sell to consumers. Lots of phone vendors (and some non-phone vendors -- e.g., the reported B&N e-Reader) are and plan to do that.

Microsoft is just one company.

And Microsoft doesn't make Windows (whether you are talking the traditional OS or the movile one) devices to sell to consumers, at least not most of them; lots of hardware vendors do that.

Just because some handset makers are betting on the future of Android, doesn't mean their bets are panning out.

No it doesn't necessarily mean that. However, the fact that many vendors has consequences for Android; it means, among other things, that its not tied to the success of any one particular hardware vendors efforts. Plus it means that its quite likely that more different strategies will be tried with it by hardware vendors, which gives it more chances that one of them will hit it out of the park.

Oh yeah.. and their bets can pan out without their OS overtaking the iPhone OS.

Yes, they could.

Both this and the preceding point seem to confuse an analysts prediction of what is most likely to occur (against which there may be many valid criticisms) with a statement that that is the only thing which is logically possible.

Re:Biased like crazy

[Pascal Sartoretti]

"many handset makers are betting their futures on Android, while Apple is just one company."

And for the same reason, Linux's market share should be much high than Mac OS X's. Oh, wait...

Re:Biased like crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a little off on your comparison.

Google one company with Android( think MSFT) + Hundreds of HW companies (Think PC industry)

Vs Apple

classic PC vs Mac..Lets see who gains the most market share. It reminds me of the PC industry in the 80s.

Re:Biased like crazy

[JAlexoi]

Lots of companies bet their futures on Linux 5 years ago and are doing just fine, but has Linux surpassed Windows as top desktop OS?

Offtopic correction: 5 years ago no one bet on Linux desktop(None of the significantly large companies). People bet on Linux server and that resulted in great success.

Re:Biased like crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

How many macs...

How many linux servers... oh right

Re:Biased like crazy

[hazydave]

Microsoft is just one company in the hardware business, but it powers hundreds in the software business.

Apple is just one company in the hardware business, and it powers just one company in the software business... as a result, it's a decently large PC company. No HP, but larger than many... but that's also the size of the software market for Apple, and it's unlikely to grow much larger.

And that's the PC business... PDA and Smartphone buyers are easier to sway to another platform. You do need the right kind of openness for the OS to prosper... Symbian never hard that... it was never all that compelling anyway. Palm was, at one time, but like Apple, pretty much limited to one company (ok, it was one, then a couple, then essentially one again).

If it's Apple versus most of the cellular phone market (and it's looking more likely, with Motorola, HTC, Sony/Ericsson, LG, Samsung, Dell, and others), Apple will not remain #1, any more than they did when there were more Apple computers than PCs in the world. Same with the carriers... it's AT&T for iPhone right now, and the much smaller T-Mobile delivering the G1... the much newer G1. So of course the cards are stacked in Apple's favor. But with Android phones moving onto Sprint, Verizon (the largest US carrier), and even AT&T (they're Dell's partner), AT&T won't be leading, and won't just be dependent on the iPhone.

In short, Android is following the same market path that allowed Windows to dominate. Sure, they won't be able to cheat in the way that MS did in the early days, but it won't be necessary... they're own "cheat", open source, is the big win, and one that's far more compelling. Apple could technically complete by opening up, but they'll never do that.. they're Apple... being closed is a big part of the religion.

It's not as if you can't have two (or more) smart phone platforms doing well enough to support healthy markets... again, this is likely to be more volatile than the PC market, just because the current cell phone market is network subsidized, and users are used to replacing units every two years. Apps are certainly one way to enforce loyalty, but smart phones are still such a tiny segment of the cellular market, there are not enough iPhones yet, nor will there be by 2012, for this to be an important enough advantage.

Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[popo]

I've been an analyst. I've been a consultant. Does anyone realize how little it takes to be either of the two?

If we simply replace the word "analyst" with the word "dude" the headline more accurately reflects the absurdity of this piece (and its utter lack of press-worthiness).

i.e: "Dude thinks Android will overtake the iPhone by 2012". ...Yeah, and?

What's worse is that Wall Street plays this game daily to make non-news look like news, and to make bad news look like good news. Did your company lose money *again* this quarter? No worries, you still beat the expectation of some analyst, er "dude", somewhere.

This is non-news. Wake me up when Android actually makes a dent in the market. Some dude somewhere thinks it will? Great. Some other dude somewhere thinks the opposite. Must we write an article every time some moderately paid asshole has an opinion?

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[swanzilla]

i.e: "Dude thinks Android will overtake the iPhone by 2012". ...Yeah, and?

The Analyst abides.

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[farble1670]

gartner is not some "dude". just because you've been an unqualified consultant, it doesn't follow that every other consultant is also unqualified.

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[lordandmaker]

It's hardly as if Garter have a reputation for accurate predictions based on thorough research, though.

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, if you're going to make that argument: Don't stick up for Gartner of all people. He's exactly one of those guys.

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[farble1670]

that's an awfully big word, are you sure you are qualified to use it?

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[Anonymous Coward]

well, we all know you are a douchebag now, so...

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[amicusNYCL]

The dude who runs the "#1 site for free tarot and astrology?"

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[EvilBudMan]

---I've been an analyst. I've been a consultant. Does anyone realize how little it takes to be either of the two?---

No....

How do I get started? What does it pay? IMO I have an opinion on just about everything. And...I can be an asshole.

Where do I sign up for this gig?

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[Anonymous Coward]

... or maybe "consults" to it?

lol.

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[rwv]

I've been an analyst. I've been a consultant. Does anyone realize how little it takes to be either of the two?

Quote of the week.

Must we write an article every time some moderately paid asshole has an opinion?

Articles about people's insignificant opinions were what the internet was designed to do.

Maybe somebody could design a site called slashdotfilter.org which links to the normal slashdot.org with these types of headline stories that don't contain "real news" scrubbed out.

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[PotatoFarmer]

The dude who runs the "#1 site for free tarot and astrology?"

In retrospect, he probably should have seen that reply coming.

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[Anonymous Coward]

Must we write an article every time some moderately paid asshole has an opinion?

Yes, if it's about how open source will take over the world and put all these monolithic capitalist dinosaurs like M$ and Crapple to shame and usher in a grand new world of copyright-free open piracy and children dancing in the sun and light and laughter and magic.

Of course, when some moderately paid asshole writes an article that argues, equally strongly (or equally weakly, depending on your point of view) that Android will more-or-less retain its market share and the iPhone will, as the iPod did before it, remain pretty much dominant in its market, or that Microsoft will most likely see Windows 7 on most desktop computers in the world, it won't dent Slashdot, except perhaps once in a while when someone talks about how horrific the whole thing is and how NEXT year everything will change and open source will conquer the world and so on and so forth.

Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"??

[Anonymous Coward]

So are you the analyst that is lying or the one telling the truth?

Wait, I know how that works!

Tell me what the other analyst would say.

As always, xkcd is relevant here

[A beautiful mind]

This is what the analysts are doing.

2012

[SloppySevenths]

Wouldn't have figured the Mayan prediction would include an Android. Clearly ahead of their time.

3 words into the summary and its already

[antifoidulus]

discredited. Seriously, does anyone actually listen to Gartner anymore? (The same ones that said over 50% of US IT jobs would be sent overseas by now, when the real number is maybe 1/5th of that). Pretty much all of their "predictions" are either a) wrong or b) bleedingly obvious.

The Android may or may not overtake the iPhone, but we need real research, not Gartner crap, before we can say so definitively.

iPod Killer

[whisper_jeff]

Isn't that the same year the iPod Killer is supposed to be released?

Yeah. That's what I thought. Talk to me when something is actually worth talking about.

Re:iPod Killer

[sznupi]

Since the article apparently talks about whole world picture (otherwise it wouldn't count Symbian as dominating the place) - iPod, worldwide, was just one of many mp3 players; and not very attractive/popular due to price. For some time it doesn't stand a chance against ordinary mobile phones, from which people usually listen to music on the go now.

Re:iPod Killer

[Deosyne]

Anyone can create music that can be immediately used by fans on their iPods without subjecting each song to a lengthy and questionable approval process before having their songs solely available through Apple's storefront. Pick a better metaphor.

Re:iPod Killer

[MBGMorden]

Yes but those songs can also be used on a myriad of other digital audio players too - many of which have interfaces just as functional as the iPod.

