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Android Outsells iPhone In Last 6 Months
tomhudson writes "Despite all the hype about Apple's latest iPhone, Android has sold more in the last 6 months (27% of all smartphone sales) than Apple (23%). The gains for Android are coming at the expense of RIM (still #1 at 33%, down from 45% a year ago), Windows Mobile (11%, down from 20%) and the iPhone (down from 34% at it's peak 6 months ago). If the current trend continues, Android is expected to be #1 within the year."
Boy Genius and Engadget are circulating a report that says that Android has already overtaken Apple and RIM in the US. Android devices collectively represented a 34% share of the US market in the quarter, and with growth of 851% Android became the largest smart phone platform in the country.
Turns out Linux doesn't suck and it is good for something mainstream after all. I still haven't seen the real "year of the Linux desktop" but Android has already given us a year of the Linux phone, and we barely even realized it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
...I wonder which is more popular amongst geek culture. Android is Linux based, so it has a ton of geek cred...but many a geek has allowed Apple's products to take them over (Ars Technica recently had a statistic in which roughly 26% of their visitors use macs)
Living With a Nerd
The numbers for the iPhone are of course going to reflect that the apple crowd has been holding off and waited for the new generation iPhone 4. The numbers for Q3 will be more interesting.
And then again, who cares, it's just a phone.
Tell your friends about xenu.net
...but hasn't the iPhone sales been slow the past 6 months due to anticipation for the new model coming out last month?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
If this trend continues, Android will have 100% of the market in just over 8 years!
I love linear extrapolation.
welcome our new Android overlords.
I always thought of the new iPhone as a #2.
In about half a century, Android will dominate a 1000% of the market!
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Or rather, the exclusivity deal between AT&T and Apple.
Anecdote: I had lunch over the weekend with a friend who lives in a part of the country that AT&T doesn't cover at all. He and his wife had seen other peoples' iPhones while travelling outside of that area, and all things being equal, would have preferred to buy iPhones, but couldn't. (Yes, they could have bought one someplace else, sucking up a useless contract, jailbreaking, etc., but come on -- that's not a real option for most people.) They ended up getting Android phones instead.
AT&T's commercials assert that it covers 97% of Americans, but if you live in or spend much time in one of the areas (more than 3% of the map) it doesn't cover, the iPhone loses by default even if Apple's marketing is successful.
There is a bunch of problems with the title. The data is talking about NEW subscribers only, and has no iPhone4 data. Now people whom when from an iPhone to an iPhone, nor people whom bought an iPhone4. Apple is selling more iPhone4s alone then the iPhone and Androids in this review COMBINED.
I should have called it the problem but anyway, 'Android' is mis-understood or even mis-represented.
Case in point: Look at the title of this story, " Android Outsells iPhone In Last 6 Months". Essentially, the author is comparing an OS, (Android) to a device, (iPhone)! It would be better and more informative to the reader to rephrase the title to something near "Android devices outsell iPhones In Last 6 Months".
This is the same plague in Linux land. Some folks know Linux is an OS while others think it's RedHat or Debian or Ubuntu - troubling!
Since this is a platform for geeks or geek story lovers, I expected better. And even then, Android devices outselling iPhones should be expected because the latter is only sold on one carrier in the US and comprises of just 'one' product from one manufacturer.
Yawn... These are sales from January to June - before the iPhone 4 was released. People were intentionally holding off purchases because they knew iPhone 4 was coming out. Wake me up if they outsell iPhones for the next 6 months.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
I am sorry, but this comparison is pretty crap.
RIM = 1 company
Apple = 1 company
Android = oodles of companies...
Its comparing apples to oranges here.
Of course you do see that Android is doing well. Something that I expected and it will continue. This is why I question RIM's, Microsoft's and Nokia's sanity of trying to go against either Apple or Android.
Though I wonder how long Android will do well. Here is the thing, people buy gadgets, but upgrade devices. With the iPhone 4 people upgraded. With RIM people upgraded. Nokia less so, and Android is an open question mark. I don't know either way and only time will tell.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Yeah, the iPhone wasn't even close to being the #1 Smartphone in the US. That honor goes to Blackberry. So why compare to Apple? Ah, because it's cool to hate on Apple.
Slightly different markets. People have Blackberries for business, mostly. iPhones and Android phones are more personal consumer use products.
If we're going to ignore the business/personal distinction, then I'm going to hate on Macs for doing terribly in the business server market. You just can't win! :)
Well, what else is it supposed to do? There's only one current-generation iPhone, whereas there is a large selection of Android phones (the way it should be)
they are instead smug about hopping on the walled-off Apple bandwagon where customizing a device you own is not allowed unless it's approved by the company that sold it to you.
I hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of people who own phones don't care about customizing it.
Ya, I think the exclusivity with ATT hurts the market share. Many people don't want to go near ATT, or they are stuck with a huge contract break fee to leave where they are. Or like me, I have a family plan on VZ, but the other two lines just need to be regular non "smart phones", so it would be a huge pain to move all three of us to ATT just so I could get an iPhone.
Also, I think Apple is a bit more polarizing than Google/Android. Some people just don't want to buy apple.
And finally, when you have multiple HW manufacturers and multiple carriers it's seems that it would be easier to get a larger base established.
My employer-provided phone is an HTC EVO 4G (Android). I could have chosen a Blackberry or an iPhone (or even Windows Mobile). And I work for a large Fortune-500 company. Corporate America is opening up to the new options.
(My company is large enough that they've outsourced the phone purchasing to some other company that specializes in it. I went to that company's web site, selected the phone that I wanted from the list that had been approved by our IT department, and they shipped it directly to me. All said, it seems like a very good system, especially compared to some of the other services that have been outsourced.)
Android 2.2 is supposed to take Exchange integration a step further, letting corporate IT wipe the phone if it's reported as lost or stolen, as well as allowing corporate security policies to be enforced. So expect Android to compete even more heavily with Blackberry once 2.2 comes out.
Quite a bit more than 3%; size of the map area not served doesn't follow anywhere near that close the percentage of population served.
One that hath name thou can not otter
It's not just a phone. It is determining how portable device will be used by the mainstream. Locked down, or open?
To the mainstream, both devices are locked down. Android requires rooting for full openness, the iPhone requires jailbreaking.
