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The Android Invasion Cometh; Is Resistance Futile?
DeviceGuru writes "Last month, we learned from Gartner that Android will probably be the number-two worldwide mobile OS this year, and may lead the pack by 2014. With Android's growing use as the OS embedded in phones, in tablets, in set-top boxes, and in LCD HDTVs, it seems like the Linux-based OS could end up dominating the entire non-PC consumer device operating system space. What do Slashdot readers think: Is resistance futile?"
I think the article is forgotting that there are already many widespread OS that are taking up that market. I and obviously other geeks love Android because it could mean more open devices for us, but we aren't seeing the whole picture either because it's not in news every day.
The "problem" is the same as with Opera. People think it's not as widespread as it's barely in news and their stuff isn't blastered all over your face all the time. However Opera dominates on embedded devices, televisions (especially in hotels!), mobile phones, even Nintendo Wii.
Windows variants are also the same. Windows 7, Windows CE and Windows Mobile are majorly used but it's not always so obvious. When you take a flight all the televisions in airports run Windows. When you go to ATM they run special version of Windows CE. Some hotel TV's also run Windows. With the upcoming Microsoft tablets and Windows Phone 7, it will get even more marketshare. Windows is also used pretty much in every organization and company.
If Android actually wants to take over all of that, it will be a long road. I hope they do, but I'm not so sure they will. Microsoft is good with business relationships and marketing and thats the point. It's not a small market and Windows is already dominating it.
Is resistance necessary?
I'd rather see MeeGo taking a sizeable portion of market from Android. With MeeGo, desktop Linux skills suddenly become very relevant in job market, and we'll get more desktop software (eventually).
With Android, Java skills are everything and... um... we got more people capable of doing Websphere/JBoss stuff? What a victory would that be.
IN B4 "Android Fragmentation"
The Android Invasion Cometh; Is Resistance Futile?
Look both options have their benefits. But I happen to agree with a recent survey that finds developers think Android is the long term solution while iOS is basically the immediate choice because of its dominance it has enjoyed with being the first. Given that the obvious is already happening, it's just going to take two or three years for developers to really unseat anything else in favor over Android. I was never given a chance to tinker or code for iOS so of course I'm biased towards the one technology out there that is actually trying to empower me without restrictions.
In the end, that sort of empowerment is going to trump any sort of assured device capability or graphical power that Apple can offer me. You may have a different opinion (BWJones did) but I simply cannot see how Apple will retain their lead in this fight.
Resistance is never futile. You could stick to your guns and enjoy immediate sales then moderate sales then fewer and fewer sales. Or you could enjoy moderate sales and then increasingly more and more sales. You might have to do more development if you want to target both TVs and handhelds (inputs get tricky) but I think investing in only iOS at this point is not a prudent decision.
My work here is dung.
I think Apple might have a thing or two to say about that...
Apple doesn't sell competing products to this, Microsoft does.
this is exactly what statistics are for, it's way better than your anecdotal evidence.
did you forget to take your meds?
most people reading here are desktop-centric, and the smartphone os is a secondary platform, in terms of work, play, and psychological orientation
but we are rapidly entering a world that is smartphone-centric, and the desktop os is a secondary platform, in terms of work, play, and psychological orientation. the whole desktop segment will be marginal
google can ride this psychological shift to get android/ chrome os onto the desktop market. the shift will be second nature, not an alien intrusion. and it will happen with a whimper, not a bang: who cares about the desktop except old people?
the only people making noise about this "big deal", this great promise of unseating microsoft in the desktop market, chattered about on slashdot for over a decade, will be old people. the idea of using a desktop will be a fossil idea, that only fossils will care about. like looking at greybeards from the 80s with their funny unix command line interfaces
in which case, "resistance is futile" is a good allusion, because google will be the new microsoft. cue bill gates slashdot borg icon morphing into a sergey brin/ larry page borg icon. nevermind that even the idea of "the borg" is a silly scifi notion from last century that only old people even care or know about
slashdot, we're showing our age
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i take the subway and lately i've been seeing more iPhone 4's than Android phones. i've noticed that a lot of android phones look like an iphone 4, but overall i see a lot more iCrap than Andoid. could be all the people with ipod touches i see have android phones in their bags they aren't showing, but then what is the point of 2 devices?
when people ask me what they should buy i tell them that it doesn't really matter since they are 90% the same
... voltage over current
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I honestly don't care what wins as long as I can install anything on my phone that I want without needing to get "approval" from some corporate app store with "Christian" morals as part of their app approval policy. Personally, I'd buy a technically inferior product if it was open and the makers didn't try to shove restrictions down my throat.
The way I feel about it is: It's my phone, I payed for it, if you don't like what I'm doing with my own property, well, that's just too bad for you.
It's that kind of typical Apple fanaticism that will allow Android to eat their lunch. I've had an Android phone for six months that can do everything my partner's phone can do and a hell of a lot more besides (admittedly she's using a 3GS, I can't comment on the iPhone 4, but from what I've read about it in the press I'm not exactly green with envy). She's had her iPhone for 7 months and really wants to replace it with the same model as me. I even prefer the look and feel of my phone, although I realise that's entirely objective, and price-wise they were roughly the same when I bought this. I desperately hope that Google don't have aspirations to make Android like iOS, because I think it's already the better system and that would be a big step backwards.