What iPod DOES have though is iTunes - the app, not the store. While the app and store talk well together, even my purchases from Amazon and Wal-mart's music stores end up getting imported into iTunes for syncing to my iPod. As far as organizing music, downloading RSS content/podcasts, and then easily syncing that to a device, iTunes owns. Just being able to plug my iPod in in the morning, wait a few minutes, and then be able to disconnect it and have all my new songs and podcasts waiting is why I have an iPod. The mere act of listening to the content could be achieved on any other device and I wouldn't care one bit.

and the iTunes store was crushed by rivals in 2008

[enkidu]

By that same logic, the iTunes store should have been crushed by rivals (amazon, walmart, emusic et al) in 2007. Guess what? Didn't happen that way. I think that android will gain marketshare, but most of it will be from Symbian and WinCE Mobile (or whatever they're calling it this year). Apple will also gain market share at an equal or greater pace, fueled by the advantage of the app store. Focused competition will beat apple (remember Palm vs Newton?), but unfocused, dispersed competition is going to have a hard time beating Apple at their own game.

Similar arguments

[Captain Spam]

Market watcher Gartner is claiming that by Q4 2012 Google's Android smartphone OS will have overtaken Apple's iPhone.

*sigh* Yeah, yeah, and that's also the year of the Linux desktop, and when BSD will finally be dead, and when Duke Nukem Forever is going to be released, and...

Re:Similar arguments

[DragonWriter]

Yeah, yeah, and that's also the year of the Linux desktop

Well, if Android overtakes the the mobile version of OSX for smartphones and similar non-phone devices, it is more like the year of the Linux palmtop.

Re:Similar arguments

[Gilmoure]

NetBSD is NOT dead! NetBSD is LIFE!

Android + Shanzai = Number 1

[pieterh]

If you've ever tried a KIRF $50 Chinese smartphone you'll see that all that has been missing is Android. The Shanzai ability to innovate in hardware is so powerful that I predict this is the future model for building phones, computers, and such.

All that's been missing is a decent free OS.

While the Shanzai firms take over most of the world's production of smartphones, and sell their designs and models to Nokia, Samsung, Apple, and Microsoft, they will also be taking over PMPs, netbooks, and god knows what else.

And finally we'll all be using $20 smartphones and $75 computers. I cannot wait.

Re:Android + Shanzai = Number 1

[cdrguru]

And finally we'll all be using $20 smartphones and $75 computers. I cannot wait.

And I can't wait to hire software engineers for $3500 a year. Of course, nobody is going to be employed in the US in any technical position anymore - why would they, when any company in the US just has their products stolen and copied cheaper in China. I guess there is also the idea that there isn't any point to paying anyone for software development because it is all free now, right?

Sure, you can have your cheap stuff. Just remember who is being paid to make it. Won't be you. Or your neighbor. Both of you can commuite together to bag groceries at the food bank.

Re:Android + Shanzai = Number 1

[chrb]

Interesting. You aren't the only one talking about Shanzhai.

Re:Android + Shanzai = Number 1

[bemymonkey]

God I hope you're right...

Two Predictions

[BryanL]

I have 2 predictions for Android (though this might seem obvious to some people.)

First, if Android overtakes Apple, it will be because Android eats into the market share of other mobile handsets/OSes. It probably won't hurt Apple as much as other companies.

Second, Android probably won't overtake Apple any time soon. Having a single company means a focused business strategy. Having many companies involved means a market strategy that is unfocused and hard to define. For every 2 steps forward the Android companies make, they will take 1 step backwards. There are just too many disparate interests involved. If Android surpasses the iPhone, it will be long after 2012.

Re:Two Predictions

[Daishiman]

I disagree with this. Already there's a substantial bunch of iPhone users that are dissatisfied with either the phone or the carrier and have plans for switching. I'm sure Apple is already moving to counter this, but the iPhone has locked itself into a corner with their development policies and single-tasking OS.

Re:Two Predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

What seems obvious to me is many different companies use Symbian and it's #1. How did the Symbian OS become #1 if it was going up against other more focused business strategies?

Perhaps the Gartner analyst believes more and more people will begin using Smartphones and will need a "Smart OS." If Symbian fails to deliver a "Smart OS" for the new generation of phones and prices keep falling with smart phones, Android could easily replace Symbian as the #1.

Re:Two Predictions

[sznupi]

Uhm, Symbian is used pretty much only by Nokia. Yes, there are other players, by their share is miniscule.

It likely has become no.1 thanks to what you hint at - low prices. I think people often got Symbian phone without really realising its capabilities, OS, even that it's a smartphone. Now that Nokia and Android devices makers start to push with even lower prices, into segment dominated now by feature phones, this will be how they grow, big time. They don't even have to steal marketshare from each other...

Re:Two Predictions

[salarelv]

What other companies? The other companies will use Android. Apple has to innovate to stay on the top. But the iPhone hasn't innovated after the first release. Only hardware updates. Yes probably it will gain some market share the coming 2 years but when they don't come to new ideas the others will get better than Apple because there are more carriers, more hardware producers and more freedom.

Re:Two Predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at work I know of 3 other Android users.. and only 1 iPhone user... Though there are like 8+ blackberry users... that's pretty much the landscape of the team I am working on. To be honest, the company promotes blackberry use for integration reasons, and the Android users prefer the platform (3 G1, 1 Touch).. the iPhone guy has hacked his... The points are all meaningless, and can't be abstracted. I have more friends outside of work that have iPhones or Blackberry phones that any other brands (even combining android phones)... it's hard to say what will happen in a couple years though.

Re:Two Predictions

[JAlexoi]

A) If you use the word "IF" then it is not a prediction.
B) On the other hand, Apple has a well defined strategy, that is exclusive and not inclusive. Having a lot of companies, might get Android to a wider range of audiences.

Re:Two Predictions

[mdwh2]

I agree - though, can you give me a definition of "smartphone" that distinguishes it from feature phone?

The thing is, the terms are pretty much the same, except that "smartphone" vaguely means one that's higher end or more costly at the time. (This is what the "But the Iphone does well in the smartphone market" crowd don't get.)

So the trend of yesterday's smartphones becoming today's feature phones has been going on for years, and it's natural that we'll continue to see this to happen. Nokia are indeed number one, which is much to do with them having a full range of phones that people want. The Iphone might not lose sales, but it's easy to see them becoming (even more) irrelevant as high end features continue to become bog standard on cheap phones (Internet access and ability to run applications were bog standard years before the Iphone existed; last time I checked, even touchscreen was becoming commonplace on cheap contract-free phones).

Re:Two Predictions

[MeNeXT]

Market share.... I like the term it means nothing. Apple had the biggest market share in personal computers before IBM released the PC. The big the automakers had the biggest market share in NA and where are they now? Out of the ten people who I know who bought iPhones five regret the decision two find the phone ok and three love it. All hate the number of calls it drops. What good is a camera when you can't transfer a picture to another phone, you have to wait to get home to sync through iTunes. Personally, I think Apple is getting in the way of a great innovation.

Re:Two Predictions

[sznupi]

I don't think there is an "industry standard" definition. For me that's a phone with basically all the capabilities of, say, fullblown PC. Feature phones don't count, because while their functionality can be somehow extended (j2me), those apps generally don't integrate well (of course there are borderline cases, like Sony Ericsson phones that can run several j2me apps and, having usually the most advanced j2me implementation at the time, can sorta offer better integration; or iPhone for that matter, with limited multitasking)

That also means the trend you're talking about can't be preciselly described as "yesterday's smartphones becoming today's feature phones", IMHO. There is something as "good enough" functionality. A PC that's 10 years old doesn't stop being a PC. A netbook can do basically all of the things some high-end Macbook Pro can. Future cheap Android & Symbian phones will do basically all of the things some high-end phone will. And they will also be vastly more popular than the latter.

Just history repeating itself?

[sznupi]

There was a time when similar things could be said about Macs. But ultimatelly other companies betting on more open solution catched up and overtook them.

I suspect Apple might make similar errors with iPhone / iPhone OS...

Re:Just history repeating itself?

[znu]

The whole "Windows won because it was a more open platform" thing is probably an overly simplistic analysis of why Microsoft came out on top in the desktop PC market, and attempting to apply it to every other technology market (as analysts seem to enjoy doing) is probably overgeneralization.

Re:Just history repeating itself?

