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Android vs. iPhone — Who Wins In 2011?
Hugh Pickens writes "Philip Elmer-DeWitt writes in Fortune Magazine that Apple and Google have two very different strategies in the competition shaping up in 2011 between Android and iPhone. According to the conventional wisdom as espoused by Don Dodge, a Developer Advocate at Google, both Apple and Google will win because they are playing different games. Android will win the market share battle, but Apple will generate bigger profits. 'Apple goes for the high end of the market where they can charge high prices and enjoy great profit margins. Apple has been successful with this strategy multiple times, and will do it again with iPhone,' writes Dodge adding that Google's strategy with Android is to generate revenue streams from mobile search and advertising. Another Google employee, Tim Bray, sees things differently and says he won't be surprised if Apple ships a cheap iPhone and if this time next year, dirt-cheap iPhones were competing against Androids that push the user-experience lever farther than Apple. 'There's nothing fundamental in Android that would get in the way of a industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team, whether at Google or one of the handset makers, testing the hypothesis that these things are central to Apple's success.'"
What about Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry?
revenue streams from mobile search and advertising.
That is why they will fail.
I meant to comment earlier, but my iPhone alarm didn't go off.
eop
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Customer wins!
Based on my experience with both Android phones and iPhones, here's how I see it:
Do you want something that "just works" out of the box, but with somewhat limited customization options? Do you want something that's dead simple and requires little to no learning to use? Get an iPhone.
Do you like to be able to modify every little facet of your phone, right down to the hardware it runs on? Do you not mind a small learning curve if it means more flexible overall operation? Get an Android phone.
They both have their place...it all comes down to your preferences and needs.
Living With a Nerd
he won't be surprised if Apple ships a cheap iPhone
Well, if there's one thing Apple itself has proven, it's that there is a real market segment that will pay more for a better product and won't just go for the cheapest product in the niche. Therefore, I predict this strategy will fail.
And before someone uses the 'f' word, Apple's traditional customers have been loyal for a reason - they've delivered quality and real, practical utility in exchange for the price paid. If someone else can come along and do the same thing, then we'll find out how much all these boys really are fans of Apple. I'm one, and I don't care whose logo is on the damn thing, if it's a gem, I'll save up for it rather than pay less to have some rickety piece of crap now. Just like I've done for 20 years with my personal computers.
I can see the fnords!
Verizon or AT&T?
not the first line of your post.
What about Windows Phone 7??
HA, that will be the joker in this game that will conquer it all!!
uhm...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I had a rather chauvanist father, and among other black pearls of wisdom, he offered me this: "At some point or another every woman becomes a whore. It can work for you sometimes, but in the long run it will not."
Now, with my wife as proof, I've found that this is not true about women.
However, with Apple and Google as proof, I'm becoming convinced it's true about corporations.
I can see the fnords!
iPhone owner here. I use it all the time & develop for it, but Android simply has more & less expensive options. You can get Android on virtually every carrier and you can get them 2 for $99. The iPhone is only on AT&T, and even AT&T runs advertisements for Android phones. Apple's saving grace is that the iOS also runs on the iPod Touch & iPad. Android wins if by winning you mean continues to increase in market share, but Apple will continue to turn a handsome profit off of the iPhone, which I'm sure is their only real concern.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
iWin!
=P
This is a flawed comparison. Android is a platform. The iPhone is a generation of specific devices. I'm an Android fan myself, but this is clearly an unfair, and biased comparison.
I have been sick to death of advertising for pretty much all my adult life. I think it's a horrible shame to name so many of our modern points of interest after corporations. I hate how everything must be branded, and I especially hate how tasteless it all is. Product placement sucks. Most of all I'm just blown away at how I have to pay for the carrier to bring the advertisements to me.
I pay about $80 per month for cable TV, and all the channels are ad-laden; it is standard for each hour of programming to contain 20 minutes of advertisements. Now, DVR technology has allowed us to skip those commercials if you're willing to watch the program on a time delay. But doing that costs extra. A few years ago I used an old PC as a homebrew DVR and it didn't cost anything above a small investment in hardware and software, but nowadays things are so locked down the only realistic option is to rent the box and pay for the "service" from the provider. So, as I see it, I'm getting screwed from every direction.
The content itself is laden with product placement, it's subsidized further by being 33% pure commercial advertisements, I have to pay to bring the crap-laden content to my TV, and I have to pay more to filter out some of the noise.
The internet is rapidly heading in the same direction. You can't view a lot of content without turning on scripting and flash, and the scripting and flash bring advertisements that cannot be blocked. I'm paying an ISP to bring the crap in for me, and the services that offer to sell me access to the content still won't promise to remove all the advertising if I do so.