This is the year of Linux on Everything! *
* Everything excludes the desktop
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
There will be resistance from me as long as I am able to purchase WebOS devices. I *MUCH* prefer WebOS over Android.
Since android sources are available to the open market, a fork (or more, or better) will come one of these days and the compatibility nightmare will come true...
Don't say that on Slashdot. This site demands that the most used and popular programming language of this time is nothing more than a bad fad which will die away leaving people the open space to write Perl scripts just like they way they used to.
Actually, studies have shown android fanboys get laid the least. Sorry buddy.
It's kind of hard to compete with market share when the other guys are doing 2-for-1 specials.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
...this "either/or" mentality. That if Android succeeds, everyone else has failed.
Let's look at computers. Microsoft and OEM's that use Windows have about 90% market-share, while Apple and OS X has a bit under 10%. Does that mean that Apple has "failed"? Not really. They seem to be having highly succesful computer-business, happy users, and lots of profits. Apple earns more money on their computers than HP, the market-leader, does with theirs. yet for some reason some people say that Apple should be like HP and Dell, since licensing OS from someone else is "the way this business works". Even though it seems that the OEM's are not earning that much, while Intel and Microsoft are the companies that reap the profits.
If we look at phones, we can see that Apple is earning lots of money there as well. More than Nokia is earning, even though Apple is a lot smaller. It seems that people are expecting Apple to gain iPod-like dominance in the phone-business, and if/when Android overtakes iOS, people decide that iOS has "failed", since history did not repeat itself. Well, Symbian dwarfs both iOS and Android, yet no-one is calling iOS or Android failures because of that fact. And gaining iPod-like share in a mature market like phones is quite hard, if not impossible. When Nokia was at it's biggest, it had something like 60-70% share of the market. But that was a market that wasn't all that mature yet. and they managed that for only few years.
What if Android gets 50% share in few years? Great! Android is a good OS, and we need more good phones. does that mean that everyone else has failed? I don't think so. It seems that people have this strange idea that there must be a clear winner and a clear loser(s). We got that in computers, when Microsoft ended up dominating the market. So we MUST have something similar elsewhere as well, right? I don't think so. And even in computers the "niche player" is earning quite nice profits. Even though they have single-digits market-share does not seem to be hurting them. You do not need to be big, biggest or dominating in order to have a good business.
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The last time, the Board forced Steve out of the company and Apple stopped creating dramatically new products, favoring incremental improvements instead.
Because iPhone is still much smoother than Android.
Most people don't care about Flash, HD video or dual-core phones. People want phones that can do well the basic stuff one wants to do on a smart phone (email, news, maps. weather, calls (!)). And the iPhone is terribly good at that.
I've had an iPhone for 2 years. Now that it's renewal time, I looked at all sorts of Android devices since I want to move away from the walled garden of Eden^H^H^H^H Jobs. The answer was simply that there is no match for the iPhone out there.
My advice to Google: focus on the Android user experience. That's the only way you'll ever beat Apple (and I hope you do).
If it was an apples to apples comparison then maybe it would be something Apple should worry about, but the mobile market is NOT the same as the PC market of 25 years ago. That's not saying Apple will dominate nor Android, but then again who cares. I buy Apple products because I like them. If someone else doesn't then they can buy something else. Why is it necessary for one to dominate? To be honest, I think those days are gone, I don't think any phone maker is going to dominate any more, there will always be many choices.
"the" android market is still by far the largest one, and is accessible from pretty much every android handset.
It's not accessible from any Android device made by Archos. In fact, it doesn't appear to be accessible from any available Android device without a cellular radio. (Samsung Galaxy Player 50 isn't out yet.)
2-for-1 specials are basically equivalent to selling at half the price. Being overpriced compared to the competition is no virtue, though I can understand how Apple fans would see it that way (or, rather, I can see how people who see it that way would tend to become Apple fans.)
Resistor is useless
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Or are you referring to just the US?
From the FAQ: Assume the United States market unless otherwise specified. Among industrialized anglophone countries, the United States has two-thirds of the population.
yes, but to obtain this geekdom paradise,you need to *jailbreak* the device. You have to jump through hoops to get the device do stuff that its makers don't want you to do. And you're at the mercy of the next update bricking your phone.
this doesn't make much sense,specially when there are perfectly valid alternatives.
systems which are homebrew friendly out-of-the box,and let you instal stuff out of the walled garden if you want (HP/Palm webOS has tonnes of interesting stuff you can instal on them. Including SSH, Bash, an XServer etc.)
systems which ALREADY feature all the goodies of a computer-in-a-pocket, (like the Nokia N900).
all these work without jailbreaking/exploits/or othe such non-sense.
the fact that android provide a little bit less features out-of-the-box, doesn't mean you must jump on the most locked up device and go through complex unsupported/unapproved/discouraged procedure that could backfire next time Saint-Jobs decides to Fart.
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