[mac84]

Exactly. The leadership at apple (Scully/Spindler/Amelio/Kawasaki)made several tactical mistakes in the late 80s/early 90s that doomed the macOS, such as pricing mac way above the competition, betting that cooperative multitasking would be the next thing in OS's (remember Copeland?) and so on... Remember, the OSX you see now has much more in common with NeXt OS than the old macOS. A big distinction today is Apple/ATT are price competitive with palm/RIM/win smartphones/plans. And soon as Apple sees it to their benefit, you can be sure there will be no more "carrier exclusives" for the iPhone. Remember, Creative/Dell/MS and the rest were all going to surpass the ipod "any day now" What ever happened to that argument?

Re:Just history repeating itself?

[david_thornley]

Except that that's not how it happened at all.

Once upon a time, before the Empire, there were numerous manufacturers of different small computers: Apple, Radio Shack, Commodore, Atari, to name a few. Then IBM came out with the Personal Computer, and took over the market immediately, being of course the only real computer company. Businesses that wouldn't dream of buying one of those toys from a place called Apple were eager to spend lots more money on something from IBM.

Then, in a world absolutely dominated by IBM PCs and clones, came the Macintosh. It was different, and sold in small numbers, but the profit margins were so high that Apple did well anyway, at least until (after a year or so) Apple came out with a version that was actually useful.

The Macintosh was never overtaken. It was always way down the charts from the PCs/clones with whatever OS Microsoft was selling from the start. It was never better than #2, and currently it is #2 by a large margin. Other players in the market, like Atari and Commodore, just didn't make it (although the Amiga was amazing back then).

The iPhone is more like the iPod: introduced into a marketplace and immediately becoming a major player. Apple needs to make the iPhone more business-friendly to be truly dominant, and they've been doing that at least to some extent. Even as it is, the iPhone is more of a success than the Macintosh ever was.

Moreover, the iPhone is more of an appliance than a computer, and I think that's the sort of thing Apple can do really well. I expect the iPhone to be the dominant personal smart phone for a long time, and to make serious very inroads into business phones. Developers will write iPhone apps because that's where the money will be, and the money will be there because of many millions of people with iPhones being used to buying apps. People will buy iPhones because they're so easy to use and because of all the neat apps they can get.

I've been wrong before, but the dynamics are far different from what they were for the Macintosh, and the geek marketplace is much smaller than the nongeek one.

Re:Just history repeating itself?

[dangitman]

But ultimatelly other companies betting on more open solution catched up and overtook them.

When did that happen? The only desktop OS with more marketshare than Mac is Windows, and that's hardly an "open solution". Linux is currently way behind in marketshare.

Here's where it lost me

[UnknowingFool]

Windows Mobile's share will grow from 10.3 per cent to 12.8 per cent during the same quarters, Gartner added, which will see it remain as the fourth most popular phone-based OS.

So Gartner is saying WinMo will grow. Based on what? Their last release 6.5 is being panned by many reviewers as window-dressing of 6.1 with few new features. The only thing that WinMo users can hope is that WinMo 7 will catch up to iPhone, Android, Palm OS, etc. But at the earliest this is a year away and no one has seen it yet. By that time, WinMo competitors are not likely to be sitting idle and will be continually updating their software.

Re:Here's where it lost me

[salarelv]

WinMo will grow because smart phones gain market share. More and more people can afford a smart phone. WinMo has a lot good apps. Even more than the iPhone. These apps are for the business people who need more than a fancy outfit.

Re:Here's where it lost me

[UnknowingFool]

WinMo will grow because smart phones gain market share. More and more people can afford a smart phone.

There's no question that smart phones become a larger part of the mobile phone market but the question is whether WinMo will grow its share of the smart phone market. The Gartner analyst says Symbian will stay at the top of the smart phone market, followed by Android, etc. And they say WinMo will gain marketshare. My question is how they can reach this determination when WinMo is not giving users any new features for at least a year while their competitors seem to be racing ahead.

WinMo has a lot good apps. Even more than the iPhone.

WinMo probably has a lot more apps overall than the iPhone. However, they have never had a cohesive way for their users to get apps till now. Even now there's only a few hundred apps on their store. Also the overall platform is user unfriendly enough for people not to bother getting apps. Those users who get apps do so because they need a certain app for a certain function; whereas other platforms have apps that users actually want to get. Developers sensing the real focus is no longer with WinMo development have left for other platforms.

These apps are for the business people who need more than a fancy outfit.

I'm not saying you're a MS apologist but this statement shows that you are rather biased. Many, many companies apps have been ported their applications the iPhone. Again WinMo has many more application, but WinMo has been out longer a decade longer. In 2 years of existence, the iPhone has overtaken WinMo in terms of sales. At the rate the iPhone is growing, it is expected to eclipse WinMo easily in the next 2 years in terms of apps.

Also in my post, I never advocated for the iPhone. I merely said WinMo competitors like Blackberry, Android, etc would not sit idle while MS finally catches up with WinMo 7. In my opinion, serious business people should get Blackberries and not WinMo. It's a far better communications device than WinMo.

Re:Here's where it lost me

[salarelv]

Many my friends who were businessmen before iPhone and Android where WinMo or Symbian users. And these people will continue to use these because they have the apps they need(ed). And like You said that there is now a store for these apps. People don't buy every day a new phone and the market has the time change to fight against Apple. Apple has to innovate to stay ahead but usually the winners stay put and don't care. Sure the iPhone is gaining but not very much from the hardcore users but from young people who care for the outfit not the functionality. iPhone will gain because it's a fashion accessory but fashion changes every year. Maybe apple will find the next big thing but that's another question.

Re:Here's where it lost me

[UnknowingFool]

Many my friends who were businessmen before iPhone and Android where WinMo or Symbian users. And these people will continue to use these because they have the apps they need(ed). And like You said that there is now a store for these apps. People don't buy every day a new phone and the market has the time change to fight against Apple

So you are basing your opinion of WinMo not on your personal experience but your friends? Our company uses WinMo 6.1. I was issued a phone. Every company employee hates them and uses them only because that was what our carrier/finances would allow. The problem with WinMo devices is that the quality varies dramatically by the OEM. One user bought her own WinMo device because she got tired of the company cell phone hanging up on her for no reason during the middle of phone calls with clients. Her model sucks less but it isn't a stellar performer.

My experience with the phone is that it is barely usable compared to other systems. The main thing that ties our employees to WinMo is Outlook. But now users have been able to get their iPhones to sync with company email so some of them turned in their company phones and use their iPhones. Other business may have applications that require WinMo, but as the iPhone and Androids become more popular, those applications will probably be ported over.

I remember right after the 3G came out, someone commented on a site that they would never get an iPhone because it didn't have any apps for their business. It was a toy and not a real phone, he said. He was a doctor and only Windows Mobile had his apps. Until someone responded back that the companies that made his apps made iPhone ports.

People don't buy every day a new phone and the market has the time change to fight against Apple. Apple has to innovate to stay ahead but usually the winners stay put and don't care.

People are not particularly loyal to any one phone or brand. Unless there is some reason to stay with WinMo, they will switch if it suits them. In some cases, applications may limit their choices but as said before, if they can get their app on Android or iPhone or WinMo, it doesn't matter much. What we see these days are that developers are flocking to other systems other than WinMo. At some point, people getting a new phone will switch away from WinMo because of this.

As someone who has used WinMo, Blackberry, and an iPhone, the #1 reason I bought an iPhone is that the web browsing is actually functional whereas it was abysmal on the other platforms. Android looks interesting too but at the time, it was too new.

Sure the iPhone is gaining but not very much from the hardcore users but from young people who care for the outfit not the functionality. iPhone will gain because it's a fashion accessory but fashion changes every year. Maybe apple will find the next big thing but that's another question.

This is a very biased statement. So the iPhone is only popular because of young people who care only about fashion. Have you looked around lately? The iPhone is used by everyone, young and old. Like others, I didn't know if Apple could really sell phones to consumers until I saw more grandparents and parents with them than teenagers. So who are these "hardcore users" that you speak of. If you mean, business users, many of them have no choice. They have to take whatever the company gives them.

For a long time, smartphones were purchased mainly by businesses. A very small percentage of people bought them for personal use. About the time that companies started making more consumer friendly smartphones, Apple released the iPhone. Now Android is out. I would say that smartphones will probably divided for business and consumers. In the consumer space, iPhones dominants more than any other model, and the largest growing segment of the smartphone market is the consumer area. As Apple adds more features to these phones, they are becoming more business-friendly.

Re:Here's where it lost me

[Anonymous Coward]

Gartner ALWAYS overestimates WinMo. Go back 3 years, 6 years, 9 years...

.."the iPhone market penetration"...

