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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?
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!
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!
wait, how do you think that apple isn't doing the exact same thing?
the only difference is in the price of the devices, in which android has been vastly cheaper than iphone until they released 4g.
products are quite similar, except that new android devices come out continually (say every 3-6 months), while new iphones come out once a year if that. So while android continually evolves better products in between iphone product cycles, that only leaves the question of volume vs profit.
Anyone with a minute amount of business knowledge would know that volume is far more sustainable than profit in the long term, and it shows in that apple has started to sue the shit out of people because they cannot continue to compete at current profit margins.
Volume is also a much bigger deal due to market share. If android outsells apple 10 to 1, and apple makes the same profit on the device, apple isn't making the same profit on any additional profits to the device due to having 10% of the volume (app store purchases, advertising, etc).
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.
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.
IMHO Android would have been a non-starter if the iPhone had been available to all carriers (GSM & CDMA both) and not restricted to AT&T. A lot of people (myself included) passed on iPhones for the sole reason of refusing to use AT&T. Android currently suffers from too much product fracture. Too many different customer experiences based on vendor customization, and so much different hardware it's hard for developers to test everything, as well as hard to use newer, better APIs because older OS versions, whose updates are controlled by the carriers and may or may not happen, don't have them.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
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.
One manufacturer makes iPhone, many make Androids. It seems like an easy question to me.
And I'm a nerd, dammit, not a marketer or MBA. Why should I care who gets the most profits or market share? When did the Ferengi take over slashdot? I don't care how it sells, I care how it works.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
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.
I see people switching to iPhone from Android with some frequency, but I've never seen anyone go the other way _and like it_.
Really? In the past 6 months, I know about twelve people who have left their iPhones behind and went to an Android device, instead of upgrading to an iPhone 4 when their contracts were due. I realize this is anecdotal, but I see more people switching from iPhone to Android than the other way around.
"It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
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.
The same could be said of the iPhone/iPod Touch experience...let's take games as an example. My wife has a second-gen iPod Touch, but is missing out on a ton of newer games because they require a 3rd or 4th gen iPhone/iPod Touch.
How is that any different than needing a newer Android phone to run more recent, more intense games?
Living With a Nerd
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"
This is a strange treatise to write, because I could just as easily swap all occurrences of Android/iPhone and just as many people would be nodding their head along with me.
The pleasure you get out of using a device is a matter of preference/familiarity. This has little to do with Apple either, as I actually wanted an iPhone for the longest time until I actually got one in my hands and started messing around with it. The allure of it went away pretty quickly, but I'm still having lots of fun with my android phone.
It sounds like your choice was completely right on for your preferences, and that's a good thing, but to generalize yourself to the entire population of smartphone users is a bit silly.
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.
Agreed. The good thing about Apple's strategy (good for them, that is, you don't necessarily have to agree that it's good for buyers, even though I personally think it is), is that they target their products specifically at the group of buyers they know will appreciate exactly those attributes of their products they spend the most time on: ease of use, polish (both in terms of software and hardware), longevity (in terms of planned obsolesence). Affordability is not one of these attributes, and people getting iPhones instead of Androids get what they expected from the product, which explains the high customer satisfaction rates.
Meanwhile, Android handset manufacturers mainly target the demographic that wants to save money on their phone, ie: they want it to be cheap, or at least: cheaper than comparable alternatives. Sure enough Android is also great if you are a geek, and sure enough there are also high-end Android phones that are as expensive as the iPhone, but they constitute a pretty minor subset of all Android buyers. The problem with this tactic is that to make money using this strategy, means you have to sell lots of phones, and to do that, you have to introduce lots of new models, to get people to replace their phones faster. You also have to cut down production costs which means making design compromises. Eventually this will hurt Android as a platform and it will hurt customers, because there will be many crappy Android phones on the market, and many phones will end up unsupported within a year. Someone who gets burned by a crappy Android phone will choose something different next time.
I don't think the Google model is sustainable in the long run, and will seriously limit the usefulness of the Android platform. Not because it is a bad platform, but because too many buyers will have a negative experience with their purchase, but also because the insane variety of brands, specifications and OS versions will mean developers will never be able to achieve the same baseline quality level in their apps without having to shut out a very large part of Androids installed base. This will be very confusing and frustrating for end-users who expect to get their phone, go on the Android market, install stuff, only to find out their phone doesn't handle the application, or because the quality is abysmal. Apple got it right with their single-model-1-year-update-cycle, sure, it means you have less choice if you want an Apple phone, but at least you can be pretty sure you won't run into any surprises if you try to use it they way you expect it to work.
