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Gartner Predicts Android Most Popular Mobile OS By 2014
mikesd81 writes "According to Gartner research firm, Google's Android smartphone operating system will in a single year have leapfrogged competitors like Apple's iPhone, Research in Motion's Blackberry and Microsoft Windows phones in global popularity, and will challenge Nokia to become the world's most popular mobile OS by 2014. Gartner says that the explosive growth of Android will give it 17.7% of world wide sales by the end of 2010. ... Analysts also say there are number of things that could derail Android's growth, including Oracle's lawsuit over Java patents."
I for one welcome our new android overlords
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
for putting the most important words of this "news" right at the beginning: "Gartner predicts". From that point onwards, everyone knows one can safely disregard anything that follows unless a good laugh is needed.
the year of linux mobile desktop!
Android will become the most popular OS by 2014, or it will not.
...that the carriers are beginning to resort to their old tricks on the new Android phones? Stuff like replacing Google search with Bing and not letting you change it back, loading phones up with unremovable crapware, locking down tethering, banning installation of non-Marketplace apps, etc.
Before anyone replies, "Well, just root the phone to get around that stuff! Duh!" let me remind you that geeks who are willing and able to do so are far, far outnumbered by normal people who just want to use their goddamn phone, not tinker with it.
I actually think that Android won't become super fragmented but will break into 3 main branches
A) The "dumbphone or device" branch, devices that barely support their current version of Android loaded on them. (things running 1.5 that aren't phones like the Nook would be an example of this)
B) The "Stables" branch, everyday devices running a simi-current Android release (things running 2.1 right now would be an example)
C) The "bleeding edge" branch, high powered devices either easily rooted or pre-rooted that run the newest Android available (devices like the Nexus One would fall into here)
So developers would probably use branch A to make basic applications, use branch B to make things like games and branch C to make tech demos.
Fragmentation will be less and less of an issue the more phones that get rooted and the slower Google releases OS updates.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
That would be different from Apple's whole approach. They don't want a majority of the market - they want a niche market with big margins. Apple's goal is never really more than 20% of the market.
Android is quite likely the biggest winner over the next few years. What I'm personally watching for is what RIM does. While RIM has the corporate market, they've been trying to break out of that. I'd expect the major battles to be between Android, RIM and Windows 7 Phone.
"Is Nokia's Symbian devices every actually used outside of Europe/Asia?"
Europe and Asia's population is around 4.6 billion people, or 70% of the worlds population. Anything used in "only" those areas of the world is pretty damn close to ubiquitous, whether it reaches every corner of the world or not.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I interpret the evidence differently; Apple seems absolutely delighted with their 80% market share for MP3 players and 70% market share for downloadable music sales. I think they'd love to have a similar position in mobile platforms, although I agree that they will abandon markets that do not permit sufficient differentiation to support their target margins.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Google will be (or already is?) the new Microsoft.
Just as Microsoft was the new IBM.
That always sounds like a reasonable comparison, but under Google's current leadership, and their current business focus, that probably won't ever be the case. Microsoft got where it is by committing a whole host of illegal, anti-competitive acts (still are, actually) and can be legitimately said to have retarded progress over the past thirty-odd years. Google isn't really doing anything of that nature, and if anything is pushing the state-of-the-art. Google's external operations are also very standards-based and, so far as I'm aware, Google hasn't pulled anything like what Microsoft did with the ISO approval process.
... also for free. Of course, there's a reason for that: the only thing Google really "sells" is ad space, and that will only make money for them as long as they can attract eyeballs. I look at Google's rather massive investment in R&D and outpouring of free cloud-based services as being very future-oriented: they know that they may not be able to subsist on ad revenue forever, and would like to have other options. Microsoft has been doing the same thing for the same reason for many years, but Microsoft generally fails at anything outside its core competency of operating systems and office suites. Likewise, Google isn't making much money, directly, from its online services (other than its bread-and-butter ad views) but in the meantime we get to play with some cool stuff and they get to sell some more advertising. Some of that nifty online stuff may stick, and eventually start making Google some serious money. Only time will tell.