[CdBee]

Apple will probably never make a $400 netbook or a phone that's cheap enough - with or without operator subsidy - for the basic-level phone deals. That limits their market significantly.

Very large assumtion that

[baomike]

Gartner has a clue about what they are talking about.

NB: non cell phone user, so I really don't care who "wins".

Is that you Ballmer?

[tylersoze]

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2007/04/ballmer-says-iphone-has-no-chance-to-gain-significant-market-share.ars

Re:Is that you Ballmer?

[popo]

Further proof that Ballmer is, and always will be, a complete buffoon.

What's that old maxim about opinions and assholes?

Re:Is that you Ballmer?

[Gilmoure]

What's that old maxim about opinions and assholes?

Make like a tree and bark?

only 2 more years of unimaginable profit

[goffster]

drat!

OMFG are you kidding me?!

[erroneus]

In what universe?! The only way that could happen is if Apple were to discontinue the iPhone. I think my comment history largely speaks for itself. I disapprove of the iPhone for a variety of reasons, but the public likes what it likes and we don't need to go into the causes. But the most powerful reason the public likes iPhone does not presently apply to Android. So unless they are predicting a huge and successful marketing push that would best Apple's, nothing will change the status quo we are seeing today.

Re:OMFG are you kidding me?!

[farble1670]

oh you read slashdot a lot you must be an authority on such issues? actually, there's probably an inverse relationship.

Re:OMFG are you kidding me?!

[DragonWriter]

I disapprove of the iPhone for a variety of reasons, but the public likes what it likes and we don't need to go into the causes.

Actually, if we are talking about what is likely to be successful in the future, rather than what is successful right now, we do need to have some understanding of the causes of why the public likes what they like. Simply stating that "X is popular now, which means the public likes it and we don't need to examine why, and it will always, therefore, remain the most popular" doesn't really cut it.

I bought an iPhone because it seemed to be the best mobile device for my interests at the time I bought it. I also bought it under the firm belief (which has only been reinforced since) that by the time I bought my text smartphone, the iPhone probably wouldn't be where I was going, and that something like Android probably would. Even if underlying desires never changed (which they do), how well different products meet them can and does change.

Re:OMFG are you kidding me?!

[MtViewGuy]

However, don't dismiss Android if Google gets LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson to all make Android-based cellphones. That right there represents the vast majority of the marketshare of cellphones around the world, and within a few years this could be MUCH larger than Apple's share of the "smart" cellphone market.

As such, this means apps written for Android has the potential to be installed on a lot more cellphones than all the iPhones sold out there in the long run.

Microsoft Loses

[geoffrobinson]

It seems that Android will kill Windows Mobile. That appears to be the real story. Most non-Apple/RIM companies will get behind Android and avoid Windows.

Mod Down: Parent is a Liar

[mpapet]

wish Symbian would die already, its a horrible system and all apps require certification from Symbian

Oh really? THen how would the MAME port for Symbian ever work on my phone? How about any one of a number of openSSH clients for Symbian?

Windows Mobile I still except to stick around, it's quite nice system and you can run any apps
WTF? I know a few people that have regretted buying Microsoft's offering inside a phone. I know I'm not alone.

Seriously, you guys don't know what you have been missing with Symbian devices. Tons of applications, stable OS, excellent media Freedom.

Now that the OS is supposed to be GPL'd at some point, it might help it's case against more rudimentary products from Apple and Google.

i refuse to believe this

[nimbius]

for in 2012 when i am fending off the zombie apocalypse with an over-under shotgun from behind a burned out krispy kreme I'll have at very least the comfort of knowing I wasnt deluded into believing an open-source operating system through its own merits and achievements actually became more popular and market acceptable than its proprietary, closed source, and heavily regulated alternative. its just NOT HOW PEOPLE WORK, DAMNIT!

Is Gartner Group a paid Microsoft shill?

[walterbyrd]

Gartner declares Android a second place winner in 2012. Why?

> Looking into its crystal ball, Gartner Group has predicted that Google's Android will become the second largest smartphone platform by 2012. Problem is, nobody's talking about how terrible Gartner is at predicting things, or that Gartner's "research" has historically been paid for by special interests. So why the headlines?

> But calling Windows Mobile a dud at this point isn't very bold, even for Gartner, a group that has dutifully suckled the teat of Bill Gates throughout a series of sour spells. Microsoft's shill budget for Windows Mobile is probably as sad as the beleaguered mobile platform's web browser. That would certainly explain why a Gartner analyst wrote a month ago that he was "concerned about its future and I worry that WM7 [in 2010] could even be the last throw of the dice [for Microsoft]."

> In one of Microsoft's antitrust suits, Gartner's core competency as a shill group was detailed when confidential internal memos surfaced showing that Microsoft had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort that "successfully lobbied and changed the Gartner Group TCO [Total Cost of Ownership] model to show Windows as providing the lowest overall TCO [in comparison to NCs]."

> In contrast, RIM and Apple largely live or die on the merits of their products, not on the spin that chattering analysts can give their products. Tomorrow's Android makers are today's Windows Mobile makers, and Gartner is just doing the best it can to keep Windows Mobile alive in principle, even as the life is draining out of its frail earthly corpse.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/08/gartner-declares-android-a-second-place-winner-in-2012-why/

OK

[PinkyGigglebrain]

Maybe its just me but has anyone else noticed how almost everything seems to be happening during or in 2012?

Re:OK

[jbond23]

That's because it's 3 years away. And secondly because these style of articles are always of the form "The X Market will be Y big in Z years." Where Z is either 1,3,5 or 10.

What about...

[Pulin Shah]

What about Palm/WebOs?

Gartner's other claims...

[His Shadow]

They probably produced a paper about how everyone was going to own a SPOT watch as well...

What about WebOS from Palm

[Harlan879]

I don't think I'd predict that WebOS will be up near Android or the iPhone in 2012, but it'll likely still be around. The original analysis doesn't even mention them. Many people think that WebOS has the best technology of any of the existing mobile OSs, although they obviously need more apps (coming soon) and more phones (coming soon).

I'm also an analyst!

[Hurricane78]

And I predict that I will be rich, because there is this incredible hype around people giving me money for no reason!

Rich! RICH I tell you!

Unfortunately it will happen on the same day as the end of the world.

Re:and the iTunes store was crushed by rivals in 2

[sznupi]

The summary talks about the market in which Symbian dominates. That means it isn't US-centric. On the scale of the world iTunes isn't that strong.

Also, why do you all forget about another possibility - that Android (and Symbian, and...) will grow mainly thanks to people moving en masse from feature phones to smartphones? You know, the latter are a very small part of the whole picture now. That will cheange when they will get cheaper. Symbian goes there. Android goes there. Other players...not so much. And Apple almost certainly doesn't want to (their mistake, will be just like with Macs vs. PCs in the 80's & 90's...)

These the same yahoo's?

[Anonymous Coward]

That predicted the Palm Pre would be a problem for the iPhone too?

Oh, and I predict...

[Hurricane78]

...that ol' big daddy Nokia will put those two fighting dwarf children in the opposite corners of the room until they behave again! ^^

Android vs. iPhone = Software vs. Hardware

[popo]

IMHO it isn't really possible to compare a software product with a hardware/software product anyway... We're talking about two different things here.

re: Where do I get me a paranoid android phone

[MRe_nl]

At the Radiohead Shack.

I for one, welcome...

[Wraithlyn]

In my RSS reader, right above the previous headline "PhotoSketch Image Manipulation Tool Taking the World by Storm", I totally misread this as something like "Analysts predict androids overtake world by 2012" at first glance. ;)

People here miss that......

[zaibazu]

there are more phones besides the full featured smartphone. Apple mostly caters to the upper market segment, while Android can be can also be used in middle and maybe even lower market segments (Just look at the Xpressmusic). Sheer volume will put Android before Apple and WinMobile.

2012????

[Anonymous Coward]

Mayan Calendar predicts that the end of the world will be 2012....

Analyst predicts the end of the iPhone supremacy in 2012....

Does the end of the iPhone mean the end of the world? Hmmmmm.

What about the dock connector?

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone has a lot more going for it than just the app store. Nobody else can touch the dock connector. When I bought my first iPod it was because of the dock connector not because it was the cheapest or best MP3 player available at the time. There are hundreds of accessories made especially for that simple connector and no other phone has it. I walk into just about any store and there are accessories for the iPhone and every dock-capable iPod everywhere I look.