This last paragraph is exactly why I find the statement in the article by this guy named Tim Bray pretty stupid. Even if one or two vendors introduced phones that are better than the current iPhone in terms of hardware (such phones are already on the market) *and* software (Android is almost there), you'd still have only a few handset models, which combined will sell only a fraction of what the iPhone sells, and will never get individual marketshare big enough for developers to spend enough time extracting all their capabilities from the hardware and software. Most developers will go for a set baseline much lower than the current iPhone model, just to make sure they target a sufficiently large installed base. That way, the ecosystem of Android apps will always be one or two years behind iOS.
Just for clarity, Apple has way less than 10% of the cell phone market. It has a good chunk of the smart phone market, but that is a small chunk of the overall cell market.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
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.
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
Me too. Actually most iPhone users I speak to say something along the lines that "I would dump my iPhone if not for iTunes". Of course, then I tell them about DoubleTwist and then they are off to the Verizon store.
As an end user I don't think most people can even see the difference between iPhone and Droid OS. The advantage droid has besides not being tied to AT&T is the variety of devices. I personally like a slide out keyboard and being global ready.
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
I'm referring to phones that, for example, have an 800+ MHz processor, or more than a certain amount of ram.
Like I said, it's the same thing as an iPhone...some games just plain don't work on a first or second gen iPhone. If you're confused by something as simple as clock speed, then stick with an iPhone.
Living With a Nerd
"to generalize yourself to the entire population of smartphone users is a bit silly"
Well maybe a bit. But we're all talking about opinion here right?
I do think, having spent the last 20 years of my life dealing with end users and end user technology that I have a bit of an edge when it comes to judging these things. I might be wrong, but I'm betting that of the people who have used both enough to come to a good personal conclusion, it's the geekier of us that prefer Android. The iPhone is a little insulting to the technophile sensibility. And the extra twiddling and patience that -seems to me- to be required by Android, is something that the geek crowd is used to, actually revels in. I get it. I fiddle with my wife's android all the time. I just use my iphone. From the "Joe Sixpack" viewpoint, I'm pretty sure the iPhone is the winner. From elegant UI standpoint, I'm pretty sure the iPhone is the winner. For the fiercely independent geeky Slashdot crowd, I'm not at all surprised that Android is the winner. But we're talking Market Winner for 2011, not Slashdot winner.
Again, this is an Apple vs. Android story. It's all opinion.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
If they both make money, then they both win.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
If you read his post again, he is familiar with Android because his wife owns a phone.
I'd say he's more in a position to offer thoughts on this than people who do not have a lot of iPhone experience...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Really? I can name a dozen friends who are just waiting for the iPhone to be available on Verizon so they can ditch their Android phones.
My anecdote nullifies your anecdote. It's a push.
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 market is big enough for both of them.
Android currently suffers from too much product fracture. Too many different customer experiences based on vendor customization, and so much different hardware it's hard for developers to test everything, as well as hard to use newer, better APIs because older OS versions, whose updates are controlled by the carriers and may or may not happen, don't have them.
By that logic Microsoft should have failed as soon as Compaq cloned IBM's BIOS and started selling their OSes to run on different hardware.
Free Martian Whores!
http://xkcd.com/662/
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
That should be fairly local though - globally, in places where iPhone is available from few carriers, it doesn't impact the viability of other options at all; quite the contrary, typically.
MediaTek - responsible, among other things, for OEM packages used in inexpensive Shanzhai phones - is releasing solution for Android (previously they were supposedly basically blocked from doing so / from joining Android alliance by Qualcomm); now it will really pick up steam. Yes, the products will be "basic" or smth - but it needs to be only good enough (plus there's a third major smartphone OS around, that pundits like to ignore but should remain a top player for foreseeable future)
One that hath name thou can not otter
She is on 4.2. The problem isn't firmware, it's hardware. There are a lot of games out there that require a 3GS/4G iPhone (i.e. 3rd or 4th gen iPod Touch.) The hardware specs in a 4th gen iPod Touch are almost double that of a 2nd gen, in terms of clock speed and ram. Her 2nd gen iPod Touch has a 620 MHz ARM11 core, whereas a 3rd gen has an 833 MHz Cortex-A8 (and the 4th gen has a 1GHz Cortex-A8 Apple A4 core). Likewise, her 2nd gen has 128 MB of ram, while the 3rd and 4th gens have 256 MBs of ram. Hell, even the graphics chip is different...in the 2nd gen, it's a PowerVR MBX, whereas the 3rd and 4th gen have an SGX.