Where you got confused is that the degree of open differs more significantly if you are a developer. But then you should not be confusing what is relevant to the mainstream, vs. the developer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First of all these numbers directly contradict the numbers presented a few weeks ago that only 20% of Android users would buy another Android phone. Here it says that 71% of Android users would buy another Android phone. Still lower then Apple's 91%, but that can partly be ascribed to the fact that Apple has built a very strong brand loyalty over the last several years. Secondly, there is a direct negative correlation between the release of the Motorola Droid (which began the release of many droid phones like the Incredible) and the drop in recent acquirers of IOS4, going from 34% to 23% in the same period that droid went from 6% to 27%. Now this could be that people were holding out for the iphone 4, however the trend started nine months ago. It's doubtful most people were holding out nine months for the latest iphone. There were probably a few, but I don't think that explains these numbers. Third these numbers are going to be dramatically different in the third quarter simply because the hype of the release of the iphone 4. Because the new iphone is released rarely compared to a most other phones that event atmosphere lends itself to what I'm sure will be a spike in iphone sales. What will be most telling is what happens in Q4 as things balance out.
I think the survey shows that Apple needs to free itself from an exclusive contract with ATT. I have an Android phone, but I would replace it with an iPhone as soon as it becomes available on T-Mobile.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
But the swarm of Android devices reminds me a little of the horde of Wintel PCs that swamped Apple's desktop offerings.
A little? The parallels are many. Apple has a platform that is considered the superior platform by many people. The problems with their platform are all based on how closed it is, either that they can't install what they want, or they can't use it how they want, or they have to use AT&T, etc. Other than the antenna issues, criticism for the iPhone isn't very technical, it's all usability issues related to the closed Apple system.
Contrast that with Android, which is designed to run on many different platforms with varying hardware. It might not be as shiny as the offering from Apple, but it's more flexible. This is exactly the scenario that allowed Microsoft to crush Apple with Windows, and if Apple isn't careful they're going to end up getting crushed again, this time by Google. Apple is just one company, they don't allow anyone else to sell their products. Anyone can license Android and build and sell a device that runs it. This is the same as the PC scenario, where it turned out to be Apple versus everyone else, where everyone else was selling the same competing product.
You'd think they would learn that more openness translates to more market penetration, but their mindset is so stuck on controlling the user experience that it seems like they're doomed to keep repeating history until consumers and businesses "evolve" to desire a more controlled experience. Even just licensing iOS to other vendors to allow them to create other devices powered by it would level the playing field, and I truly have no idea why they refuse to do that. It's all about control, and Apple refuses to relinquish any of it, even if they keep control all the way into the ground.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Where is the line between smartphone and non-smartphone? My last two phones have not been considered smartphones, despite being multifunctional, supporting multiple web browsers, having downloadable apps, handling email, camera, GPS, etc. My latest one does all that, is a touchscreen and better at multitasking than the iPhone 4, but isn't considered a smartphone. Why not?
I'm thinking they draw an arbitrary line that suits their point and only look at the phones above it, despite the many below the line that do the same things.
Is there any real definition for smartphone? It doesn't seem to be based on function. Is there a minimum technical requirement to be considered one?
This sentence no verb.
It's an excellent way to compare them. The strength of platforms like iPhoneOS, Android, WindowsCE, etc. is that you can run the same apps across all of the devices. The more devices there are out in the population, the more enticing it is for developers to develop for them. The more developers there are developing for a platform, the more decent quality apps there are, and the more decent quality apps there are the more people will want to buy into the platform. It's a cycle that accelerates at an increasing rate as the install base increases. It's what has made the Apple app store so successful up to this point and will work the same way for Android.
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Are there any small Fortune-500 companies? What definition of "small" covers, "we have annual revenues in excess of $4 billion"?
It's a shame that AT&T held a gun to Jobs head to force Apple to sign an exclusive agreement with them.
And most important: multiple sources for applications.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I find it impressive that a relatively new platform is selling comparably to a platform that's been around for 4 years and has had a chance to "iron out the bugs".
Oh, and Apple's selling three different iPhone models, so it's not exactly a "single handset".
You are welcome on my lawn.
As usual, TFA doesn't mention Symbian, the world's number #1 smartphone platform anywhere in the world except US... Not that i'm not saying that Symbian is better than any of those platforms, i'm just saying that Symbian IS(like it or not) the market leader.
It's not just a phone. It is determining how portable device will be used by the mainstream. Locked down, or open? The ability to load your own music and ring tones, and app, or only loading what you are allowed ..at a price, of course.
Uh what android devices are as free as you claim? Last I heard you have to wait for someone to "jailbreak"/root the android device to be able to do what you want with it. This "android is open and free" is a load of bull. Motorola phones are all locked up so are HTCs. I also heard many Android devices, just like iPhone, has apps you can't even remove by the user. Yes, that doesnt sound very open to me.
Sounds like you've never seen an Android either. Rooting an Android device is just unlocking the firmware. Software is still open as is much of the layout. You can install any program you want for the Android regardless if it came from the Market Place or the internet (and I've done that before). While some of the core applications that came on the phone are uninstallable by default, most of them never run unless you open them so its not as much of an issue as you seem to make it out to be. I can also change ringtones and other sound effects to what I want. Something the iPhone won't let you do by default.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
I am sorry, but this comparison is pretty crap.
RIM = 1 company
Apple = 1 company
Android = oodles of companies...
Its comparing apples to oranges here.
The valid comparison is for the smartphone OS platforms and their respective ecosystems, not companies or specific devices. The fact that some platforms (iOS, BB OS) are restricted to their respective owners' devices, and others (Android, WP7/WM6.5) are not has no bearing on that comparison.
Similarly, Mac OS is only "legally" available on Mac hardware, whereas Microsoft Windows is available via variety of vendors. This fact does not make consumer desktop OS market share comparison invalid in any way.
iPhone = 1 OS
Android = 1 OS
RIM = 1 OS
So...by that logic it would still be nost that irrelevant in a hypothethical scenario where RIM has 1%, Apple has 1%, and Android 98%...but uniformly distributed across many devices from 100 manufacturers?
BTW, Nokia has more marketshare than the next 3, perhaps 4, combined. Questioning their sanity would only come to play if they'd willingly give up pursuing their own way in such situation.
One that hath name thou can not otter
AT&T's commercials assert that it covers 97% of Americans, but if you live in or spend much time in one of the areas (more than 3% of the map) it doesn't cover, the iPhone loses by default even if Apple's marketing is successful.
97% population does not cover 97% land area, it probably is closer to 60% or less land area.
Nonsense. Windows Mobile = oodles of companies and it still fails.
This space for rent.
Why does this stuff keep making the news?
There are at least five mobile phone manufacturers out there using Android, where as iOS and BlackBerry are used by one manufacturer each.
It's not a straight comparison. Android vs. Windows Mobile is a comparison, because they're both operating systems being used by several OEMs.
But everyone seems to be crowing in triumph that five or more OEMs have collectively sold more phones than one. That's not news.