So, with my iPhone, at least it's not loaded with advertisements. Of course it brings in the Internet ads for me, but it blocks the invasive ones and I bless the iPhone for the lack of flash. But at least for the most part I'm getting fair value for the service I pay for: I make and receive phone calls and text messages, and neither are subsidized by advertisement.
So, to me, the iPhone wins. I don't care about the openness and inexpensiveness of Android if it means everything I do with my phone is partially paid for by advertisement. I'm not going to pay a carrier for voice and data service so that they can use that pipe to shove ads in my face every time I pick up my phone. It's just ridiculous.
I'm starting to believe that our society will end not in natural disaster or nuclear armageddon. Instead, the signal-to-noise ratio of all our communications will drop so low that our culture and our future just disintegrate.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
I still have a Bell's Box Telephone, you insensitive clod!
aka Gardener, aka ollej
Quote FTFA:
"There's nothing fundamental in Android that would get in the way of a industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team, whether at Google or one of the handset makers"
Nothing fundamental in Android, no. Except the solid design/UI-experience from Apple doesn't have anything to do with technology, but rather with the whole company structure and culture. I don't think that can be emulated by putting together "an industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team" and then planting it at Google or HTC or Samsung or whatever.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
"There's nothing fundamental in Android that would get in the way of a industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team, whether at Google or one of the handset makers, testing the hypothesis that these things are central to Apple's success."
There is that little annoying thing called "you don't rule the world" that will get in the way of those rock stars. The problem isn't that you can't build an awesome UI experience on top of Android. No, the problem is that you dont HAVE to build an awesome UI experience on top of android. And with that, anyone selling apps has to cater to all the dirt cheap handsets (that sell in droves) and at the same time work with the high end handsets with "rock star" UIs.
And as we all know by now, a UI gets kind of boring without a slew of cool new apps to run on it. I am not saying there wont be cool apps for Android phones, nor am I saying there wont be cool android phones for years to come. But the notion that anyone working on Android phones should bother building a "rock star" UI is, at face value, pretty stupid.
p.s. to any Android apologists who want to come by and snipe at me for being an apple fanboy: I dont like apple products, and I own an android phone.
The cell phone industry is a bazillion dollar market. Apple will be perfectly happy (same as they were with desktops) of having 10% of a bazillion dollars.
Apple are perfectly happy being the club with the higher cover charge... and if half as many people buy their twice as expensive phone, they'll do just fine.
Besides, we don't want someone to have 90% of the market share, have we forgotten about Microsoft/Windows/Office already?
My wife has an Android. I have an iPhone. Comparing hers to mine is like comparing Windows 95 to Windows 7. Sure they both do email, messaging, web surfing, have apps, and basically do all the same tasks that most people do day in and day out. One is a pleasure to use. The other is annoying and sometimes frustrating. Using an iPhone makes me smile. And I'm a lifelong Microsoft junkie (I tried rehab several times). Never having been an Apple fanboy (I don't even like Mac OS a little bit), I'm now a total iPhone fanboy. It's elegant, ergonomic, pleasant, and intuitive. Android tries to come close, but it doesn't. Every time I pick up a new Android device I think surely this one will impress me. Nope. It's only impressive if you've never used an iPhone long enough to appreciate it.
I see people switching to iPhone from Android with some frequency, but I've never seen anyone go the other way _and like it_. If Apple can get the price down a bit, they'll "win" for a long time to come. Android has the many handset makers going for it. It'll continue to do well. There are still a ton of people (90+% last I read) that have yet to upgrade to a smartphone. Android might remain more popular. But Hyundai's are more popular than BMW's. Nobody pits them against each other. That would be silly.
I'll add, that I don't like Apple's locked down approach very much, or it's lack of basic features out of the box, like wifi tethering or just plain moving some damn files around without syncing with iTunes. But most people don't care about those things, and those that do are just the type of people to click here, and have their cake and eat it too.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
I mean, there is no doubt that Android will be on more devices sold. With uncounted devices from uncounted companies and carriers this is to be expected.
What's interesting is if there will be *one* model of an Android phone that will sell better than the iPhone. If the iPhone will stay the best selling smartphone in 2011, well, it's still the bestselling smartphone.
I'm totally expecting the prices for smartphones spiralling down. An unlocked Android smartphone for $99 with no contract should be possible. It will have crappy battery life, a crappy touchscreen and a crappy camera, though.
It's very much like the Windows PC business: you can try to make better hardware, but who will pay for better hardware in the commodity world? Aside from the handful of people with various political motivations (free software! Yippee!), anyone buying an Android device is someone who's settling for a half-assed iPhone knock-off, so they're certainly not going to buy "moderately better device A" for twenty bucks more than "cheap shit device B". They're sure as hell not going to spend as much as they would for a genuine iPhone.
