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Android 2.0 — Competition Against the iPhone and the Rest
GMGruman writes "Every few months, it seems, there is a new 'iPhone killer.' Android 2.0, in the guise of the Motorola Droid, is the latest such 'killer.' But what will it really take to beat or match the iPhone (single page), and does Android or any other mobile OS have the right stuff? There's a lot more to the answer than is usually discussed. This article takes a look at the strengths that may allow Droid and Android 2.0 to provide strong competition to devices like the iPhone and the Blackberry, as well as the obstacles it continues to face that could inhibit adoption."
Really. There will always be some number of viable devices competing. Each will appeal to some group that values its strengths over what the others have to offer. The only way iPhone can fail is to lose to several competitors, not just one. The iPhone isn't the market leader now. So how can one phone or O/S kill the iPhone or anything else?
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
is to market yourself as a 'iPhone killer'
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I hate to say it, but it just made no sense and backed up almost none of the opinions it presented.
You can't kill the iphone by trying to copy it. You have to:
1) Find a way to steal it's best customers in a way it can't keep up with.
2) Wait for it to get big, fat, and lazy.
Just copying the leader may get you investment dollars, but it won't get you market share.
It's not a real problem.
Several options exists to install apps to the SD-card.
It's also possible for individual apps (like games) to store everything but the executable on the SD-card.
---- Sig. gone.
One problem killing the iPhone, is that most of the iPhone's weaknesses are one policy change away from disappearing.
Enough people want background apps? Well there they are.
Enough people want customizable lock screens? Alright, that's easy enough.
Enough people want shared file storage? There, done.
Enough people want post-hoc approval of apps, like Android? No problem, it'll save Apple time and money to boot.
Enough people want unsigned apps distributed outside the app store? Ok, here you go.
Enough people want Flash, or other browser plugins? Fine, Adobe has been clamoring to put Flash on iPhone since it's inception.
Enough people want root access? Fine, administration is their problem.
Apple keeps those measures of control because they help to protect their platform's image from incompetent or unscrupulous coders, and their negative impact on most users is relatively minor. If that balance ever shifts, either due to more competent coders (supposedly Flash 10.1 is heavily optimized) or more demanding users (with friends whose phones do some or all of the above), the rules can change in an instant.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
1) It forgets to mention the 1 major thing that gave the Iphone such a major push forward. Marketing!
Actually, I'd say the major thing that gave the iPhone such a major push was the fact that it was the best thing at the time. People seem to have forgotten the awful "smart" phones we had before Apple decided to shake things up. The iPhone may or may not still be the best thing around (I don't know), but it seems to me we probably would have no Android today without the fresh competition Apple provided.
So will Android devices overtake the iPhone? Well I sure hope so. It would be pretty sad indeed if Android wasn't able to gain any headway seeing as how it will be on multiple devices and multiple networks and there is only one iPhone on one network. Ultimately, I think Android will be considered a success, but I also think it won't have much impact on Apple.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
MobileSafari uses Google for search results, and there are a lot of mobile searches being generated by iPhone users. Google is eroding marketshare everywhere else. If I'm Apple, I'm not scared of Google. If I'm any manufacturer representing another platform (Nokia, for example), I'm terrified.
Spoken like a review from a windowshopper.
Look, there is nothing special about the Iphone OS any more.
That just isn't true. Android 2.0 is pretty attractive on the surface, but it's still plagued with UI and usability kinks that have yet to be worked out. Multi-touch still isn't quite right, nor is it fluid. Android's interaction on the desktop is much better than most of its competitors, but it still lags behind the iTunes experience. There are plenty of advantages to the iPhone platform, including the iPhone OS.
When someone writes a wrapper for these App store Apps that allows them to run on Android, its game over for this particular advantage.
That's what they said about Linux and Windows in 1996. Easier said than done. We're still waiting.
But lets face it, the hardware has no particular advantage any more
The pile of hardware components was never the advantage to begin with. The devil's in the details. It'd be a trivial effort to out-spec the iPhone's hardware, but that doesn't get you anywhere on its own. Look at the terrible state of video playback at the time on smartphones even with the same muscle as the first generation iPhone.
Whether you love the iPhone or hate it, it's indisputable that it was a kick in the pants for everyone else. Now they're actually trying to make good products, and competitors are addressing their failings and adapting what they can from Apple's lead. That's how it should have worked, even if the iPhone never existed, but it just didn't. Even Windows Mobile, while still painful to use, is at least easier to look at these days.
But Android has the advantage of youth, and none of the baggage of middle age.
Drama much? The iPhone is "middle-aged"? What does that make RIM/Blackberry? A pensioner?
In the past, I have asserted that social popularity trumps technical superiority. Beta was superior to VHS and yet VHS won. Why? It was more popular... some would argue that it was more popular because porn was not allowed on Beta. Whatever the case, VHS was more popular and so it won.
iPhone is ridiculously popular. I don't care to go into why it is popular, but I will say I don't fully understand it because I tend to measure things by a different set of metrics than non-nerds. Whatever the cause of its popularity, iPhone will not be toppled as "king" of whatever market it rules with attack/smear ads and it won't be toppled by technical superiority or versatility. It might be toppled by convenience if that were possible and it would have to be convenient to leave it behind and/or migrate from it.
iPhone isn't just a phone. It's a hand-held computer with software applications that people use. In the past, moving from one phone to another was a matter of exporting data and importing that same data into the next phone. iPhone has applications for which there may not be equals on other phones. iPhone has applications that many have spent significant amounts of money on and people aren't willing to dump things like that so easily.
Another means of entrenchment iPhone enjoys is the connection it has with a person's identity. In much the same way people build self esteem rooting for their favorite teams in sports, the iPhone enjoys a strong fan base.