Yeah, absolutely. That (without trying to guess at numbers) was what I was trying to convey. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
My wife and I are on AT&T and choose the HTC Aria over the iPhone. Now I wish I would have waited until the Samsung Galaxy came out. My wife played with my daughter's iPhone and my HTC and picked the HTC.
... stuff that competition and open markets tend to provide.
In my office of about 25 people, there is 1 iPhone user and several Android phones. Almost every Blackberry user is dropping their Blackberry for an Android as their contracts come up. The company will be pulling Blackberry support over the next year partly because of the exodus from Blackberry.
It seems that Android is making inroads both into the consumer AND business markets.
One of the Android based phones best features is that there will be numerous different configurations of Android based phones that will all work basically the same, but each person can purchase the phone with the features they want instead of the limited choices Apple provides. By limited, I mean features like integrated keyboards, SD cards, different camera options. You know
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Untrue. Customizing is an ancient behavior and it has carried on to phones. The first nokia with user-changeable covers came in 1998 and sold in the millions of units. Nokia caught on and 2 years later sold the 3310 even more customizable than before and managed 126 million units sold. So I would contradict your argument and say, on the contrary customizing is essential and that is why ppl bemoaned the lack of choice in even changing the wallpaper on a JesusPhone.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
because Apple are limiting themselves too much with the One True Form-Factor. Some people want a keyboard, either palm-style or N900-style, some people want a bigger screen, some want a smaller device (though the iPhone 4 is getting small), and some a more rugged one. No matter how good the iPhone gets, most people I know just won't consider it because of the form factor issue. I for one want a larger screen (my HD2's is 44% bigger by area than the iPhone's, I'm strongly considering a Dell Streak, 99% larger), above all other considerations.
All the rest (features, locked-ness, looks) can be argued about. Form-factor is a very straightforward issue, and there's a reason why there are so many different ones on the market.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
This is all true and the parallels are many. It's interesting because in many ways Apple is behaving exactly as they did in the mid-80s, when they really began loosing the desktop war.
However, just for the sake of conversation, I'd like to point out a few things that have changed:
First, Steve Jobs. Had he never been given the boot, it's hard to say how things would of gone with the desktop wars. I'm not suggesting that Apple would have dominated, only that we'll never know. Sometimes success is result of many factors - ie, a tightly controlled corporation run by MBAs might not be the same as a tightly controlled company run by SJ. Right combination at the right time. All I'm saying is the man has sufficiently dominated when it comes to every product introduced since his return - including the 100% closed and 75% market penetrated iPod. So that's variable number one.
Second, the market has matured. Personal computers are still a relatively new thing; it's a market segment that is developing - and the mobile computer market is still in a baby-walker. As any market matures, consumers become more discerning. They demand more, not necessarily in features but in performance. Again, not saying Apple would win the desktop war if it fought today, but things aren't the same. Consumers are a little more discerning, if not any wiser. Consumer satisfaction reports show that Apple leads the pack, by a good distance. People may very well recollect the experience of the PC with parts from multiple vendors and decide it's not what they want with a cellphone. The cellphone biz has more or less operated on the single hardware/software provider up until recently, remember.
Third, Apple now operates a massive boots-on-the-ground retail effort. No other company has this kind of physical presence with consumers. They also have a shining PR image - they are widely loved, if not by the techlier-than-thou slashdot community.
Fourth, they have the halo effect of all those iPod sales. Mac sales are rising fast - which could lead to a reverse halo effect down the line when it comes to iPhones. The point is they have an Apple eco-system, and once you've got one piece, again remembering customer satisfaction surveys, it's all that much easier to go for another piece of the "system".
I think all your points are well taken, but I do think things have changed. Its entirely possible Apple will loose the mobile war as they did the desktop. It's also entirely possible that this isn't as much a zero-sum game as the desktop war was. There are room for multiple successful players (frankly, that makes it better for everyone).
Remember: The real reason Microsoft won the desktop war had to do with business choices, not consumer choices. Business bought cheap commodity computers, users wanted at home what they were used to at work. So far, they are not making the same choice in 2010 - they're given blackberries at work, and choosing to buy either iPhones or Androids for home.
In the US at least, there is only one carrier selling the iPhone, and only 4 or 5 basic models, if there is anybody still buying the 8GB 3G and 16/32GB 3Gs past the launch date of the 16/32GB iPhone 4. All 4 major carriers are selling multiple Android phone models from multiple manufacturers...so I think the sales figures for Apple are artificially low and hence not a solid footing to start touting that Android is killing the iPhone. You might say it's not an 'Apples-to-Apples' comparison (I wouldn't, but you could say that...) Android is having an impact, definitely, but I think the sales curve, as with any new gizmo, will start to taper off dramatically as soon as everyone that wants one has one. Are they giving Apple a run for their money? You betcha. I bought my daughter an iPhone 4. My wife has a crackberry, which she barely knows how to use. As for me, I'm waiting to see what Windows Phone 7 goodness comes out of HTC for AT&T to replace my Fuze since they decided the HD2 wasn't worthy. Dammit.
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
I'm a die hard Apple-Hater. The mere sight of Apple's logo gives me the creeps but I still think it's unfair to compare the sales of an entire Platform with the sales of one phone. Coz if you're gonna do that then you should include ipod touch and ipad and it still wouldn't be fair.
Android is a wonderful thing....I 3 Unix/Linux. But this article is skewed...did anyone take into consideration what Apple would have done with iPhone sales if they offered a "Buy one get one free" deal like Verizon was? It's little wonder Android phones are flying off the shelf!
The summary beings with "Despite all the hype of Apple's latest phone," but the figures don't include the sales of the iPhone 4. In fact, the sales are from the period of time during the iPhone 4 prototype leak, which means potential 3GS customers were probably waiting for the next model before purchasing.
It turns out that the iPhone 4 saw the biggest single-month market share gain on record. That's over twice that of the Android. Will you see that article on Slashdot's front page? Of course not, because (in my opinion) Android astroturfers are using the site to drum up anti-Apple buzz among techies.
It's humorous that this keeps getting brought up.
For about a week-long period Verizon had a "two for one" special. Of course, the "two for one" included the requirement that you buy two contracts, weighing it at some $2500 of total spend per device. So, not really.
Seriously, the "freebies" myth has never been true, because a smartphone is never free. The pittance $99 or $199 that someone pays for an iPhone barely differs, and of course is ghetto cheap compared to the $550 I spent on my Nexus One. I guess I'm with the Elite.
