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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."
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.
You lost me at Gartner.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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.
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
"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.
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?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
This is what the analysts are doing.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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.
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.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
"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
Maybe its just me but has anyone else noticed how almost everything seems to be happening during or in 2012?
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.
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...
"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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
A common misconception.
It's actually the year the Mayans predicted as the year of the linux desktop.
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.
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 :-)
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.