Not to mention the iPhone-specific cases and other accessories. No other product line has that. I have struggled to find a case to fit every other phone I ever owned, but I can find dozens for my iPhone. How many earphones or microphones advertise themselves as working on Android, Zune, Symbian, etc. yet almost all of them advertise they work with iPod and/or iPhone.

Where is new Maemo?

[dUb]

You may already heard about Nokia's Linux based Maemo OS? Was it included into Symbian or was it forgot completly?
I bet it will beat iPhone.

There are already hundreds of free applications in www.maemo.org for older Nokia internet tablets. And there are no restrictions like iPhone.

Re:and the iTunes store was crushed by rivals in 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Once a consumer has an iPhone, it's going to be hard to get those consumers to switch. In the past, if you bought a phone, you never really spent money on apps so you didn't care about switching.

But now you have a phone that's a proprietary OS which people spend hundreds of dollars on apps, I bought Navigon GPS for my iPhone for $70, bought $50 worth of games, etc. If another phone wants to woo me, it's going to have to be a great ass phone for me to forgot about spending money on those apps

Um...what ever

[davmoo]

Right. This is why the market has so many wonderful Android phones now.

We've been hearing about all these Android phones that are going to appear "any time now". We've been hearing that for a couple of years. And thus far at every cellphone oriented industry show the big talk is about how new Android phones did not show up in the numbers expected. There's what...3?...actually out on the market now?

History repeating itself

[paulpach]

1. 1) in 1987^w 2007 Apple releases an innovative product, the apple II^w^w iphone
2. 2) Tons of other vendors release their own computers^w phones that mimic apple's.
3. 3) Microsoft^w Google focuses on an operating system, and lets hardware manufacturers use the software in their clones^w phones
4. 4) Everybody and their dogs releases MS-DOS^w Android compatible hardware (currently happening)
5. 5) Clones^w android phones start competing against each other fiercely on price (soon to happen)
6. 6) Market starts converging towards fewer vendors (will happen)
7. 7) Apple looses market share as new buyers flock to the cheap and compatible PCs^w Android phones

Only time will tell if 7 will happen, or apple will do something to avoid a history repeat.

this isn't controversial or even unlikely ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this so controversial? If anything, the less probable world-wide outcome is for Apple to maintain its dominance.

I think it is just market realities - Android is free, and allows carriers to have their own app stores. Hardware is only going to get cheaper, and more capable, and handset manufacturers know this. They know that in 5 years, the cheapest taiwanese phone will make the current iPhone hardware look like crap. So, what do they do? They start planning to use the least expensive smart phone OS in their future phones, in order to compete on price. If just 10 of the top 15 phone manufacturers were to do this, that would mean BILLIONS of handsets running Android, compared to just a few hundred million iPhones.

This article isn't saying that Android is BETTER, it is just saying that it will increase market share. It isn't saying that the hardware from the other manufacturers, or the apps available for the phones will be BETTER than the iPhone. It is just doing simple math - all these manufacturers and carriers are announcing Android phones, so lets add up their forecasts and compare them to iPhone and Symbian and WinMo forecasts.

Where's the controversy?

And for another view... (Roughlydrafted.com)

[david.emery]

Daniel Eran Dilger, unrepentant Mac Fanboy, provides a rather thorough and documented analysis here: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/08/gartner-declares-android-a-second-place-winner-in-2012-why/ Worth the read, even if you don't agree with Dilger's alternate position.

Open Source has failed in general

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is similar to early statements about how open source in general was going to overtake all closed source OS's. It changed a number of things but still open source software maintains only a cult following and hasn't been adopted in mass. The evil empires apple and microsoft still prevail because they can produce a finished product rather then a mash of different technolgies created by script kiddies and crappy libs.

Mod parent up!

[AusIV]

That was my thought. The iPhone might have more apps by virtue of the fact that it's been around longer, and some of them might be more mature than their Android counterparts, but 3 years down the road that won't be the case. In the long term, I'd put my money on Android if for no other reason than it can multitask.

I'm really hoping the rumors about 2.0 having multitouch support will pan out. Android does pretty well with only one contact point, but it could still benefit from multitouch support.

Other than that, both the myTouch and the G1 have an accelerometer which is used by a number of apps and built-in features of the phone. They have GPS, network, and wifi based positioning, which is pretty accurate even with my GPS receiver turned off. They have a built in compass, and there are apps that make use of it. It comes with an Amazon mp3 client, and you can put music on it with a file browser or just about any non-itunes music player.

I don't know what the OP was talking about, as only two of his points have any merit at all.

Re:Mod parent up!

[Serious Callers Only]

In the long term, I'd put my money on Android if for no other reason than it can multitask.

The iPhone currently multitasks fine (many apple apps have background processes) - they could flip a switch and allow apps to run in the background tomorrow, so I don't think this is a serious problem for Apple. There are good reasons for limiting running apps though, so I see why they do it (battery life foremost among them, responsiveness another).

Glad to hear your Android phone works well - good to have competition in this space, and I think long term your prediction on Android will pan out - it will certainly gain equal traction to the iPhone, and perhaps surpass it if Google can make their interface a little slicker, and get more devs on their store.

Re:Mod parent up!

[Chyeld]

More importantly a metric ton of apps still only boils down to a bushel of 'good' apps. The iPhoine definately suffers from the "Oh Wow! Someone is making money on this, lets release everyhing we can think of for it. Maybe we can too!" syndrome.

Re:Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait. What the fuck is the "Apple can do it if they wanted to" crap. We are talking about what they are doing NOW not what they could do. As for the whole battery life bullshit, have you ever heard of process priorities, you know where you can have a process have access to the CPU less often than other apps. Why the hell would battery life be an issue unless you are going to run 4,900 apps at the same time. You might have a well meaning point but you just come across as an apple apologist in the first part of your post.

I want to also state in this post to other people who are fervently defending Apple, that perhaps Google isn't trying to make Android a complete clone of the iphone. Not everyone wants or needs itunes integration. This would just turn android into another product where the main complaint will be "It's not as Apple as Apple". I think Google is doing a fine job going at their own pace and setting up their own vision INDEPENDENT of what Apple does. We don't need another iphone, we need decent phones with nice and useful features to bring smart phones to the next level. Apple has carved out their path with wanting to control the whole experience and Google is taking the "our OS on their phone" approach. Both products are going to shake up the incumbent telco industry but they can fight the future but can rarely win in the end.

Re:Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconded.

I bought an iPod touch (3rd gen) to see what the hype was about - and to be honest, out of the 40 or so free apps i've tried, only one is of slight entertainment after 10 minutes of 'testing'. Admittedly i haven't bought an app, but for $5, i don't expect too many to be fantastic. I was speaking to a group of devs at a company that make apps for both android and iphone and they said that when a consumer purchases a $2 app, they expect personal customer service, and everything to be hunky dory with how they expected to run it. In essence they said, you're dealing with bottom feeder software customers :)

To charge US$5.99 for an SSH app (iSSH - which is v.good) is absurd.

I'm still very happy with my nokia e71, and my music doesn't get interrupted by phone calls if I don't want it to :)

Re:Mod parent up!

[salesgeek]

Actually, there are two reasons that Android will dominate in the future:

1. Business Apps. I can write and roll out whatever I want for my company's Android devices. No App Store approval. There is serious money to be made on doing corporate apps for android, and no big brother to tell you that you can't do that.

2. Evolution. The built in Android apps face competition from third party apps. For example, Google's Google Voice App (which you can no has on iPhone) suck compared to a third part app called GV. Guess what: Google's app will get a lot better way earlier than expected because of competition.

Re:Mod parent up!

[Serious Callers Only]

We are talking about what they are doing NOW not what they could do.

iPhones currently multitask (mail, maps, safari, ipod). They just restrict 3rd party apps from doing so. It is not a technical limitation, as the grandparent implied, and they do in fact multitask right now. Sorry to disappoint you.

I want to also state in this post to other people who are fervently defending Apple

I am not fervently defending Apple, frankly I think many of their actions on iPhone suck (though they got the important stuff that end users care about right). I think you're fighting with shadows of your own imagining here.

Apples and Oranges

[Carbaholic]

iPhone is a hardware + OS platform.

Android is an OS

Nothing will beat the iPhone until there is a single handset that outsells the iPhone.

Heck, the iPhone could even run android in the future

Re:Apples and Oranges

[mjwx]

iPhone is a hardware + OS platform.

Android is an OS

Nothing will beat the iPhone until there is a single handset that outsells the iPhone.