I'm a total Android fanboy, mind you, but I'd like to see one or two of the "late comers" actually make a splash. Symbian and Palm are basically dead, HP might revive WebOS, but I doubt they'll pull it off. However, we still have WP7, BB6 and MeeGo on the horizon. Competition is good. I'm hoping history doesn't repeat itself like it did in the PC wars and we end up with a duopoly again. I think it's still early enough in the game that new entrants can still get a good share of business. Not to mention, people are much more fickle with their phones than their computers. During the PC wars, computers were serious investments that people expected to last several years. Phones are much more "disposable" and people replace them every year or two with something new and shiny. Hopefully that's enough to keep the market competitive and innovative.
Wrong.
I have a Motorola droid. I plug a USB adapter into the phone and my computer, swipe the status bar down, and tell it to mount the SD card. I then get a removable drive on my PC. I opened my music directory, selected all my songs, right-clicked and selected copy. I then opened my SD card, created a directory called "music", and copied my MP3's there. Never once did I have any need to root my phone for that one so I can certainly load my own music and I do not need iTunes or some other application to get anything through, it is just a standard USB drive. Ring tones required an app from the Android market, I picked one called "Ringdroid" IIRC. I then can open any MP3 I have and one of the menu choices is "set as ringtone", if I press that choice it .... sets it as my ring tone. I still haven't rooted my phone at all. I can also check or uncheck a security feature that allows me to install unsigned applications, that still doesn't require root. So as far as I can see everything the person you are responding to says they can do one can regardless of what you may have heard.
Some manufacturers do have some applications you can't remove - Android is Open Source and people are allowed to extend it in ways they see fit and that includes that. However Android itself doesn't. Some manufacturers have also chosen to require rooting for other common functions too - again it is Open Source so they can modify to their hearts content. There are people who want a phone with no "dangerous" options and are fairly locked down (as many iPhone users say they want to be) and Android can accomodate that - indeed Motorola's answer to signing ROM's on the Droid-X is "If you want an extensible phone, purchase a different model" for that very reason. Android itself is open and it isn't hard to find currently sold models that are near as "free" (as in speech) as the nexus one is.
Maybe last you heard was from another Apple user that wishes Androids were not selling like they were? Or at the least you believed someone that was *very* misinformed and you should take what they say from now on with a large grain of skepticism as they were easily fooled.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
they are instead smug about hopping on the walled-off Apple bandwagon where customizing a device you own is not allowed unless it's approved by the company that sold it to you.
I hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of people who own phones don't care about customizing it.
I hate to break it to you, but: http://www.phonebling.net/
Android is the 'PC' of mobile phones. Apple is, well, the 'Apple'...
Eventual share will be 90% Android, 10% Apple.
Apple haven't really helped themselves with such design atrocities as the iPhone 4 bumper. Feeling that awful plasticky thing in my hand after being impressed by the svelte unadorned original almost made me cry. I can't imagine what Jonathon Ive thinks of it.
SELECT TOP 100 [Company_Name] FROM [Fortune_500] ORDER BY [Annual_Revenues] ASC;
I would not call iOS really superior... it has the NextCore which Apple has been feeding on for 10 years now, but the Android guys also took a serious lesson in userspace API design and went for a even more modern option.
Underneath both operating systems there is a Unix core but it is not exposed that much to the end user.
I would call both operating systems up to par with Android being better in the low level core tasks of multitasking and easier to program on userspace level, but thats basically it.
Don't get me wrong. I think competition is good. It's just that we are comparing the sales of a single maker of phone on a single US phone network to a group of phone manufactures on all US phone networks.
The numbers are indicating ease of purchasing rather than one is better than the other.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
So, you''ve just said that this whole AppStore thing (however it would be slightly in shackles) is just a fad, got it...
One that hath name thou can not otter
...not to mention cases, back stickers, etc.
One that hath name thou can not otter
You can change ringtones to your heart's content on the iPhone. Apple even provides tools with every Mac to make your own ringtones.
Apple cant keep up with demand... http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/07/20/apple-cant-keep-up-with-iphone-4-demand/
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Just like Windows Mobile was an OS that OEMs could shove on their phone, Android is designed that way.
Everyone else limits their software to their phones. I'm not sure what the score is with Symbian? but the fact that OEMs aren't using it suggests it's not licence free.
If Microsoft had released a modern replacement for WinMo about three years ago then Android wouldn't have been as successful. Exchange and office support on a decent Windows touch screen based OS would be very popular.
well by that logic you should include ipad and ipod touch numbers too.
I would not call iOS really superior
I'm an Android guy myself, I was just referring to public perception. Through marketing Apple has tried to define their products as safer, easier, "just works", etc.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
But of the big 3 only 2 are actually in the business of building platforms : RIM and Apple. Will all those manufacturers that make Android phones stay in it for the long haul ? Will they update their phones to the latest Android versions ? (They can't even be arsed to ship a recent version with their phones now.) Will they work ceaselessly to improve their phones ? I hope so but experience says no. All these manufacturers keep chasing the next big thing and right now it's iPhone clones. Read this comment on the story :
"They did the same thing a few years ago when the Blackberry was first successful. They all came out with monoblock keyboard phones within a year (Motorola Q, Samsung Blackjack, Nokia E series, HTC Dash etc.) In fact, they all did this because operators called them and asked them to build Blackberry look-aline phones (I know this from experience)."
If these guys stay true to form in a couple of years there will be a big variety of Android devices all on different versions depending on the cost, different hardware, with varying form factors and ugly custom themes and crapware. What'll that do to Android as a platform ? Lowest common denominator software or risk not selling your app at all ?
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
"The more devices there are out in the population, the more enticing it is for developers to develop for them."
Wrong wrong wrong.
I don't want to develop my software and have to test it on 30 different phones. I want to develop for a single phone that has gigantic market share.
It's a phone remember. Getting good performance from a device that necessarily has quite limited CPU and GPU power means that you will need a lot of optimizations to ensure quality. I don't want to have test on a big pile of devices, and I don't want bad reviews because my software performed poorly on one particular device.
As a consumer, yes I want choice. As a developer, it's much easier to make good software for a single OS + hardware combination.
Android has been in development for years. Google bought it in 2005!
I'm sorry but you're comparison is pretty crap.
RIM = 1 OS
Apple = 1 OS
Android = 1 OS
We're comparing apples to apples here.
The article DIRECTLY talks about this but I guess you either didn't RTFA or your head is stuck in "hardware" mode. When you're comparing Apple to Android to RIM you are ALSO comparing Operating Systems as all of these platforms have only ONE OS available.
The article spends significant time talking about OPERATING SYSTEMS, not just hardware.
Seems simple enough to me.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
They are comparing platforms. It's just as valid as comparing computers sold running Windows versus computers sold run OS X. If you want to fault the article on technical grounds, you could argue that they should have said "Android outsells iOS phones".