What I see ahead for Android is a repeat of the Dell-Acer-Gateway race to the bottom, with margins so thin that the device makers have load them up with crapware because they need the advertising revenue. As for App developers, who wants to try to sell apps to the cheapskates? The only way to make money with an Android app is to make it ad-supported.
But in different ways. IOS will generate a lot more revnue than Android will, but Android will be on more devices (at least if the current trends keep up).
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
"We want to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Google has to lose."
-- Steve Jobs
The decades of IBM/Microsoft monopoly have given a number of people in the technology industry the idea that it's natural for one big player to dominate. That's not the case. It was an aberration, born of a time when immature technology meant incompatible implementations ruled the day.
Here's a prediction. Google takes the dominant share with about 50% of the market. Apple takes another 25%, but makes as much money as Google and its handset makers combined. Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, and the rest squabble over the remaining quarter of the market.
WP7 isn't there yet.
The concept is good, but MS seems to want to take all the bad things that Apple's marketplace is and shove it into their phone. So, basically, they went from the most wide open platform to the most closed.
This story is about developers, it's always been about developers. MS knows this, yet they're not doing a great job to make the developers flock to their phones.
I pay about $80 per month for cable TV
Or rather, you already have your solution: dump cable TV.
Hint: (1) Change your credit card number before you make the call. (2) When they demand an explanation, you're selling the house and moving out of the country.
Bloggers and their new/end-of year speculations that have no beneficial effect on either product will win.
"Droid Does"
I'm much happier because of specific things the phone can do, which required a jailbreak on the iPhone or was otherwise just blocked off. That said, I do think the iPhone has an advantage still. This will be with non-technical users who want to do some technically involved things, and don't want to troubleshoot or customize their phones.
To extrapolate a bit from my experience to the market at large, I think this does put Apple in a very good position. Basically Android's success will depend on the hardware manufacturers such as Samsung, Motorola etc. and how well they adapt the Android OS to their phones. Mine's still crashing at odd moments. Like I said I'm happy with it - but if I didn't need specific things the Droid X makes possible I'd probably prefer the latest iPhone.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
I just bought an Android phone and I still had no need to setup a Google account to get things from the "Android Market" because I'm trying to avoid this customer tie. There's tons of apps available from http://code.google.com/p/. The Adblock extension runs well and there are several browsers and email programs available that do not phone home.
Plenty of people will pay for "better hardware" in the PC world.
You just can't FORCE anyone into it. The consumer remains free to choose the option that suits them.
If this makes life hard on hardware makers then it's too damn bad.
They exist to service me, not the other way around.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Windows Phone 7 is interesting because it completes a sort of triad - it's got Apple UI polish and a distinct design sensibility, along with a fully curated app store.
But it's going against Android and competing to be on multiple handset maker devices.
So the question is, can it displace Android? Especially when Google is willing to let carriers adapt Android as the see fit, and Microsoft is not..
The only reason Microsoft has a chance is that they are doing the heavy money bombing runs, paying device makers to support WP7 and paying key application makers (especially game makers) to port stuff to WP7. You'll probably see a lot more higher-end games come to WP7 as a result.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If one clearly wins, then everyone loses. My hope is that none of both do, and even more playerscome... blackberry, palm, meego, all should live (and prosper) to have a healthy ecosystem.
Do you want something that "just works" out of the box, but with somewhat limited customization options?
That doesn't describe the iPhone though, and never has. Jailbreaking lets you fully customize the phone.
In fact for hacking, what people here are not seeing is how much nicer hacking the system is on an iPhone than any other device, exactly because they are using Objective-C. It allows for all kind of interesting code injection in existing apps (again, only if you have jailbroken). That means instead of writing a whole new mail client because you think the current one has issues, you can change the thing about it you dislike.
If you don't have many technical skills but want more advanced customization options, Android is probably the better choice. But if you are into really deep customization, the iPhone has some amazing things going for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A lot of people (myself included) passed on iPhones for the sole reason of refusing to use AT&T.
I agree (I know a few such people) but this year the iPhone (and probably iPad though it's sort of there already) will come to Verizon... I think that will really change the dynamic of things.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can get Android on virtually every carrier
That doesn't really matter that much, especially since that is the same in much of the rest of the world for the iPhone. For the U.S. it matters a lot more - but only really because of Verizon.
But with the Verizon iPhone close at hand, don't you think that eliminates a lot of issues you raised? As for cheap iPhones, they've been selling $99 phones for some time. It's not that vast a difference.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Microsoft loses.