Heck, the iPhone could even run android in the future

Apple II is a hardware + OS platform.

DOS is an OS

Nothing will beat the Apple II until there is a single PC that outsells the Apple II.

Heck, the Apple II could even run DOS in the future

And we all remember how that one turned out. Apple will lose market share to Android, not just because of Android but because Apple is repeating the same mistakes it did back in the 80's

Sounds like good news

[UttBuggly]

DISCLAIMER: I bought an iPhone 3GS in July, the first one I've owned. My wife got one in August. We like the phones, but are not Apple zealots. :END DISCLAIMER

I think the prediction, if true, is good news. I don't see Apple, or anyone else non-Android, idly standing by the next 2-3 years. It should result in better hardware, better OS, better apps, and better user experience at a lower cost due to competition among the players.

Wishful thinking perhaps, but not completely. The typical customer will be an existing device owner. Since their current (non-AT&T) carrier may well offer an Android phone, Apple will have to be available on more carriers than AT&T OR have an iPhone "5GS" that's so compelling people would (still) line up to get one. I don't think Apple can "out-hardware" anyone. The 3GS is neat and capable, but as several others have pointed out, there are other phones as good or better right now.

So, I would think that the entire Apple "food chain"; hardware, iTunes, App Store, iPhone OS, and carrier partner, will have to change and adapt to compete. There may well be many phone models, from multiple manufacturers by 2012 running Android. If Google rolls out "gTunes" or something that competes decently with iTunes with the content Google could bring to the table, Apple will have to react. Ultimate winner should be the consumer.

For my part, if there's an Android phone available a year from July (when my AT&T contract is up) that is better than an iPhone is at that time, I'll likely get it. My consumer loyalty lies with me, period. I feel that's probably the case with most people. iTunes doesn't make or break the deal for me either.

As I said, good news.

Re:Sounds like good news

[grcumb]

DISCLAIMER: I bought an iPhone 3GS in July, the first one I've owned. My wife got one in August. We like the phones, but are not Apple zealots. :END DISCLAIMER

Sorry to go all Grammar Nazi on what it otherwise an insightful post, but...

What you claim is a 'DISCLAIMER' is actually a 'DISCLOSURE'.

A disclaimer would be something like, "I could be talking out my ass here..." or "I don't have any stats to back this, but my personal observation is..." or "Take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt..."

The phrase "Gartner predicts...." is, for example, an implicit disclaimer, warning readers that what follows is going to be the most complete, utter bollocks since... well, since their last prediction.

Re:Sounds like good news

[UttBuggly]

LOL...you are correct.

I started to head the post with DISCLOSURE, but suffered an unfortunate grammar collision while typing. (No lives were lost and only minor injuries were reported)

Opinions and assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it goes like this.

extremely plausible

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only person here that draws the same conclusion? iPhone OS comes on a single device released by a single manufacturer, that has 3 versions currently released. By 2012, there will probably be 3 more released.

Android is an OS made for *many* devices. Shear numbers will dominate the mobile market over the next 3 years. I will take an uneducated guess, and say that it will surpass iPhone OS by 2011.5. Android will be on notebooks, smart mobiles and regular phones, much more than 6 models of phones.

Fortunately...

[P. Legba]

...by then, the end of the world will be at hand, and Apple will have won. The aliens will come to rescue us, and we'll all go to live on a planet where we communicate telepathically.

What If....?

[tunapez]

What if I do not want Google mining my every action? What if I don't use/want Fecebook and Twatter in the cloud or on my device? What if I only need a phone on a network with ubiquitous coverage(in the US) and want an open, mobile toy for browsing however I choose to browse?

Maemo appeared to be promising(nice back-pedal on the carrier crippling stand), but the n900 specs shine all the way until you see it's only available on GSM/HSDPA(T-Mobile or ATT...ack!). Too bad, millions of sheep will flock and give their money to whatever the latest crippled.platform+good.network / good.platform+crippled.network combo that comes along. They will believe they want what this oligop system deems they want(and shell out the $$$) and nothing will change for the better.

Re: Where do I get me a paranoid android phone

[EvilBudMan]

Actually I was thinking about Marvin. That was before Radiohead, but your still funny anyhow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_the_Paranoid_Android

He looks like a cell phone.

Too bad it will be too late.

[r3zurector]

Everyone knows the world is going to end in 2012..... :-p

Wouldn't it be funny ...

[Edmund Blackadder]

Wouldn't it be funny if Apple loses their lead in smart-phones for the same reason they lost their lead in personal computers. I.e., in that they did not have the system open enough and kept the hardware proprietary. Well I am not sure it would happen. Phones are tricky things and in them some close hardware/software integration is actually beneficial. But if it does happen it would be really funny. Especially considering that the same guy would have been the head of Apple on both occasions.

I guarantee you that Google had the history of PCs in mind when they were thinking up the Android strategy.

How were YOU modded up??

[SuperKendall]

Because it's not, really. It's a rant on how someone loves their phone, and that no one could possibly make a better one.

What the hell. The post you were referring to, said phones were besides the point! It was about how iTunes is the feature that drives phone sales, and said nothing whatsoever about what you are claiming they rant about.

Re:and the iTunes store was crushed by rivals in 2

[_Sprocket_]

Focused competition will beat apple (remember Palm vs Newton?), but unfocused, dispersed competition is going to have a hard time beating Apple at their own game.

Each sector of a market has it's own influences. So it's a little tricky (if not downright self deceptive) to draw conclusions from one and apply it to another. That being said...

The PDA sector was different. The Newton was cutting edge - but it was part of an emerging market. Things really didn't take off until Palm introduced the right form factor. So while it isn't fair to say Palm invented the PDA, they really set the market. But then, that market has ceased to exist along with Palm's domination.

Another example with some parallels is the microcomputer market. Apple defined that market. They weren't the first microcomputer. But they were, at the least, among the first to treat it as a consumer device. They were the first platform for the killer microcomputer business app - the spreadsheet. A market exploded around them. And while they were challenged by IBM's entry in to that market (after IBM realized what was going on in a sector they ignored), it wasn't until IBM lost control of their platform and the "PC" became commodity did Apple get truly buried. This despite the (arguably) superior product of the Mac.

Again - this doesn't mean that what happened in the PDA market or the Personal Computer market is guaranteed to be repeated with mobile computing. But it does provide enough parallels to keep in consideration when trying to make an educated guess at the future.

End of the world mods

[flahwho]

I'm really glad that no one has modded up the stupid end of the world references!

Magic 8-ball

[istartedi]

Magic 8-ball predicts dartboards overtaking analysts in 2016.

My predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that anyone seems to be able to predict the future nowadays here goes mine;

Apple will overtake Nokia in 2011, android will die by the end of 2012, symbian will dies in 2011 and windows CE will die too around 2013. There will be only three types of phones, propietary systems, linux based and apple's one.

News? Not so much

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

As far as I can tell from here:

http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/Blogs/view/5485/.html
http://tinyurl.com/yh3d59w

The "2009" figures are actually from Q1 2009, first published in May:
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=985912

The original "article" doesn't seem to be the Reg one but a plug for Gartner's October conference:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139026/Android_to_grab_No._2_spot_by_2012_says_Gartner

Gartner's Mystic Megs haven't always been spot-on before. For example, in 2006:
http://www.gartner.com/press_releases/asset_152911_11.html

they seemed to forget to mention the imminent drop of Motorola from number 2 in the list in 2006. They warned about Samsung, who improved their position.

My forecast? In 2012 one of the dominant smartphone OSes will be some Chinese thing that no-one reading this has heard of yet.

Re: Where do I get me a paranoid android phone

[MRe_nl]

Ah, the Radiohead Shack at 8 Infinity Drive ; ).

To be honest i think Tom York of Radiohead was also thinking of Marvin.

re:"He looks like a cell phone"...
I want that cell phone you're referring to

There is some sense to this...

[hellfire]

This seems to be more educated guessing than analysis, because there's not enough evidence to say that the Android train has enough steam yet. However the possibility of this coming true does exist, but that's a gamble on a guess, not fact (not yet anyway). The mistake is understanding how Apple will work vs the rest of the market.

Apple makes the iPhone, and controls the hardware and software from top to bottom. This is just like how they handle macs. The trends here can be easily understood and traced.

Google is only releasing the software, and it's up to other people to make the hardware. According to Wikipedia (who appears to have gotten their info from google, as of the end of 2008 there were already 18 devices released that run Android with about 17 possible forthcoming devices. This entry is from last year, and now we have things like the myTouch coming out. Sony, Samsung, and Motorola are seriously looking at using Android.

