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Android Sales Surpass iPhone Sales
gollum123 writes with this excerpt from VentureBeat:
"Smartphones based on Google's Android mobile operating system outsold Apple's iPhone in the US during the first quarter of 2010, according to a report by research firm The NPD Group. The data places Android, with 28 percent of the smartphone market [last quarter], in second place behind RIM's Blackberry smartphone market share of 36 percent. Apple now sits in third place with 21 percent. NPD points to a Verizon buy-one-get-one-free promotion for all of its smartphones as a major factor in the first-quarter numbers. Verizon saw strong sales for the Motorola Droid and Droid Eris Android phones, as well as the Blackberry Curve, thanks to its promotional offer. Verizon launched a $100 million marketing campaign for the Droid when it hit the market in November 2009, which likely contributed to strong sales in the first quarter as well."
Preston Gralla notes that it's not all bad news for Apple; this report could help their case in upcoming antitrust discussions.
Android phones are not as open as Maemo/MeeGo phones. Andoird could have been way cooler if Google have picked up Maemo instead of starting from scratch using Java. That said, I don't mind that all the mobile games targeted for Android should eventually run on Maemo.
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The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I dunno ... I have AT&T and I generally still have 1-2 bars of signal in places where my friends with iPhones drop coverage. I think it's more a sucky antenna issue than a bad coverage issue, at least around here.
Apple is committed to making the same mistakes it made in the 80's. It amazes me how they think they can break the natural laws of the market and make their business model work. In five years the iPhone's market share will pale in comparison to Android and it will be for the sole reason that Apple cares more about its vision than its customers. Android is the Windows of the mobile world.
or else!
There's been anecdotal evidence that there isn't as much money to be made writing Android apps as there is to be made writing iPhone apps.
One theory has gone "that's because the user base isn't there yet; when the users show up, the developers will come".
Well. It looks like the users are showing up in numbers that are becoming difficult to ignore. So now it's time to keep a close eye on app developers, and see what happens! Is Android more like the XBox 360 (where a lot of third-party developers make a lot of money), or more like the Wii (where almost nobody but Nintendo ends up making much money)?
It's all going to be very interesting to watch. Yay competition!
Hopefully, the 'Droid can come out with a version that beats Apple's 4G series that are approaching the market.
Indeed. It's also a wifi hotspot for 8 devices, and can stream HD video out of an HDMI port on the phone, in case you're one of those people who likes to watch videos on something other than your phone.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
That's one perspective. But I think you're misreading Apple. Apple doesn't care, and has never cared, about being the largest vendor in any particular space. They only care about being the "best" -- where they get to define what "best" means. Remember when they launched the iPhone and they claimed to want 1% of the smartphone space, which at the time represented perhaps 10% of the mobile phone market? They achieved that goal and then some. Other vendors had to respond to Apple and what Apple was doing. They still are. So success for Apple is to have the lead in mindshare and to make money hand over fist. They're doing that without dominating the market and I suspect they will continue in spite of Android's sales win for this quarter.
If Apple ends up with a minority share of the market they won't care one bit as long as their share is the most profitable portion of that market.
They're only in a different market if you are a telco. If you are a developer trying to make money by making applications for these devices, 'phone' is just another feature like GPS. What really matters would be the total number of devices that your app can be bought for. If one of the OSs has the developers for the most and best apps, it gives it an advantage over the other phones. Given that the Android developer market currently seems to be split up between different versions of OS and hardware, Apple has a little bit more weight to its cause when not talking strictly phones.
The phone definitely matters. Just yesterday I noticed that an iPhone 3GS gets 3 bars in my house and an iPhone 3G gets 0 - 1.
I guess it depends on where you live. I see just as many Android phones as iPhones nowadays. Hell at a boardgame party Saturday night (I am that lame) we even whipped 'em all out to compare. 3 iPhones, 3 flavors of Android phones (including my G1) and 1 Palm Pre. The most amazing thing is that a lot of the Android phones that I see are being used by non-tech people and they seem to be as happy with the experience as the iPhone users.
I never noticed motorcyclists on the road until I started riding.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
They say it's selling well, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it's for. Anything with a backlit display won't be as good an ereader as a Kindle. Too big to fit in your pocket, and no keyboard for serious business use. What are people doing with it?