Only speak when it improves the silence.
OP is comparing an entire platform, with a multitude of devices, to a single device. If you want the comparison to make sense, then it's Android vs iOS, so you have to include iPads, iPod Touches, iPhone 3GS, etc. And when you do this, and it's not like I care, but iOS wipes the floor with Android.
The Admin and the Engineer
Nielsen just did a study that says 57% of blackberry owners plan to switch to Android or iPhone.
Yeah, 97% of American homes. But if you leave your house, no signal.
Considering the iPhone 4, I think there's still some "ironing" going on.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
they are instead smug about hopping on the walled-off Apple bandwagon where customizing a device you own is not allowed unless it's approved by the company that sold it to you.
Uh... Isn't Android largely just the same? To freely customize an average Android device you own, you have to root it using methods very unapproved by the operator that sold it to you? How is this different from iPhone?
Apple lost the desktop wars because of IBM's entry. How many of the other contenders at the time, Atari, TI, Radio Shack, Commodore,etc., are around now? Without exception, they either went to IBM compatibles or died, leaving in some cases fans who'd still be loyal if there was something to be loyal to (Amiga comes to mind here). Apple lost the least.
Microsoft took over the position of dominance from IBM, for a variety of reasons. Nobody else had a chance. It was either make a MS-DOS, or later a Windows machine, or do your own thing and be one company against everybody else. We've seen Windows PC makers rise and fall (anybody remember Gateway?), while Apple hung in, and the Mac is selling quite well at the moment. By numbers, Apple is one of the larger computer makers in the US, and almost certainly the most profitable by a wide margin, not counting the rest of their business.
This time, there is no entrenched monopoly, and nobody who can come in and easily create one. There are just competitors who were around before Apple. There is no massive software base that an iPhone has to run perfectly before it's a competitor to the Blackberry. There isn't a generation of people who were taught at work, often forty hours a week, that a Nokia is the definition of a smartphone.
Apple was by far the most successful computer company to not conform to the IBM/Microsoft monopoly. Now they're in an environment where there can be real competition.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
AND Android is available on about 20 different phone models and 4 carriers. Apple's Iphone at the time only sold two models (diff colors) on one carrier. As one writer put it, it's like comparing Apples to a Barrel of Oranges. - This whole article was designed to start a flame war.
I'm not sure which iPhone you're talking about, but mine has thousands of tracks on it, only (count 'em) 2 of which came from iTMS, the rest being from CDs I own or other music stores (mostly Amazon or AllofMP3, back when you could still do that). I recorded and uploaded my own ring tone. Cost: $0. While I share your disgust about Apple's App Store policies, dude... jailbreak. It's not that hard and has been ruled perfectly legal.
So I'm having a hard time understanding what the problem is here.
Because, of course, you can do all that stuff on an iPhone too. Rooting an iPhone is just jailbreaking, which is free, easy, and legal. Then you can install any app you want no matter where it comes from. And you don't even have to jailbreak to change your ring tones - I'm not sure where that idea is coming from.
Seriously, although I agree that Apple goes way to far with the control freakery, the practical effect of it is minimal. There's actually very little difference between iPhone and Android in terms of what you can do with the platform.
AT&T was the only carrier that would let Apple retain a degree of control over the phone. Given the crap that, say, Verizon tends to load their phones up with, and their tendency to nickel and dime you to death with fees for everything, I can't say I'm sorry about how things worked out.
Could be the piss poor job of marketing BlackBerry does. Arguably Apple is the advert king, and despite the strengths and weaknesses of each device, this could definitely make a considerable impact on what the sheeple purchase.
Just a thought, however.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Get real: Android has four different versions (with varying speeds between manufacturers and operators when it comes to updating), with lots of manufacturer customizations (Sense UI, MotoBlur, TimeScape etc.) You can easily count one "Android OS" per manufacturer.
(Apparently Google failed to wring the hands of operators the way Apple did).
How many of those Android sales were G1, Hero etc. owners deciding Froyo would never come to their phones and trading up?
Sure, being flexible enough to run on a bunch of different platforms can get you more market share, which is good for developers... but it can also make it hard to figure out whether an application or feature is actually going to work on a given platform... which is bad for developers. Consider something as simple as causing a laptop to sleep when you close the lid. In Powerbooks/MacBooks: just works. In Windows machines: well, who knows? I haven't owned a Windows laptop in a few years, so maybe things have improved, but it used to be that you could practically never get them to wake up properly after sleep. And the reason is that there were so many different models of Windows machines that you could never possibly test them all. I'm not saying that Apple's model of control is definitely superior - maybe the Android model will win out. But it's suggestive that Mac market share is grown steadily for the past several years.
Come on, we're talking about products coming to market, not when R&D started. You know that.
The first iPhone came out in January of 2007. You think it wasn't "in development" at Apple years before that?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The market saturation for mobile phones (in general, not smartphones) is higher than 100% in most developed countries.
Partly due to the fact of having a phone for business and one for private uses, partly due to the fact that quite a few people have more than one phone (getting a new phone every 2 years on contract doesnt destroy the old one).
I wasn't counting them as separate models.
I went to the Apple website and found that right this minute, if you want to buy an iPhone, you have a choice of three different models. It's never been "a single handset".
You are welcome on my lawn.
I understand that Nokia makes some excellent hardware, but with the explosion in popularity of Android and iOS, it seems we have two winning platforms here, and it's almost too late for anyone else to catch up. RIM had something good going, but they're losing out big time.
The market data disagrees with you. Even on current sales, Nokia are still number one, with RIM number two. In the US, Nokia have no presence (and they never have, so this wasn't them losing out to the Iphones or Android), but RIM are still number one.
"Ah, but Symbian and Blackberry are becoming less popular, with Android and Iphone catching up, right?" you'll cry.
No. Looking at percentages of market share is very misleading, as the smartphone market is increasing (or rather, the number of phones arbitrary defined as "smartphones" is increasing). From the article, you'd think that Symbian is falling. But actually, the number of sales is still increasing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10839034
"Ah, so they're still increasing, but Android and Iphones are increasing faster, right?" you'll say.
For Android yes, but for Apple, no. Again this is a statistical quirk, due to looking at percentage change rather than actual sales, thus penalising the larger players. The BBC love to spin things in favour of Apple, but here's the actual increases from Q2 2009 to Q2 2010.
Android 9,605,050
Symbian 7,950,430
RIM 3,272,880
Apple 3,200,350
Others 607,210
Microsoft -348,320
Total 24,287,600
So, Android are still top, but Apple are actually fourth! So worldwide, I'd say it's all about Symbian and Android, with RIM perhaps holding out, and Apple stagnating in fourth place. In the US, it'll be between RIM and Android, with it being likely that Android will win out on top, but again with Apple lagging, this time at third place.