If they both make money, then they both win.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Fixed the subject for you.
The CB App. What's your 20?
It's interesting to see that Nokia is not mentioned here. I have a N800 and love programming for it, because it's Linux based, and you can download Linux VMware from Nokia. I was looking forward to buying a N900, but then Nokia went off on the Meego tangent. We'll see if that ever sees the light of day. It reminds me of the IBM/Apple Taligent project ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent ). Too many cooks . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The analyst may not be surprised if Apple ships a cheap iPhone, but I would be. What on earth would make anyone think they would? There's a reason why the "conventional wisdom" is that Apple sticks to the high end of the market - not only has that been their strategy forever, but Steve J. never misses an opportunity to reinforce the idea that it's their strategy. Right now, Apple customers can count on the fact that whatever Apple puts out is at least going to be well-made. If Apple were to make a cheap, crappy iPhone, that friendly customer perception would be out the window - folks that now instinctively by Apple products would become open to persuasion by other companies.
I can't understand why anyone would think Apple would drop a strategy that's made them so much money. Apple can't be Dell, and doesn't want to be.
The system is the key.
iTunes/App Store is a closed system. Every single iPhone 4 app will work with my iPhone 4. My iPhone 4 is the exact same size, spec and processor as everyone elses.
Android market is fragmented. Will it work on my samsung Galaxy? my android phone Nexus, G1.2.3?
Does my Android tablet have a Tegra 2 chip? will it do 3D? HD video?
Thing is, I am no big fan of Apple but when it comes to phones and tablets, they got it right and will continue to dominate. I will be getting an IPAD 2 when it comes out.
It is kind of like the cnsole vs. PC gaming thing. I know my xbox360 game is going to be optimized for my xbox360. Do I need to buy a new, $400.00 graphics card to play Bioshock3 on my PC's 23" screen ? nah, I'll just get the xbox360 version and play it on my huge TV. more fun, better experience, closed system.
The market is big enough for both of them.
Having switched from iPhone to WP7 and having spent a lot of time with Android, the way I see it is a 3-way battle where each player wins in different categories:
- Search/Maps: 1. Google, 2. MS, 3. Apple
Both Google and MS have their own, and the integration works pretty well.
Apple probably needs to buy/build their own engine.
- Apps: 1. Google, 2. Apple, 3. MS
This is a losing battle for Apple though in terms of quantity (same thing as PC vs. Mac).
- Media: 1. Apple, 2. MS, 3. Google
Google is a distant 3rd here. They need an iTunes/Zune competitor.
- Cloud storage / Documents: 1. Google, 2. MS, 3. Apple
All three have interesting offerings here, but I like MS's chances because of their Office suite.
- Games: 1. MS, 2. Google, 3. Apple
MS will probably win this one because of X-box. Apple needs to approach Sony..
- ..and the secret weapon:
1. MS: money. I expect them to throw billions here (remember Xbox vs. Playstation?)
2. Apple: cool factor. I expect them to keep making a slick device with a great user experience.
3. Google: openness. (which is good, but doesn't always translate to market share)
So, who is going to be #1 in the long run in market share?
Simply, whoever Nokia picks. Either Android or WP7/8.
http://xkcd.com/662/
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Pox on 'em all - I am sticking with WinMob 6.x since the I devil I know is more "comfortable" (actually, I did try a couple Androids, Eris and Ally, but I sent them back - hated the fingertip interface vs fingernail WM interface of a resistive screen, and lack of comparable tethering software for USB/Bluetooth).
I think you don't understand the Android market. The people buying Android aren't thinking in terms of getting something iPhone-like. They're thinking in terms of getting a phone (or highly portable PC; same thing), and all phones (even the cheapest) phones just happen to be (or will be) smartphones. As they explore the things it can do, there's an opportunity to make money off of them. Some will spend, some won't.
You're looking at them as "cheapskates" when they simply aren't the kind of people who burn money for nothin'. Do you think nobody ever made any money off Dell-Acer-Gateway customers?
Developers are going to need serious, non-commodity apps, is all. I was pretty shocked that on Apple's platform, for example, you can't even get a free ssh client. If that makes me a cheapskate, then ok, we disagree about WTF is going on. But to me, the idea that ssh clients cost money (in spite of BSD-free reference implementations being available for many years), isn't a serious market; that's an unnatural market. Lack of anything quite that weird on Android, isn't a signal that developers can't still make a killing. They're just going to have to earn it.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
> "There's nothing fundamental in Android that would get in the
> way of a industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team,
Yes there is. There is something very fundamental that's preventing Android from being an industrial design or user-experience rockstar...