Microsoft calls what they have "critical mass." Microsoft isn't getting toppled because they have critical mass. Other reasons don't play into the current state of Microsoft nearly as much as that. People are not happy with Microsoft, but not unhappy enough to move to something else.
iPhone has not achieved critical mass, but many of the factors that contribute to the state of critical mass are present in iPhone and it is certainly moving in that direction.
Still, the iPhone doesn't rule in the way the hype and attention would seem to suggest. A recent trip through an airport showed me that Blackberry outnumbers iPhone 10 to 1. That's just an estimate I pulled out of my ass, but it's probably not far off. iPhone is limited by its exclusivity to AT&T (in the U.S.) and many people aren't interested enough in iPhone to change their carrier, but since the odds are that their non-AT&T carrier will carry an iPhone competitor, people are more inclined to give those competitors a try. Provided that the alternatives are good enough to capture an audience the way iPhone has (and that's not likely in my opinion) the iPhone's primary weakness can be exploited successfully.
To be clear, the primary weakness of the iPhone is its exclusivity to AT&T. It limits its growth potential and its flexibility. There are other factors contributing to its weaknesses, but its close ties with and influence under AT&T are at the very least holding it back and quite likely to be the most significant factor that will lead to its death.
You are right. But just because Motorola designed the phone, doesn't mean google had nothing to do with it...This is as much a google device as it is Motorola.
And here you've summarized the problem without stating it.
The iPhone is one company's product: Apple. Really it's one person's phone: Steve's.
And that is why it'll be better: because Steve will fire anyone who makes a phone less than he wants.
Google will enable a superior phone. Moto will fail to deliver. But I hope that someone else delivers. I really dislike the iPhone closed platform.
I don't know if Android would take that large of a chunk out of Blackberry's user base. It will probably draw away Pearl users and small-businesses, but Blackberry's core market (medium to large enterprises) will probably stay on that particular platform. Exchange integration is great (for the 95% of companies that use it), but as far as I am aware, on Blackberry with BES and WinMo w/ SCCM have true central management capabilities that enterprises want.
As you put in your post, Android will probably have the biggest effect on Palm, especially since they've seemed to tie their fate to Sprint. I can see Palm being bought out by RIM in five years or so. It will also be the final nail in the coffin of Windows Mobile, but that shouldn't be a surprise as Microsoft has been licensing ActiveSync to any mobile software developer that wants to pay for it (there is even a Blackberry implementation of it).
Apple will probably be hurt more than people realize, and the Android platform will play a small part in it. The iPhone is a great product, but in the United States, it is restricted to AT&T's now overburdened network while the Android "platform" will be available on most carriers in some form. I don't think that many iPhone users will switch to the Android, though, but it will attract many potential Apple customers who were holding out because they didn't want to give any money to AT&T.
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I bought the original Razr when it just came into market. It was a great phone. Beautifully designed, sleek and stylish even by today's standards.
I had one for a few years also. It was everything everyone claims Apple products are - style with little substance.
As you noted, the software was ghastly. But frankly I had issues with the hardware alone as well.
The buttons, were the worst I ever had on the phone as far as being easy to type. I was always missing numbers with those damn slanted keys with hardly any feedback as to where you were.
But the worst sin, was making a flip phone with BUTTONS ON THE SIDE. This totally eliminated the advantage of the clamshell where you couldn't accidentally hit buttons. I hung up on people pulling the phone from my pocket and often slightly changed settings getting it out.
It did feel good in the hand when talking or just holding it but like I said they had issues with both hardware and software.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No one gives a shit except geeks who've never actually tried an iPhone keyboard for more than 4 seconds, and hence haven't discovered you can type faster on it than with a physical one.
2 reasons why a touchscreen keyboard is unsuitable for me:
1. no tactile feedback. I'm afraid I like to be able to feel the keys before I press them so I know my finger is in the right place.
2. I want to be able to see what's on the screen without a virtual keyboard covering it up.
I'll admit that (1) might be something that I would learn to do without if I used an iPhone all the time, but no amount of practice is going to prevent (2) from being a problem - I get an 80x25 terminal window on my phone, which I use for doing things like remotely administering servers; reducing the visible area of that terminal to 3 or 4 lines so that I can fit a keyboard on the screen would make it very unusable. Sure, most people aren't using their phones for administering servers, but this is a major reason for me buying a smartphone since it means I can avoid carrying a laptop around most of the time.
When will you iPhone fanboys get it into your head that a single design of device *never* suits everyone - just because you find a design choice to be ok doesn't mean that everyone else will. Choice is good.
100,000 apps. Seriously, it's *that* important.
I imagine that Symbian has well over 100,000 apps. Most of them are utter shit. Raw numbers are meaningless - if there were 100,000 _good_ apps then that would be something worth shouting about, but that's not the case.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
You do realise that Android comes with a 'market' application built in, that provides a wide selection of free and to-buy applications that can be downloaded to the device?
Oh, and that you don't have to use a PC (Windows, Mac or otherwise) to do this, or to update the OS, or to find and install applications that aren't on the market?
And that nobody prevents applications appearing in the market because they may impact on the profitability of the device manufacturer?
Apple has the apps at the moment, but it's a transitory advantage at best.
The market is still not fully mature with 40% of Americans owning Smartphones but over the next year or two there will be many more people replacing their current smart phones than entering the smart phone market. Those unsatisfied with their current offering are the ones most likely to move to something new. Therefore, it seems the Android is much more likely to kill off market share from everyone except iPhone. Since most smartphone manufacturers need to use someone else's software (I mean the # of manufacturers since they only have 23% market share between them), I suspect this means Window Mobile.
This is of course a US View and the market is much more open in most of the World. The key to maintaining market share is customer satisfaction. How many sidekicks would be sold now even if T-Mobile had them up for sale?
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