I've been on a blackberry for three years and recently switched to the Android platform. Nearly everyone I know is ditching their blackberries for iPhones or Android phones when their contracts are up
I'd prefer actual evidence over anecdotes. Aside from anecdotes being poor evidence, one factor is that there's something about Iphone users that makes them have to tell everyone "I've just got an Iphone!" And then everytime they use it, it's "I'm doing X on my Iphone". Android users do this to a lesser degree. Other people just use their phone. I once even had some strangers in the pub butt into our conversation about Android, to brag "Oh, we've got Iphones".
People love apps, and it looks like most developers are focused on these two platforms.
Actually it's often just a focus on Apple. Yes, it is indeed frustrating that companies, including public funded organisations (in the UK, the BBC and the Government) seem intent on focusing on what is the fourth most popular smartphone, and only covering about 3% of the phone owning market (there's an uproar when people only develop for Windows, but at least that has 90+% market share!), and when they do consider something else, it's most likely to be Android whilst the two most popular platforms are forgotten.
However, despite all the astroturfing for Apple by companies writing their apps, and in the media, this has yet to help them in terms of sales. Also, it's not clear that Apple do have a larger number of apps overall (most claims only look at central app store sales), plus, even if there are more than quantity, who cares about thousands of different fart apps? There's still plenty of apps for Symbian at least, and the only thing that I thought was cool that I can't get is the Google Sky Map, which isn't available on Apple either (plus it's not something that's really useful, unless you're actually an astronomer, which most people aren't).
Ah the lovely nerd friendly interface of android. Geesh how many more steps can android come up with compared to -- sync itunes done.\ Android GUI suck suck sucks
Originally, like 7-10 years ago,
a smart phone was considered a phone with a fully functional operating system that could be accessed a developer.
If the SDK provides access to (parts of) the file-system, screen and network its a smartphone.
Nowadays the term "smartphone" is just as meaningless as e.g. "next gen console".
So, keep touting openness as a virtue. But 99% of the mobile phone buying population doesn't care. And as you can see, it's not necessarily better.
You missed the point. I'm not talking about openness as far as users are concerned, it's about vendors. If a new company wants to bring a new phone to market, which OS are they going to choose to run the device? As we've seen before with PCs, they are going to choose the OS that lets them, not the buyer, customize the software to run on their platform. The end result is a market where you have players like Apple and Blackberry, with their proprietary stuff that only they use, and then it's saturated with tons of other devices from many different vendors all running on the same OS. That means Apple and RIM lose market share by not having an open platform which other vendors can use to build their own devices with. This is why Android is growing in share and RIM and iOS are falling.
That's where openness counts, in getting the products to the marketplace. You're right, consumers don't care about openness. But developers definitely do.
Droid handsets are a mish-mosh of different hardware features and operating system versions, which is *not* good for development.
Is that sort of like how the mish-mosh of PCs running Windows have contributed to a software environment where it's difficult to find good Windows software and people who know how to write Windows applications? Or is it the opposite, how you can find virtually anything to run on Windows, but not really so with the Mac? Hasn't the fact that the Windows OS can run on virtually any hardware platform actually contributed to its market penetration? It's the same with Linux and web servers.
The developers have to take into account the features that may or may not be available on each handset and the possible hardware limitations and program accordingly.
Developers have been used to this since the IBM-compatible PC came out. It's not a big deal. This is why software ships with a "system requirements" box.
Another issue with Android is that the handset manufacturers are exploiting the openness of Android to pre-install apps on users's phones that cannot be removed.
The same openness does in fact allow people to remove those apps. If you don't believe me, wait a few months.
And lastly, like it or not, iTunes Store is the easiest and most effective application distribution for end users and developers. No one even comes close yet.
Having never used iTunes Store I can't vouch for that, but I can definitely say there's not a single thing that's difficult or ineffective about the Android Marketplace.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Apple released their new iPhone product at the end of the sixth month of this year. Let's wait til year's end and look at a graph of sales throughout the year of similar products and compare the lifespan of a product line.
If companies like yours drop blackberry support it would be a long road back...
It's easy enough to justify connecting an iphone or android device to the existing imap or activesync server, but convincing a company to install a blackberry server for a small subset of users would never fly.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The reason why they won't license their OS is because it would be self-destructive businesswise for them to do so. They're making money off of the iPhone via hardware sales. They've got the best hardware margins in the industry. There's no way they could license iOS for the same amount per unit that they make off of iPhone hardware sales, especially when their competitor (Android) is free. Had their been a usable, easily available, and free alternative back in the 80's, then Microsoft wouldn't have dominated the way that they did.
The lesson that Apple has learned in regards to marketshare is that it more marketshare does not always equal more profits. Their vertical integration, made possible by the control that you're so quick to dump on, is what allows them to differentiate their product and get away with profit margins that the rest of the industry can only dream of.
They went down this road with the MacOS clones back in the last 90's. The clone makers just undercut Apple's prices and drove the margins down to nothing. The PC market is that way, and much of the phone market is that way. Apple has no desire to participate in that part of the market, it's really hard to make money there.
Apple will keep on doing what they're doing, and even if they end up with 10% marketshare at the end of the day, it'll likely be the most profitable 10% of the mobile market, and they'll happily keep making truckloads of money. If they end up with higher marketshare than that, then that's just gravy.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
By the way, I would also say "the mainstream" does not really want or require to root the phone.
And they do want to jailbreak iPhones?
WHy is is any different?
The users who want to jailbreak or root are the same crowd. Technical users who have the ability to do so. "the mainstream" does not care.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't know about the Mac tools (since most people don't own a Mac), but while you can do it for free on Windows, it's a bit of a pain and the average person is not going to take the time to do it.
Android on the other hand lets you make ringtones in just a few seconds with no hassle at all.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
All of these phones become useless due to the battery, still.
I ended up going for a Symbian phone....
a Nokia E55.
2 weeks ago.
Bit crazy because the O/S will no doubt soon be out of date. But it does the important things... which are:
- still got putty ssh
- free maps, fairly global coverage, and you can download them before your holiday. You can't do that with iphone or android, maps orientate the according to how it's held
- it's smaller than all of those phones; thinner
- not touchscreen
- SIP internet calls can be integrated... personally I can't get it working so I use fring...
- takes a full sized bluetooth keyboard
And it was ~$200.
I know I can't write stuff for it so easily like android.. though it can run python alright...
and I'm sure it will be out of date soon
but for the moment it just does the normal stuff, you know.
I looked at iphone people playing flick the coin and all this stuff and thought to myself, I don't want that, I just want maps and be able to use that stuff as much as I want without worrying about battery.