They keep outsourcing the hardware for the thing to crappy, two-bit,no-talent, junk-producing companies like Motorola and HTC. And if that's not bad enough by itself; they let these same third-party jackwads tamper with the software as well! (MotoBlur? Bleech!) Gods, it's frustrating to see a company that I know has good engineers and can deliver a good product on its own (Google), allow Android to be dragged down by the dead and rotting albatross carcasses that are those two. And until they fix that problem, and bring the hardware in-house and do it properly, they will never have a "rockstar" and I will never own an Android.
The funny thing is, Apple once made the same mistake. The first time they made a phone, they went the old-fashioned route too; and did the software and partnered with motorola to do the hardware. And the result of that union was that abortion, the ROKR. Apple, at least, learned from that mistake and did the hardware themselves next time when it came time to create the iPhone. But Google is not just inclined to not learn from Apple's mistake; they've continually refused to learn from their own mistake as well.
And that is why Android has not, and likely *will* not, live up to it's potential.
*sigh*
Imagine all the people...
The real strategy is to get a cut off all the apps & iTunes people purchase.
The apps are what make these devices attractive, not the Apple OS.
That's why the Apple stores are so carefully controlled.
I think the definition of expensive on this forum is whatever price Apple charges. Expensive in this space used to mean $600, now you can get a spectacular top of the line iPhone for $299 and less capable units (new) for down to $99.
$229 for a very nice iPod touch or $499 for an iPad? Seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Apple's strategy isn't to charge extra to artificially inflate their brand, but rather to make high quality devices and charge as little as they can for them and still sustain their business and large R & D expense.
Android phones and iPhones aren't drastically different in terms of usability or customization. I would say they are 90% the same. But as with lots of things it's that 10% that differentiates them. Both can access Gmail services, but Android's Google voice system is probably slightly better on the Android because you can build an app that's more deeply integrated with the phone. Both have relatively easy interfaces, but Apple's is probably much more consistent because there is only one iOS and one phone, where each android phone choses different input methods. Apple is hyper concerned about UI consistency and ease of use and it's something they built into the first iOS so they didn't have to worry about it later. A smart user will have no problem figuring out either, but it depends on if you want to go for the 10% that have no time to figure out technology and just want something to work.
I agree the plugging in the phone is annoying, as is typing in the password, but there is something very important that this gets you later... security. Plugging in the phone means you have a backup of your phone available. Sure many people probably don't do that later, but if you have a smartphone, you really need to be backing it up. There will still be some people who don't ever back it up again, but still there are some that say "hey maybe this is a good idea to constantly backup my information" and might just learn. As for the password, the last thing you need is an eager 4 year old buying $500 worth of apps using a password you have stored on your phone. You are going to say "but just don't give your phone to your 4 year old!" I 100% agree with you on this, but a large portion of people will be sharing their Phones with their children, and it is incredibly easy to download content on your iPhone aside from that password. I'd personally not want to have to enter in that password in, but I understand the the theory behind the UI and
The iTunes store has more market penetration than all the Android markets combined so far, and while 90% of the important apps are on the Android, there are still some apps not available for Android. The iTunes store makes it very easy to find lots of content and is unified across movies, songs, TV and apps. I hate to say it but it's the walmart of apps and content. It's not perfect but it's incredibly easy to download stuff. And if you don't like games, that's fine, but Android got Angry birds after the iPhone, and it's great you finally have fruit ninja, but there are no plans to bring Infinity Blade or Chaos Rings to the Android.
Android does have advantages when it comes to media content, in that DRM is a pain. My son bought an iPod Touch and never synced it to a computer. When I bought him a MacBook, it was a pain getting it synced without losing all the content that he had downloaded direct to the iPod. Fortunately, we spent a little time yesterday making sure everything was synced over properly without losing everything, and I'm betting that would have been a whole lot easier on an android phone with no DRM. The same problem would have existed for iPhone. Note that most of the content is DRM free, aside from apps.
I've experienced annecdotes just like yours, but I've experienced annecdotes which contradict yours. Some of the "conventional wisdom" may be marketing, but some of that is also based on the experience of the masses and statistics. You can't use annedotes to counter conventional wisdom, you need numbers.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
"There's nothing fundamental in Android that would get in the way of a industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team, whether at Google or one of the handset makers"
"There's nothing fundamental in the iPod that would get in the way of an industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team, whether at Microsoft or one of the other MP3 player makers"
"There's nothing fundamental in the MacBook that would get in the way of an industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team, whether at Lenovo or one of the other laptop makers"
Yes, there is nothing that would "get in the way" but that presupposes that someone is willing to turn control over to an industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team. To date, only Apple has shown the willingness to do that (although I'll concede that Sony's VAIO and Dell's Alienware come close).