Apple's OS is proprietary, and the OS only sees growth when the hardware has growth, and apple is the only manufacturer.

Android sees growth when multiple manufacturers get up and start building multiple phones. If Android phones become a commercial success, and most of the major phone companies start using it, then yes it's market share will skyrocket and could surpass Apple. I'm in fact an iPhone fan but I understand the potential of the division of labor here and accept that this is a possibility.

Now, there are two problems with the analysis. One is that Android is basically free, so it's yet to be seen how this would be a financial success to google yet. I'm sure they have leverage somewhere but it's basically an experiment. So increased marketshare doesn't immediately mean increased revenue, not yet anyway.

Second, this is the same mistake analysts made comparing Microsoft to Apple in terms of OS marketshare, and have oft proclaimed Apple dead by not understanding their core business. Compare Apple to hardware sellers, not software makers. Android's OS might overtake iphone OS... so? Apple makes money on the iPhone hardware. The major news you want to look for is if this company HTC which makes the myTouch makes a good quality Android phone for less than the iPhone and has all or more of the features and that new phone's marketshare overtakes Apple. That will be huge news and maybe the analysis should be that we should be looking to invest in HTC. I don't see that happening any time soon, and definitely not by 2012. I do see a whole bunch of manufacturers taking their own slice and sharing the market hardware wise.

Forgetting much?

[SputnikCopilot]

*coughcoughcoughMAEMOcoughcough*

What? Did someone say something? Must have been one of those smaller companies that gave up on the top-end Symbian OS and dove in for a real, open, competitor for Android.

Nokia is small, right?

Gartner Group?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick check... didn't Gartner also say that OS/2 was going to overtake DOS and Windows?

Prediction: Unlocked Android phone for 99$ by 2012

[kroyd]

The current lowest price I know of for an unlocked windows mobile phone is 136.50$ including shipping worldwide. (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12811)

It is a pretty conservative prediction that by early 2012 you'll be able to buy a number of 99$ unlocked android phones - something similar to the HTC Hero I would guess, or similar to the 2G iPhone. This makes it an impulse buy much more than the iPhone. What the label is on the phone won't matter - by then phone hardware will be even more of a commodity hardware than today, basically just a big screen, and the vendors will differ based on software.

The 99$ market is not where I expect Apple to go, they'll probably stay with their current market, which is limited to what, the richest 10% of the world?

As an aside: By 2012 I expect a high end phone for the European market will have a 5" 1024x480 screen (the same resolution you find on high end Japanese phones today, but lower dot pitch), 2Ghz main cpu with multiple specialized cores, and a 10mp camera which can record 1080p HD. The screen will probably be borderless on two sides, the phone itself will be even thinner than today's phones. I've not seen many signs that Apple are planing to extend their platform to the next generations of hardware, but Android certainly is. (Things like resolution independence and APIs for social media and close integration with web services are really important imho.)

What I would like for myself is a phone where I can boot Windows (Mobile), Apple OS (iPhone), and Linux (such as Android), much like you can do with a modern PC if you really want to. Something similar to this: http://intruders.tv/inqtv/2009/04/20/nvidias-tegra-demo-dual-boot-to-boot/.

Ballmer was right

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone does not have significant market share, and probably never will. When I look around my office at what phones people have, less than 10% are iPhones.

Apple has people tricked right now; they're able to claim a higher market share than reality, by qualifying it: smart phones. In other words, if you ignore 95% of the products that are currently in use, and just focus on powerful/expensive high-end phones made in the last 2 years, then Apple is at least on the map.

When the 5 year old phone in my pocket finally gets wet one too many times, though, and I go looking for a cheapo replacement, guess what I'm going to be looking for. Something that costs less than $200 w/out a contract, or is free with one. Apple isn't going to be there to compete with Android.

Electronics are cheap. And now the software is free. I'm not saying Apple sucks, just that they don't have a chance. If they try to compete in this market, they're not going to make any money anyway. And that's why they're not going to.

We've seen the Apple model before

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony. Remember the walkman? Everyone had one. No one could topple Sony.

The world moved on, Sony bought Columbia, and pretty much killed their business when they let content people dictate terms. When they started into the idea that the device somehow existed only for their content and their content was only for their device (OS2/PS2, anyone?)

iTunes store, iTunes, iPod, iPhone all exist as a closed system. iTunes store and iTunes only exist to support the users of Apple devices.

At some point, sheer market force will niche them. Not everyone can have or wants an iPhone. In fact, way more people will never have an iPhone. Not everyone in the world can afford them. Which will leave a big market for cheaper phones. To keep costs down vendors will use a free OS. Small vendors will have easy entry since they can use SW developed by others. With open formats, content will be a non-issue as well. This means the battle will be HW and service. Not SW. Not content

Right now, Apple is very close to losing that. In fact, if their competitors weren't so amazingly bad, Apple would have been crushed a year ago. Says something about that industry, I suppose...

I predict that the iPod and iPhone will go the way of the walkman.

I have an android (dev) phone, and several flavors of iphone (all jailbroken except the new 3GS - let's go dev-team). My day to day phone is the 3GS for its memory, speed, and GUI. But I have to say, it's much less usable un-jailbroken. And the later android GUIs are very close to being better (ie: can accomplish things quickly without thinking about them) 2012 might be too far out.

This is absurd

[malevolentjelly]

This is just a fantasy. There is absolutely no conceivable reason to think that Android will overtake the iPhone. It hasn't been a market success in the slightest yet. Many companies are still hanging back from it and waiting until it has meaningful hardware acceleration for graphics and video. In this respect, this is a prediction that it will defeat a superior, cooler, and more popular product for absolutely no goddamn reason other than the analyst wants it to.

Oh wait, the article's in The Register. Nevermind. It is a fantasy.

2012: Year of the Linux Desktop.

Gartner's OS/2 prediction

[dpbsmith]

Gartner predicted circa 1990 that OS/2 would quickly pass MS-DOS, Unix, and Windows to become the dominant operating system in three or four years. This was a detailed prediction with graphs showing exactly how the percentages would unfold over time. At the time I was working for a Fortune 500 that took that guff seriously and accordingly shifted resources from DOS, Unix, and Windows to OS/2.

There is always a market for predictions. People seem to assume that an organization that charges a lot of money for its predictions must make good ones. I don't know why bad predictions don't discredit the predictors, but they don't. People selectively remember the accurate ones. There are ten people who know that Jeane Dixon predicted that Kennedy would die in office for every one that remembers that she predicted Nixon would win the election in the first place.

2012?

[PPH]

Damn! The Mayans were right.

iPhone no longer exclusive to 1 vendor in Canada

[tomhudson]

Rogers had an exclusive deal to sell iPhones in Canada. Starting in November, Bell and Telus will also be selling iPhones.

Interestingly enough, Bell's existing network is CDMA, not GSM. Bell and Telus partnered to build a new HSPA network to compete with Rogers.

My Prediction

[weston]

Even if the analyst at Gartner is wrong, neither Gartner nor the analyst will be held to account for the prediction.

Just like the iPod......

[iditamac]

Single service provider. No multi-tasking. Lame.

Fuck iTunes?

[Anonymous Coward]

A five sentence post, of which the last sentence was "Fuck iTunes." was modded as 'insightful'?

It seems Slashdot hasn't improved since I stopped reading it about 5 years ago.

I dont' see it this way

[mdwh2]

The Motorola is ahead because of the apps and the highly capable hardware. Plus you can run apps anywhere from anyone.

The Iphone Is Not A Smartphone

[mdwh2]

Indeed, and it's also worth noticing that this feature list was impressive in bog standard phones, ooh, years ago. I guess the Iphone is playing catch-up yet again.

The bottom line is, the Iphone is not a smart phone. It doesn't belong in these comparsions of OSs. It doesn't run a branded off-the-shelf OS; it doesn't have smart phone features (such as cutting edge features before any other phone; or a keyboard; or behaving like a mobile computer that can multitask, or run applications installed from anywhere). No, the bottom line is it's a locked down feature phone, no different to billions of other feature phones, albeit one with an Apple logo, a high end price tag, and therefore a reasonable high end feature set - but nonetheless not in the smartphone category, unless you define the term broadly enough to include all feature phones too.

I suspect that claiming it to be a smart phone is done simply to inflate its market share ("it has X% of the 'smartphone' market", whatever that is), or to be able to list "Iphone OS" (whatever that is) alongside other actual smartphone OSs. It's a neat marketing trick - but one that could be said for any feature phone.