So I had to go for this sort of phone. It's the only one I know that can do this stuff.
A blog I run for the wealth
I find it absolutely disturbing that you don't think "user experience" is an important factor here. Everything Apple does is driven by providing a superior user experience, at any cost, even at the cost of openness.
Openness doesn't really matter that much to normal, average, non-technical users, of which there are vastly more of than very vocal minority here on Slashdot. Compare to a fantastic "user experience" which provides immediate value to everyone.
Thanks for the anecdotes. This is what I've been noticing just from reading various posts in this thread - that Android seems to be gaining in both the business and the personal smartphone markets. Sounds like the Microsoft Windows formula on the desktop market. All the other players in the smartphone market (RIM, Apple, Nokia, Microsoft) must be very worried right now.
Apple will keep on doing what they're doing, and even if they end up with 10% marketshare at the end of the day, it'll likely be the most profitable 10% of the mobile market, and they'll happily keep making truckloads of money.
Right, they'll be cashing checks all the way to irrelevance. Arguably one of the most profitable software markets is the gaming market. How come PCs dominate gaming more than Macs? It's because developers don't see much of a return in spending a lot of money to port their product to a platform with ~5% market share. Yeah, Apple may make a lot of money in the short term selling hardware, but over time they are again going to find themselves in the position of being the little guy that no one bothers to support because of a lack of market share. Granted, that's going to take a while with mobile devices, if it happens at all, but the trend for Android is certainly upward, and the trend for Apple is decidedly downward. 6 months ago the share for Android was 4%, with 6% of new purchases being Android devices. For Apple, 6 months ago the share was 27%, with 34% of new purchases. Today Android has 13% (+9) total share, with 27% (+21) of new purchases, and Apple has 28% (+1) share with 23% (-11) of new purchases. The graphs clearly show that all other players either started declining or leveled out when Android started gaining. Android is taking from everyone else. If Apple doesn't watch out they're going to follow Windows Mobile all the way down to Palm and Symbian, and RIM won't be far behind. In a few years time I expect the market share for mobile devices to be shaped very similarly to the market share for search engines or desktop OSs, one dominant player and a lot of others trying to gain any ground.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I mentioned that criticism for Apple devices is not technical, but centered around user experience.
Everything Apple does is driven by providing a superior user experience, at any cost, even at the cost of openness.
No, everything Apple does is driven by providing their user experience. That does not mean that the user experience they perceive as superior is in fact better than competitors. I have zero complaints about the "user experience" with my Android device, in fact I get a lot of value out of it (just like you said). Apple is trying the one-size-fits-all user experience model, again, and that may work for some (many) people, but sure as hell not everyone.
If you want an example, assume my company wants to develop a mobile application to complement our paid application, where every customer who purchases the paid application also gets the mobile application, but we don't want people who have not paid for the full application to have the mobile one. How do we distribute this mobile application to our customers? Do we put it on the public App Store and say that you are only allowed to download this free app if you've paid for our other non-mobile one?
Openness doesn't really matter that much to normal, average, non-technical users
See my other reply in this thread about openness. The consumer doesn't care about openness, the developers and manufacturers do. That's why a new Android device comes out every few months, because the developers and vendors are able to do that, because the platform is open.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Turns out Linux doesn't suck and it is good for something mainstream after all. I still haven't seen the real "year of the Linux desktop" but Android has already given us a year of the Linux phone, and we barely even realized it.
Yeah, but the price is to become for the smartphone universe what Windows was for the PC. With Google being what MS Office and the "industry standard" software was for Windows. Well, could've been worse.
The gaming market is far from the most profitable software market, but anyways, as I stated earlier, Apple doesn't make much of their money from software, hardware is their main revenue and profit source. Neither apple nor anybody else would be able to make any money selling a mobile OS, because there is a competent mainstream competitor that is free.
You can extrapolate marketshare all that you want, but those same numbers that you're using show that Apple is selling more iPhones now than ever before, and as long as that is the case, they'll do just fine.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Mac OS = 1 company
Linux = A few companies ( I count three)
Windows = Very many companies
If that's a valid comparison, so is the smartphone OS one.
The operating system matters because it doesn't matter if I buy a Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Legend or Motorola Milestone becasue I'm still getting the same Android OS.
Asking for a single vendor comparison is pointless. What you want is like to like and right now all Android phones can do the same things as Iphones (vice versa is not true) so comparing a single manufacturer is not like to like, it's stacking statistics in your favour and frankly it's a weak tactic.
They could but they wont license their OS because they would lose control over it.
This is not an Android problem.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Iphone 4 sold 3 million in 23 days. Lets see, that averages out to 130,000 devices per day.
In June Google announced that 160,000 Android devices were being activated per day. So Apple is still 30,000 behind Android.
Lets take into account that 1.7 million Iphones were sold in the first 3 days (ignoring the 2 months of pre-orders of course) and the number for the remaining 20 days is 65,000 units.
Simple math. If we accept Googles claim at face value (and we do if we expect to do the same with Apple's) then Android is still outselling Apple.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Actually it's about 6 if you consider the different memory sizes. 8 if we include the 3G refurbs that are still on sale.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
And the difference between each model is...
mostly aesthetic such as a choice of colour. Thanks for playing.
They operate all the same functions, just like a laptop with MS windows from Dell is no different then a laptop with MS Windows from Asus. They'll both run Firefox.
Iphone 4 Iphone 3GS Iphone 3G... no, wait.
There are 3 different models of 3GS being sold, two different models of Iphone 4 and 2 different models of refurbished 3G's still being sold, in two different colours. So lets do the math (3+2+2)*2=14 models of Iphone.
Apple is not the only one who can play with statistics.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Well Google will show you naked women if you ask...
Does Apple?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
This is pretty obvious in my opinion (as a iPhone lover and user myself). With devices like the HTC Tattoo which sells for a third the price, it's bound to be a higher volume product. You can get Android phones for free (financed through the contract) with normal phone plans as well. So when you go to the store and decide "Do I want to buy my kid a basic do nothing phone or a phone which they can play games and music or surf the web on?" the answer becomes pretty clear pretty fast when you're paying the same price for either of them. You just get more value for the money that way.
On the other hand, if you go to a store to get an iPhone, even if it's with a "Free phone with plan" scenario, the cost of the plan will be MUCH higher.
It would be great if they differentiated based on price ranges and not just operating systems. Android is going to be on pretty much every inexpensive smart phone on the planet because of the cost of the OS and the fact that it is competitive with the iPhone.