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
.. people don't buy N900s. So only GPL developers program for N900s. I don't mind, I've even used the text based youtube download client when my N900's CPU was overloaded, no worries. I wouldn't expect many people going that route however.
There are many small time commercial & crippleware developers reading slashdot. Android unseating the iPhone will have a big impact upon them.
I'll definitely buy myself an N9 once they've been out for a couple months, but I'm vaguely worried now. There are however some features for which I'm worried about Nokia falling behind the Android phones. In particular, there is now a dual core Android smartphone with dual SIMs. Dual SIMs is a killer feature for my lifestyle. And dual cores is a killer feature for a phone OS as multitasking oriented as the Maemo/MeeGo.
There are many other lifestyles and feature preferences of course, but Android's market diversity can deliver them all, while the iPhone has no chance.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I sell more more with my free OS on it, or versions of same? Who's winning? HTC? The Android makers will now have a race to the bottom, and the networks will make money on the OS by restricting choice. The dictators, the "EVIL EMPIRE" here are AT&T and Verizon, etc., that do their best to hook you into exclusive bondage to their networks by various means of branding their company. Whether you like Android or iOS is a matter of taste. I like the iPhone, despite the crappiness of the AT&T network. Our rents on these phones are too damn high, get it? Oh, no, the Androids among us like to see Jobs as the locus of evil in cell phones. As long as you look at the problem that way, you're fresh meat for Verizon, etc. What we need is a populist rebellion against the networks, and all you guys can do is cheer for one vastly wealthy corporation over another, both of which make creditable platforms.
Consumers.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
The same argument could be made for the world-crushing domination of Apple computers, except it can't. Variety and price basically won. There is a dizzying variety of PC vendors, each with its own reputation for price and/or quality, all based around largely a single operating system. That operating system is not Apple's. It's not Linux either, for those following along at home. Apple maintains its dedicated but small following based on predictable levels of quality and the rest of the world chooses from a continuum of quality and price in a marketplace. Linux is still struggling to catch up to Microsoft's head start, and I don't think the "year of the Linux desktop" will be very soon, but I think it's inevitable in my lifetime, and I'm solidly past 40.
Remember - Apple was first with a good concept of the userful "Personal Computer" - that's how they got started. But they always (at least after the very early beginnings) insisted on building their own hardware for their software and not allowing their own product to grow and adapt in the overall marketplace. Result? They remained a niche product for years. And will remain so. Still a recipe for success within their own market, and they do make nice stuff, but they'll never dominate any market they are in as long as they insist on absolute control over their share of it.
Fast forward 20+ years, and the same cycle is happening again. Apple crashed into a market with a revolutionary new type of product, they had the shiniest shiny on the block, everyone wanted one, and they started shooting up in popularity as a result. But the design team of one company cannot possibly keep pace with a competitive market, and the competitors are just about caught up now.
This is in no way implying that the iPhone is somehow inferior - it is certainly not, it's a very nice smartphone. This is in no way implying that Apple is somehow inferior, they certainly are not, they're a clever company that builds nice stuff. But this is a battle they need allies to win, and they are playing the isolationism game. They'll hold on to a niche because they build good stuff. But Android can also be used by people who want to build good stuff, and great stuff, and trashy cheap stuff. Apple will basically hold on to people who want their new phone to be the same as their old phone, just evolutionarily better.
Apple has, thanks to their great design teams, had three revolutionary opportunities to become the market leader.
1. Their inception, where they had little competition and a very cool OS.
2. The introduction of OSX over their BSD variant (Linux-like OS stability with Apple's design team building the UI over it? Bill Gates would have died of an aneurysm if Apple had ever even hinted about licensing that to other hardware builders).
3. The introduction of the iPhone.
In all three cases, Apple themselves stunted the growth of their own product by insisting on owning the entire user experience. They are brilliant engineers who assume that no one in the market could possibly be smarter than they are, so of course no one else could possibly improve on their product. So they don't allow it to happen. And others, if they see something Apple is doing right, just imitate them then improve on that until they outpace Apple.
How did Gates win? He watched what Xerox and Apple and IBM did, did similar things, then did it faster by creating a larger market and collaborating.
How did Palm lose? By creating really great devices then insisting on being the only people allowed to make them.
This actually represents the first time there is a viable and easily-licensed operating system for smartphones that anyone can make. It's rough around the edges, just like the Apple I was. This is like the personal computer space could have been had Apple continued pursuing the Apple I line and allowed licensing of its progressive improvements to other builders. If Apple had done that, it could have been the dominant operating syste
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There's clearly more than enough marketshare for both types of phones to co-exist.