Google isn't charging an arm-and-a-leg to phone makers for Android, matter of fact, it isn't charging anything. It also offers a remarkable suite of online services
But they're far from a monopoly, illegal or otherwise (as of now, anyway), and any comparison to Microsoft or IBM in terms of ethics or monopolism is really undeserved at this point. Not saying that will always be true: companies do change, but in this case I think we'll have to wait until Brin & Page retire. Hopefully their successors will be at least as good, business-ethics-wise (well, better than Gates' replacement, anyway, which wouldn't be too hard.)
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Android has something like a 1300% growth rate. If we extrapolate that forever, we can see that Android is going to take over the entire universe in approximately 15 years.
Deleted
I actually think that Android won't become super fragmented but will break into 3 main branches
Don't forget D. Third-party ROMs like Cyanogenmod and others. They have a pretty substantial following (they're the real reason people root their phones in many cases.)
... they never gave me any grief whatsoever for using my Android phone any way I wanted to. For the past year or so (since I first got a G1 and flashed it with Cyanogenmod) I've been tethering my laptop to it and running Skype, and doing other things that AT&T wouldn't allow, for example, an iPhone user to do. I pay my T-Mobile bill quite happily each month because they're giving me what I want from my carrier.
Ultimately, so long as there are carriers like T-Mobile that will let me go buy an unlocked phone (like the N1) and pop in my SIM card, fragmentation will be less of an issue.
The problem, for carriers, is that people want advanced network-based services like the so-called "Google Experience", they want the ability to run any application they choose. Carriers that refuse to acknowledge this are nothing but a business opportunity for those that do. Right now, that's why I'm on T-Mobile
The cell phone market has changed forever now that they're not phones anymore but pocket-sized personal computers. The cellular outfits are rapidly being relegated to their proper role as telecommunications providers: fat wireless pipes, no more. They don't like that, but unfortunately in world where the terminal equipment is smarter than desktop PCs were only a few years ago, they're going to have a harder and harder time justifying such things as "airtime" and 15c per text message. And that's good: I don't expect my home broadband provider to nickel-and-dime me for using specific Internet applications and services, and ideally would rather my wireless provider didn't do anything similar. Yet, that's exactly what they're currently doing.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Look, Nokia sells 4 out of every 10 smart phones. Outside North America (5% of the world population), Nokia phones are practically everywhere. It's worth noticing that while the Iphone is considered a nice phone (and even a game changer) everywhere and it sells quite well, it was a smash hit mostly in the US: In most places people already had fairly good smart phones, it just wasn't that big of a deal even if the touch UI was awesome.
As a comment on this Gartner guesswork: many people dismiss the work Nokia does in the developing countries but they probably shouldn't. China and India are already massive smart phone markets and they are going to be absolutely huge. Nokia is _very_ strong in these countries.
predicting what kind of music our grandchildren will like
That's too easy. Something that you can't stand.
http://xkcd.com/605/
The Wall Street Journal also had analysis; they said that Apple can afford to lose a chunk of market share (in a growing market) and instead should worry about the competition driving the price down. Here's the story (do the google-the-URL thing to get a good Referer: if it doesn't show the whole thing).
It is not a given that Apple will lose market share. Apple may not be the player that is displaced by Android. Android is more likely to displace all the in-house operating systems being used by the handset manufacturers. For example Nokia could announce that they have dropped Nokia OS and Symbian OS and will use Android for all upcoming handsets.
The situation is not unlike Linux and Microsoft. Despite Microsoft being widely perceived as the competitor to Linux, it was really Sun Microsystems and other traditional Unix vendors that were displaced. Similarly I expect it will largely be the traditional handset operating systems that will be displaced, not necessarily Apple.
1 thing about that, Google is milking the ads like they'll be nothing eventually, and looking to the future for potential alternatives (or additives). Microsoft is only just jumping on the ad bandwagon and trying to slap them everywhere they can. I can imagine Microsoft putting ads into Office soon and alienating its users, while Google moves on to something even more profitable (probably a % of subscription services, micro-paid for from your mobile contract or somesuch).