This statistic is pretty frigging useless in my opinion. It generates some buzz, but as an iPhone lover/Apple hater, I have to say that it's not the OS or the phone which makes me buy the iPhone. It's the fact that my 1st generation iPod is working like a champ 9 years later and still works with iTunes and the latest music I download. It's the fact that Apple releases one phone a year and having worked with Nokia, Ericsson, HTC and most others in the business, I've learned that once they start shipping one phone, they move onto the next and leave the worst developers on the old one to fix problems that might come up. The other guys simply have no loyalty to the devices they make. I've even worked on phones with some of these vendors where they found out after a "critical bug" came up, they couldn't fix it because apparently their subversion repository for the project got lost and noone had the code to fix.
Apple might not be the best phone maker or the best OS maker, but they probably have the best overall product/service at the moment, so I pay the extra money for it. I don't trust the loyalty of the hardware vendors to Android phones. I don't trust them to keep their board support packages or drivers up to date and fixed. Android itself will keep being great, but I don't trust the hardware makers selling them.
Sorry if I'm a moron, but are T Mobile and AT&T compatible GSM? Could you buy an iPhone, and unlock it?
I bought an Original iPhone, "locked to the AT&T network", and had it jailbroken/unlocked. It worked perfectly fine, although we never had um, "Edge" here in New Zealand, we moved to a faster technology.
I'm waiting for the iPhone 4 to come out here officially, it JUST came out, and instantly sold out, I'm on a couple week waiting list...not cool! I would not personally recommend jailbreaking unless NEEDED, I could not use my iPhone without it, it would be saying "wheres AT&T? Emergency Calls Only!". I've always been scared of security issues, relying on some anonymous person under a fake name to hack around with my thousand dollar plus cellphone? I've always only installed MAJOR OS updates, for fear of the admittedly simple Jailbreaking process, especially with the new website approach! Boy, it couldnt get any easier?!
If you want an iPhone, but not AT&T, you might be able to get your match made in heaven! Otherwise, although I am an Apple fan, I believe Android phones are now at least equal to the iPhone in MANY ways.
Good luck!
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but many a geek has allowed Apple's products to take them over
Excluding ipods && ipads && iphones, this is not necessarily a turn-in-your-geek-card type of situation. They can still choose to pop open the hood and live on the command line with a mac.
Reply to That ||
Off-topic I'm sure, but I think Ringdroid is rather good. I dump an mp3 file onto the sd card, a little editing, and done.
Reply to That ||
There's a big difference between "it's a bit of a pain" and "it's impossible." The latter is what the post I replied to claimed.
free maps, fairly global coverage, and you can download them before your holiday. You can't do that with iphone or android
You can on Android at least (probably also on iPhone, I just don't own one). Sure, it's not in the stock Maps app, but there are several third-party ones in the Market (e.g. Maverick) which can use preloaded maps in offline; and there are also desktop apps which can scrape Google or Bing Maps and save them in formats understood by those apps. I use them every now and then, mostly for hiking.
Everything Apple does is driven by providing a superior user experience, at any cost, even at the cost of openness.
My user experience is heavily dependent on being able to use a hardware keyboard. This is why I buy mobile devices that have one built in. How exactly is Apple's offering superior in that regard?
My user experience is also heavily dependent on being able to make calls reliably. Again, Apple are struggling to convince me their product is superior here.
My user experience is also heavily influenced by the software I can install on my device, and the level of control I have over it. This is why I bought a device that lets me edit the configuration files that change almost every aspect of the device's operation (and lets me recompile the OS from scratch if the config files lack the flexibility I require). Final chance, remind me how Apple's user experience is superior here?
A fantastic user experience is truly important; everything Apple does is pretty clearly not driven by providing a superior one.
Eww.... only $4 billion?!?
Mommm, a poor corp talked to me!
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
Great, so theoretically by buying an Android device I get openness.
In reality in a year, we'll be buying locked down fragmented variations of Android that offer nothing in terms of openness and have diverged to far from the default OS to be truely 'compatible' ... intentionally ... so that Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile can continue to sell access to the GPS for an additional $10/month and have you buy from THEIR app stores.
Whats that you say? Most of it has already happened?
So great, in theory Android is open, in practice not so much. What was your point again? Where you telling us Windows qualifies as 'open' because I have in my posession a good portion of the source code? Theory and practice are two entirely different things, you're trying to compare the theoretical world of one device with another device in the real world. Doesn't work.
Why would any Apple user (or any other phone user) give a shit how many Android devices sell? You think theres some sort of 'Android Envy' or something?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
People have blackberries because they haven't upgraded to an iPhone yet because its not that time or their company provided phone doesn't come with an option for an iPhone.
People don't continue to use RIM devices out of choice, only lockin and ignorance.
You can argue over the strengths and weaknesses of the iPhone versus Android all day long and it'd be an argument.
If you tried to argue that a RIM device compares to an Android device or an iPhone then you might as well show up to a gun fight with a knife.
RIM is dead, they had their hayday and sit on their asses instead of innovating, now both Google and Apple said 'holy fuck you guys suck at software development, good bye."
Apple has a nice phone for normal people to use that a lot of geeks love.
Andorid has a nice offering for geeks to use that some normal people love.
RIM ... I got nothing, and neither do they.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Rooting an N1 is fully sanctioned by Google, and they even provide instructions, though it does void the warranty.
The OP may have meant e.g. customising the phone's UI by, say, adding widgets to the homescreen.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It's a shame that AT&T held a gun to Jobs head to force Apple to sign an exclusive agreement with them.
Poor Steve had to sign a deal with ATT and receive bazillon dollars in return. I almost feel sorry for him
Google failed on Nexus One, and success on Android. Handset makers with Android device on sale include HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG and more. Because the Android is OPEN SOURCE. iPhone still the No.1 smartphone of all. **** iPhone Transfer for Mac http://www.iphonemactransfer.com/
Ok lets argue semantics here. We'll change the wording around a bit and see if the results change: Blackberry OS = 1 company Apple OS = 1 company Google OS = 1 company Windows OS = 1 company It's not my fault (or google or msft) that they other competitors choose to limit the hardware they put their OS on. So now it is up to the jury: have the results changed?
Why is everyone freaking out about this? Selling the most does not mean selling the best. PCs sell overwhelmingly larger numbers than Macs but we all know where most problems lie.
Oh, and Apple's selling three different iPhone models, so it's not exactly a "single handset".
Aren't they just the same device with different internal memory capacity? It's not like there's 'iPhone with slide out qwerty' as opposed to the existing one.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Nope T-Mobile and ATT have 3G networks that are incompatible with each other.
I do have a friend who use an old iPhone purchased on eBay with data access only on the edge network. I don't because it seems foolish to get edge connectivity at a 3G price.
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