The real answer is that "we" win, as long as the competition exists to drive innovation and downward pricing pressure in the industry. This is the real accomplishment of the iPhone. It wasn't a marketing thing, it was a wake-up call to an industry that had gotten exceptionally lazy and non-innovative. Keep handing out the same crap in smaller and skinnier packages with the same terrible interfaces, and eventually someone else is going to come along and eat your lunch. Read about the RIM internal reaction to the first iPhone demo, and you'll see what I mean.
What gets really funny is to look back at that first iPhone (what, 4 years ago now?) and realize what a crap phone it was by today's standards. It was slow, the network connection was glacial, the only features were the ones built in because there were no apps. The battery life was a fraction of what we have now. The camera was horrific. No GPS. I mean, seriously. And yet it was such a huge leap from the state of art (Razor v3? Ugh!) at the time that people literally believed that the demo was rigged. Why, with all of the billions and billions of dollars in the industry devoted to research, didn't RIM or Nokia or Sony or M-freaking-S come up with this? Why did it take Apple? Was it just a failure of imagination?
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It seems very unlikely that Apple will make a cheap iPhone or try to compete head-on with Android. In user polls they score very highly on satisfaction and reliability and that is what differentiates them. That and usually being the first to take a new concept and bring it successfully to the market. Android makers may well tear themselves apart trying to differentiate their products from the rest.
Putting in your password to install a free app makes some sense if you don't want an unauthorized person installing apps on your system.
Fat chance. Everyone knows this is going to be the year of the Microsoft handset.
It's only important that they continue to compete.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I've recently become aware of an interesting factor in the iphone/android debate. All iphones work the same, and everything that is an iphone looks and works like an iphone. To someone who wants a smartphone that "just works" this has value.
My daughter goes to an art school, and Android has made serious inroads this year amongst the female students there due mostly to what I've come to call the "bling" factor.
With widgets, active backgrounds and customizable desktops, Android gives them something the iphone does not -- the ability to customize their phones to their own taste, and to make them look different from everyone else's phone. (Important in a school where kids tend to make their own clothes and hair colors not found in nature are common.)
Whether any of these things actually make the phone more useful is of course debatable. (I would have a hard time convincing myself that chewing up CPU with an active background was a good thing, but you'd have a hard time getting me to give up my weather, Facebook and email widgets.) But apparently, being able to make your phone sparkly and different is an important factor.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And on that score, the unit margin for iPhone is way higher than the unit margin for any of the Androids.
Apple wins. And cashes in.
You can aim low, and hope to win on volume.
Or aim high, and even if your market share is 40 percent, you take home more greenbacks.
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And for the same reason Jobs lost the PC OS wars back in the late 80s early 90s:
Attempting to control the software market. Locking users out of their own machines. Worrying too much about piracy.
It's the exact same battle he had against MS Dos and then Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. It's hilarious he's too greedy and stupid to learn from his past mistakes, despite being first to market with a superior product almost every time.
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and improving and not just undermining each other, the consumer wins most of all.
Personally, I'm sticking with my iPhone, but AT&T and Verizon, if it's all true, will get to fight it out over me.
I'm not sure that the question really makes sense. It's highly unlikely either will eliminate the other, and truthfully "winning" for a consumer is merely getting what they want for the price they want to pay. Ultimately, the cost of the data plan and not the phone will decide the price. The quality of the experience does depend somewhat on the OS, and to a point, the hardware, but it's really the data service and compatibility with external services and standards (like HTML5) that define the experience.
If you are asking which platform will be the most robustly profitable, iOS will take the cake. Android will sell more units because it's supported by more vendors, encompasses more models, and is sold by more carriers. However, the Android menagerie means slimmer margins all around. Every phone has overhead in engineering, manufacturing, and support -- Apple pays for one, HTC pays that cost 5 times over, as does Motorola. For the carriers, each model of phone has an overhead, and in the case of Android phones, the carriers are taking upon themselves the role as tester and gateway for OS upgrades, and even pre-configuring apps and things on the phones -- again, a cut into the margins.
If Apple and Android vendor X sell phones for exactly the same price, Apple will still net twice the profit. For the carrier, the net on the phone itself will be higher from Apple, but it's still a pittance compared to what they make off data service -- which is phone-independent (more or less; if one phone made sales of expensive data plans increase, it might matter, but in practice Android and iOS are a draw there). However, the carriers still make out a little better on iPhone because the carrier bears no responsibility for the platform -- no customization, no OS pre-testing / roll-out, even warranty support is out-sourced to Apple.