Re:The Iphone Is Not A Smartphone

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, you are a funny guy! Smartphone == has keyboard. Where does that come from? There is no definition of smartphone, but I think "have keybord" is not very common. Off-the-shelf OS isn't it either, the blackberry doesn't have that. Cutting-edge features? Well, how many phones had an app-store before the iPhone? How many touchscreen phones existed before the iPhone, and how many are there now? GPS wasn't very common before the iPhone either. WiFi in phones before the iPhone? Hard to find. Here's the wikipedia entry for smartphone, the iPhone and Blackberry fulfills some of the requirements, but neither fulfiulls yours.

"A smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality (PC-mobile handset convergence). There is no industry standard definition of a smartphone.[1][2] For some, a smartphone is a phone that runs complete operating system software providing a standardized interface and platform for application developers.[3] For others, a smartphone is simply a phone with advanced features like e-mail, Internet and e-book reader capabilities, and/or a built-in full keyboard or external USB keyboard and VGA connector. In other words, it is a miniature computer that has phone capability."

Re:and the iTunes store was crushed by rivals in 2

[mdwh2]

Several companies (most notably, Nokia) are beating Apple. Why does Appledot, sorry, Slashdot give so much coverage to one company, as if they were #1 in the mobile market? It doesn't make sense - I thought this was supposed to be news for nerds, not an Apple site?

And these phones don't have just one app store, they have numerous - often provided by the networks, but the point is that any website lets you download an app. The idea of needing an "app store" is meaningless (just as it would be for Windows, or indeed OS X), and to require one is a restriction, that only in a wild Apple fan's mind could be spun to being an advantage.

but unfocused, dispersed competition is going to have a hard time beating Apple at their own game.

I'll bite - what game is that, exactly?

Similar arguments

[mdwh2]

*sigh* Yeah yeah, that's the year of Linux of the desktop, and when Apple Iphone gets to be a best selling phone.

For heaven's sake - ridiculing Android for not overtaking Iphone is about as meaningful as how someone would look in your eyes for ridiculing BSD for not overtaking Linux. Big deal.

Call me skeptical

[Nycran]

Google's Android operating system is certainly getting it's fair share of rosy coloured predications lately. Overtaking Windows Mobile isn't hard to imagine, especially if Microsoft can't make Windows Mobile 7 radically better than what they have at the moment, but overtaking Apple in just 3 years is going to be a pretty big challenge. The iPhone is the bomb as far as consumer space smartphones go. It's sexy, slick, delivers a fantastic user experience and has a huge and thriving developer base. A testament to this is the fact that even my wife, the most vehement of Apple haters likes “the jesus phone” and wants one. The iPhone's market share arrived at where it is today in no small part by Apple exploiting the huge momentum of the iPod - millions of happy iPod users make for a pretty easy upsell target. Not to mention that Apple know a trick or two when it comes to marketing products to consumers. More here: http://www.rypenow.com/community/the-rype-blog/android-overtaking-the-iphone-within-3-years-call-me-sceptical.html

How did this get modded up?

[mjwx]

If Android phones don't step up to the plate app-wise, AND touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise,

The four released Android phones already have a superior accelerometer, GPS and Compass. The touch screen is the same capacitive type as the iphone and the only thing it could possibly lack is multi-touch which isn't that big of a deal (we are only waiting for OSS drivers as the OHA cant use royalty restricted drivers, HW manufacturers have licensed it though).

You also fail to grasp that the API's for the GPS, Compass, Accelerometer and everything else are better documented and more open then that of the iphone.

What Android stands to do for the mobile phone market what Windows 3.1 did for the Personal Computer market, several other "PC" came before it but Windows 3.1 was the OS that put one in every office and every home. Android intends to do the same with smart phones by the exact same method, providing an easy to develop and release for framework that lacks the restrictions of other models.

iTunes-wise.

This is not a feature that people want, it is used because Apple forces it upon them. You'll quickly find that most people will prefer using MSC to load music onto a device rather then itunes.

I pay that for my iPhone

[SuperKendall]

Sprints offers an unlimited plan for $70/mo in the US.

I pay that much for my iPhone. I don't have unlimited text but I have more than I use, same for minutes, and AT&T has similar deals about calling other phones not always taking off minutes.

The plan differences for most people in real life are just not that great.

Re:I pay that for my iPhone

[GooberToo]

Last time I did the math, only a couple of months back, for T-Mobile (Android) vs AT&T (iPhone), the difference was $400 over the term (two years) of the contract. I consider that to be a big difference.

Really? Where are they

[SuperKendall]

Actually I would bet that there a lot more apps for WinMo and Symbian than the iPhone.

The iPhone is heading north of 85K apps now.

I am highly, highly doubtful you can find that many apps combined across both platforms given the difficulty and lack of desire people generally have to develop for them.

Android will surpass them before too long.

Re:Really? Where are they

[salesgeek]

I would not put money on that (hint winmo and palm have been around for how many years)?

Android is not after the iPhone...

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone is here to stay for a lloonngg time. Android is not after the iPhone. What Google is doing is cutting the grass under MS's feet by providing by an "OS/full-mobilephone-stack" of incredibly high quality for free.

Phone manufacturers are seeing this and switching to Android "en masse".

Who's going to buy MS's offering for mobile phones when they charge gigantic prices per unit for an underperforming, insecure mobile phone OS?

Think about this: how often do people want to reboot their phone and how often do people want to have their phone become part of a botnet?

This shall happen with MS phones. Everybody knows it. Espcecially the phone manufacturers. And they don't want to pay $7 per mobile phone for that MS "feature".

Google's target is MS: there are billions of mobile phones in circulation and Google won't let MS do the mobile phone market what they did to the PC market.

This is a very, very smart move from Google.

If MS is a bit concerned about Apple's raising desktop market share (and especially laptop market share) and Apple's iPhone, then they should be very concerned by that Google move.

We're talking about a company that has market cap of hundreds of billions of dollars who's cutting the grass under MS's feet.

Competition finally here

[Anonymous Coward]

Today iPhone is an uber-cool gadget, mostly because it's best phone around OS-wise and competition is still catching up.
However it will change for Apple. I don't bet they will have that much exclusivity they enjoy today.
Exclusivity that allowed them to almost dominate US market, to get very good carrier contracts, to be confortable with crippling
devices to only run sold software and to earn _much_ money from that same software (and finally to prevent popular stuff like Java and Flash from running on the Phone).

At least some of the Android, Maemo-based Nokia, Palm Pre (and Pixie), WinMo7 (if not too late) could give iPhone a run for it's money. In the sense that we will have cheap contract phones all running the same OS and software as respective top models. Remember that US is a bit behind in adopting mobile technologies than Europe and especially Japan, and there still weren't many established brands when Apple released it's product. And indicatively iPhone as a newcomer didn't have as much success in Europe because people are already used (even loyal) to brands like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola and some others. Also Americans are always more likely to buy domestic brands if they are competitive and especially if they are better.

How Apple will react to competition, nobody knows for sure except maybe Jobs, but they have always been very clever about retaining their market share. I expect a cheaper version of the iPhone, and maybe will be forced to open development and unlock the damn thing (or at least there will always be a loophole somewhere for jailbreaking).

Re: Where do I get me a paranoid android phone

[jaminJay]

"...will be first against the wall when the wall when the revolution comes..." - Douglas Adams

"When I am king, you will be first against the wall." - Radiohead

Q.E.D.

Re: Where do I get me a paranoid android phone

[Savior_on_a_Stick]

"That's it mate. Come the revolution, you'll be first against the wall bop-bop-bop!" - Wolfie

"Citizen Smith" (1977)

Gartner as God?

[minstrelmike]

If Gartner says it, we all _know_ it will come true just like almost 0.0000000001% of their predictions usually do. I develop in Android and like it, but think Gartner is still full of feces.

Re:Gartner as God?

[salesgeek]

I'm still trying to figure out how Gartner stays in business. Their crystal ball hasn't ever worked very well.

Re:Gartner as God?

[minstrelmike]

Gartner is the National Enquirer of the computer trade magazine industry. It's the bottom half of management that keeps them in business.

Re: Where do I get me a paranoid android phone

[jaminJay]

Touché

i'm sorry but

[KingBenny]

in 2012 my master will be overtaking all of you so you can safely close this thread and go talk about something other than a cellphone with a big touchscreen