Hard to say, but you're probably right that Google will find something to replace or substantially augment their current model. They're still capable of looking forward: Microsoft (in spite of the considerable sums it spends on Microsoft Research) spends more effort trying to maintain the status quo. Oh, Google is a big operation now and certainly has a significant level of inertia, but I think its longer term prospects are better. You're also right about something else: when Google releases something it's usually executed competently from a technical perspective. Even when they do buy up a company (like, for instance, Grand Central) it usually ends up pretty well integrated.
but you missed one important thing: developers.
Well, that's true of course, but there's an important difference. Because Google is implementing their externally-facing services in a standards-compliant way (hell, they're a Linux shop through-and-through) they don't really have to worry too much about courting developers. Microsoft, on the other hand, has always gone its own way in terms of programming methodologies, languages and tools, and thus has an uphill battle to keep Web developers interested. Google just has to use the tools everyone who codes for the Internet and the World Wide Web already knows and keep doing really nifty things with them.
Android, now, is something of a hybrid but it is something that Java devs can get into fairly quickly. I've often wondered why Google chose to base Android development around a bastardized Java, but if anything it was probably to attract enterprise-level Java developers. Google obviously wants to break into the enterprise market, because a. the Cloud's the Word and b. there's serious money there. Using a language with which in-house corporate developers are already familiar and already runs a lot of heavy-duty back-end stuff was probably a smart move. I don't know: I'm not exactly on first-name terms with Larry and Sergey.
I'd go so far as to say that if the Year of Linux on the Desktop ever happens, it will likely be because of Google.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's full of opinions masquerading as facts, as well as outright falsehoods. It has now reached +5 Insightful because of the well known Slashdot tendency to mod up anything that bashes Microsoft, no matter how tenuously said bashing is related to the topic. In fact, I suspect that's why you liked it.
If I misspoke myself, feel free to correct me (with facts, since you brought that up) rather than simply doing the same thing you claim I did. Furthermore, the poster I was replying to made a comparison to Microsoft and IBM that I felt was unwarranted. So your "tenuousness" complaint is likewise unwarranted.
And one last point, this is a public forum where people go to express their opinions. That's what I was doing. If you are unable to determine when a person is expressing an opinion or making a statement as to fact, I respectfully suggest that you are on the wrong Web site.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
As a developer on a few mobile platforms, I foresee that Android will be popular for carriers and manufacturers, because it's free. But for consumers, it will, by 2014, be no more useful than any previous handset OS: Your phone WILL be locked into the apps, settings and themes governed by the carrier, and the number of "stellar" apps will dwindle considerably. Unless the carriers subsidize development for their particular handset, there will be very little incentive for major developers to waste time on such a fragmented market.
And cellphone penetration in that part of the world is much higher than in the US. For example, 88% of the population of the US has a cellphone, compared with 95% of the population of the EU (source CIA World Fact Book).
No mod points today - but I totally agree. Google has done something very clever which the other vendors have not - they have not tried to take Apple head on, but instead they've picked a bunch of different areas where the iPhone is weak and made Android strong in those areas. They are moving into heavily differentiating Android based on advanced features integrated with Google services (integrated voice recognition / control that is ubiquitous, for example). These are things that are *really*, *really* hard for competitors to reproduce. So you can't go into a store and look at an Android phone next to an iPhone and do a direct comparison - "this one has better graphics, this one has a nicer contacts list, this one has better facebook integration, ... " etc. You have to make a choice between a completely different paradigm. This means that despite the hype, Android is not really competing with iPhone directly, rather only in a secondary sense. Compare with WP7 where it seems that Microsoft is very much going down the line of out-Apple-ing Apple. There are some differentiators but mainly they seem like they plan to take on Apple where Apple is strong - super smooth UI, great gaming, controlled experience. I wish them luck but I strongly doubt anybody can out-Apple Apple. You don't fight an enemy on their home turf, you make them fight you where they are not comfortable.
It'll be an interesting 12 months, that's for sure.
Apple keeping the carriers out of the phone operating system was by far the greatest contribution of the iPhone to the mobile market place, in my opinion. I'll take slavish obedience to Apple over slavish obedience to my carrier.
(And my carrier has never let me get away with anything so cheap as US$99/yr to develop and install whatever the hell I like on my phone - remember, Apple's restrictions all apply at the App Store's gates, as a tinkerer, I have no issues and no need to jailbreak my phone).