I love both platforms, truth be told, but the iOS model is very stable and profitable. It's not going to sink without a catastrophic event. Likewise, Android's openness assures that it will have footing for a very long time, but the model for that platform is going to continue to be slim margins. Ultimately, the only way to increase margins for Android is going to have to move to a streamlined iOS platform, or to build extremely high-end phones where the cost compensates for the low margins. I suspect you'll see Android split into segments like computers: low-end corners-cut models for consumers, boring-but-silly-expensive models aimed at business, and hipster models that target consumers that want something without frills but without cutting corners.
What I do think is that they will trounce Windows Mobile 7 and RIM phones. WinMo7 and RIM don't have the openness of Android, the streamline of iOS, or the dynamic evolution of either (RIM's doing better, though). Both platforms suffer from the overhead of engineering multiple handsets, require a non-trivial carrier support model, etc. Basically, they are decent platforms that combine all the implementation negatives of Android and iOS with no compensating positives. They will ride out their company's investments in the platform, existing contracts, and platform familiarity, but they simply aren't competitive on their own merits (disregarding the UI and apps for the platforms).
That's a rumor with nothing but wishful thinking to back it up.
Actually no, last year it was a rumor and I was saying it was false.
This year it's obviously true, as there are leaks from many sources including techs testing equipment for Verizon, new broadcom chips that make it work, and of course the Verizon iPad bundle which is already in stores and shows Apple to be working with Verizon already.
Now it's just plain obvious it will happen, the only question is timing.
Also, in what way is the iPad even sort of on Verizon?
Verizon markets and sells an iPad/MiFi bundle, a precursor to ones using the new combo Broadcom chips (that can do both GSM and CDMA).
Verizon is a CDMA network.
LTE is not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...try "free". My mom is on TMobile, and she just got a free upgrade to an LG phone running Android from to replace her old dumb phone. Seems pretty obvious that this is a trend, so projecting forward: when Android handsets outnumber the iPhones by a wide margin, I wonder where developers will spend their time. Even if a smaller percentage of Android users will pay for apps, the $ will eventually favor Android. On top of all that, most devs I've talked to prefer the dev environment & tooling that Android offers.
Comparing subsidized phone prices is meaningless. You need to look at the unsubsidized price, and iPhone is one of the most expensive smartphones on the market.
As for Apple's "large R&D expense", Apple has no research to speak of at all. They do invest a fair amount of money in software development, but even there, they are using a lot of FOSS.
iPhone vs Android http://iphone-versus-android.com/ Pick your favorite and see if you're on the winning team!
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Are you comparing an unsubsidized iPhone to a subsidized Android or something?
I also posted $229 for an iPod or $499 for an iPad, both unsubsidized--care to cough up some comparable devices from competitors that are way cheaper?
You have no fucking clue--Apple has a huge hardware and software design team and they *donate* a ton of code to FOSS.
...so that they can easily do video chats with their grandson. "Easy enough for your grandma to use" kind of thing.
There is a [dwindling] segment of the population which like having a separate [simple] phone but still want one of those thingies that can play music and do Apps and stuff.
is more expensive--but that is quite different from the claims that it is prohibitively, unreasonably, or artificially expensive.
A $600 iPhone 4 is not an insane premium over a $450 Samsung Galaxy S Captivate in my opinion, and doesn't indicate that Apple is unreasonably inflating prices or that its customers are suckers. It's not like it is a factor of 2 or something.
My point is that the iPhone is a high-end phone which often gets compared in price to low-end phones or (frankly) less-desirable high-end phones--simply because Apple doesn't want to play in the low-end market.
Are you comparing an unsubsidized iPhone to a subsidized Android or something?
No, that's what you're doing:
Those are subsidized prices. Unsubsidized, those phones are much more expensive. You can get unsubsidized Android devices for less than that.
You have no fucking clue--Apple has a huge hardware and software design team and they *donate* a ton of code to FOSS.
They do have large design teams, they just don't have any research.
Apple releases some stuff under FOSS, but for the most part not stuff that's useful to anybody outside Apple developers.
ok I'm an anonymous coward because I don't want to log nor create an account. iPhone envy will quickly disappear if you pick up a droid and actually use one. AT&T is awful and iPhone took too long to get to Verizon, which turned out to be good for me cos you can't "hear me now" at my new house. But my Android has not only provided quality text, calls, and surfing but plenty of entertainment, directions, and just plain fun since Christmas. Thanks to Google I do enjoy the in the clouds back up. I have a Mac - but quickly tired of all the proprietary this and that Apple condones. I love my Mac for photos and tunes and by the way you can load your iTunes on your droid, just "Google It". And you can video chat with iPhone with Tango - perfect no, but neither is the video chat from iPhone either - Anywhoo love my Droid Samsung Galaxy S Epic 4 - Love, Grandma