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Android Phone Demand Up 250%, iPhone Down
CWmike writes "A 'monstrous' jump in demand for Android-equipped smartphones has turned the market upside down, according to a retail pollster. Of the people who told ChangeWave Research in a mid-December survey that they planned to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days, 21% said they expected to purchase an Android phone. That number represented a 250% increase over the 6% that pegged Android as their mobile OS of choice when ChangeWave last queried consumers' plans in September. 'That change rivals anything that we've seen in the last three years of the smartphone market,' said Paul Carton, ChangeWave's director of research, adding that the sudden surge in consumer interest in Android had 'roiled' the market. 'This is an indication that Android has finally caught consumer interest,' added Carton, who cited the recent advertising campaign for the Motorola Droid smartphone as the reason why interest in Android has skyrocketed. Android's leap translated into good news for Motorola and HTC, the most prominent makers of Google-powered handsets, with the former reaping most of the benefit. Motorola's share of smartphone purchases in the next 90 days shot up from 1% in September to 13% in December. Carton tagged the company's Droid as the reason. '[It's] the first increase for Motorola we've seen in three years,' Carton said." Here is the ChangeWave report.
Googles market model is better. Multiple phone designs on any carrier that will have them. It's really that simple. The design of the OS is better than iPhones competitors. Though, I do think the application openness is going to bite them in butt over the long term. Allowing background applications from any provider looks good on paper, but in practice is going to create a bot network.
If Apple went with all carriers who wanted them and released a handful of branded designs, it's sales would soar.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Imagine that! Competition works! If regulators would only get that through their heads...with enough time, consumers will win in the end as a result of competition.
Maybe Apple will finally get it through their heads and open up the iPhone for real development; doubt it though...
I have a Macbook, Mac Mini and an iPod Touch, and I opted for a Droid. I think the #1 reason I went with the Droid was because it wasn't AT&T. But a close second was the fact that music was drag and drop and that it could run background apps. Overall, I am really please with the purchase. Ordered the multimedia dock today, so I can use it as an alarm clock.
http://crackberry.com/free-blackberry-storm-lightsaber-app-emerges
http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/ppc-download-htc-light-saber-v1-0.html
http://forums.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/195472-dklightsaber-lightsaber-app.html
These don't count? Never underestimate nerds and homebrew.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
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My Verizon contract was up, and my family needed new phones. We ended up with 4 Android phones, 3 HTC Eris's, and a Droid. Verizon sold a LOAD of them over the holiday season, mostly due to rebates and discounts. The 4 phones, normally over $600 even with a contract, ended up costing me $200.
The first reseller we went to (after they were very helpful during our selection process) had run out by the week before Christmas, and had to send us to a Verizon store. They had plenty, and they were going out the door fast.
I'll preface this by saying I haven't used a Droid, or other 2nd-gen Android Phone. I did use a G1 for a little while, and from my experience no amount of marketing would have put it up with the iPhone. The interface was clunky and inconsistent. In particular there were 2 separate email apps built-in, one for Gmail and one for everything else, and they behaved differently. Battery life was abysmal at best. While the G1 has some advantages over the iPhone, it was not a usable smart phone unless you were tethered to a power supply. It reminded me very much of the Sidekick (which was developed by many of the same people as Android, and I owned 3 different versions of the sidekick), which notoriously over-promised and under-delivered every step of the way.
The first few releases of Android followed similar patterns. When I bought my iPhone 3G it did (almost) everything they advertised, and there wasn't hype about the next version until 6 months later. My brand new iPhone was the best iPhone one could get. When I got my G1, I was disappointed that it didn't have all of the cool features I had already been reading about in Android press releases and articles. Android marketing seems more about the "next" version, which makes the actual product seem dated before its even for sale.
I hope the new versions of Android devices are better, but those experiences have left me skeptical. I'll give them a look when my iPhone contract is up (next summer), but I'm not falling for the hype this time. If the product for sale doesn't have the features I want, I won't get it. I can't buy it hoping that they'll eventually deliver. I've been burned by that too many times.
I've been really happy with my iPhone 3G. When I got it, I knew I was giving up important features that I had on Windows Mobile, like the ability to shoot crappy video and an open development platform, but the iPhone mostly worked as promised (with a notable exception of Push Notifications, which did not show up until a year or so later with the 3rd generation of the OS). With the limitations of the iPhone (one app at a time is the most troubling), I'm certainly going to shop around before my next purchase, rather than automatically buy next summer's iPhone, but it will take more than slick marketing for Android to win my business (but I am pulling for them!).
blog
The phone part of the iPhone is it's least appealing part. What makes the iPhone amazing is that it is a fully featured small computer with a ton of low-cost apps. I recently went to a trip to Budapest, Hungary. I downloaded apps which included an offline map of the city (so no data use), maps of the metro system, and an audio tourist guide. It was like having my own personal tourist guide. When back at the hotel I used Skype over wifi to call home cheap. Sure beat having a big clunky book + large foldout map that screamed "tourist please rob me". When the android has the apps the iPhone does, I will consider it.
I would have answered YES to an android in December. Now, the answer would be NO. Not unless I can replace all the Google apps with something else.
What changed my mind? Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google..
This is the same guy who had Google blackball CNET after they published some of his personal info.
The guy's a hypocrite who simply can't be trusted any more. I don't need my phone spying on me for some guy who thinks his personal info is privileged, and yours and mine isn't.
Do you realize that the iPhone only has 4% of the market? Even so, I think the presence of the Android is great, because maybe it will cause Steve J. and his flock of ass-ki...er, fans, to stand back and realize that the iPhone, while quite cool conceptually, suffers from some very lame design issues. Now all Google needs is a phone-less device that can subscribe to a carrier's broadband-only plan.
Umm, technically, if you buy the phone from Sprint or Verizon, they are the only sources legally bound to give you the source. HTC only needs to give the source to those they distribute to.
Obviously, if you buy an unlocked phone from a 3rd party, HTC would be required to provide the source.