Infinity Blade is a great example: it won't run at all on her 2nd gen. Something like Plants vs Zombies will run, but it's extremely choppy (compared to running smooth until the screen is full on a 3rd gen, and smooth regardless of what's happening on screen with a 4th gen) Also, any game that requires the gyroscope built into the 4th gen won't work on her 2nd gen because it doesn't actually have one. It has an accelerometer, but not a gyroscope.
Like I said, it's no different than with an Android phone; certain games do have minimum specs. Just because it's wrapped up in a simplistic label like "3rd gen" or "4th gen" doesn't change the reason.
Living With a Nerd
A newly released Android phone may be running 1.5 or 1.6. A newly released iDevice will be running 4.2.
It's impossible to do anything about the capabilities of the hardware, but at least with Apple you know that a given generation is running a given version of iOS*.
* Or can be running a given version. Updates are at the discretion of the user.
Spiffy.
Android Apps are developed in Java. You have a rich collection of classes to extend, such as Google Maps.
When you develop an app, there's almost an implicit encouragement to offer your behaviour to other apps through the Intent framework. Similarly, developers are encouraged to wrap their data persistence layer within the Content Provider framework to promote reuse in other apps where appropriate.
Jailbreak code injection opportunities?
Consider me unimpressed.
Well you did a pretty good job of refuting him there, genius!
Seems to to me that if you don't make stuff people want to buy at prices they're prepared to pay then profits will go South pretty darn quick. But if you have deep enough pockets you can bolster market share by giving shit away at below cost. And if your competitors have shallower pockets than you it could be a sound strategy, if you can get away with it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Unless you're talking about something like the new API's in Android 2.3, most Android games run fine regardless of the firmware. It's how powerful the HARDWARE is that matters, just like with an iPhone/iPod Touch.
Just because Apple wraps up the requirements into a label like 2nd gen or 4th gen doesn't change the underlying reason: hardware requirements. As I said in another post, the 4th gen iPhone is roughly twice as powerful as a 1st or second gen iPhone. How is this any different than a newer Android phone having better hardware than an older one?
Living With a Nerd
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
I'm referring to phones that, for example, have an 800+ MHz processor, or more than a certain amount of ram.
Like I said, it's the same thing as an iPhone...some games just plain don't work on a first or second gen iPhone. If you're confused by something as simple as clock speed, then stick with an iPhone.
Regular users' eyes gloss over the moment you mention processor speed and memory on *computers*, let alone phones. If they know a bit about it, they know from computers that higher MHz/GHz is generally better, but *we* know that's about as useful a metric as megapixels on a digital camera.
So now you expect them to look up an app and check its CPU/RAM requirements, as well as screen size and other features, against their phone (or *potential* phone if they're shopping for one)?
Angry Birds developers at least maintains a list of Android devices they *dont* support, which is a better way to approach this--there's still far fewer phone models than possible computer configurations.
iOS developers can (and do) easily state what devices they *do* support, then the only variable is what OS version they're running.
Apple's only real failing here is not physically marking different generations devices (computers and iOS devices both) the way they refer to them in documentation. I have no idea how to quickly distinguish between an iPhone 3G or 3GS, or any of the iPod touches (except for the 4th gen with its Retina display), and a normal user won't remember.
> "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...
So now you expect them to look up an app and check its CPU/RAM requirements, as well as screen size and other features, against their phone (or *potential* phone if they're shopping for one)?
From what I've seen as far as game limitations are concerned, so long as you buy a "major" Android phone like a Galaxy S or a Droid, and it's one of the latest models, you have nothing to worry about.
Why people buy no-name Android phones when the major (read: supported) ones are widely available is beyond me. ::shrug:: That's just what happens, I guess.
Living With a Nerd
Meanwhile, Android handset manufacturers mainly target the demographic that wants to save money on their phone, ie: they want it to be cheap, or at least: cheaper than comparable alternatives.
I don't at all agree with this part of your post. Android manufacturers are simply chasing dollars in the market. Android is massively outselling iPhone even on higher end devices such as the Galaxy S. The reason is consumers want choice which Apple doesn't offer.
Apple's shortcoming (and they don't have many) in the mobile world is one-size-fits-all. Some consumers want a physical keyboard, and some of them want a portrait slider. Some are willing to pay more for brilliant graphics, while some will abandon that to save money. Some want a small pocketable phone, while others want a large screen. Some want to use a Swype-like keyboard. Some want a different interface for SMS. Some want to use a different browser. Those that want these want the option to default those applications. Some want to sideload applications and avoid the markets for whatever reason. Some want to change the UI. Some want 4G (although this is a misnomer... no real 4G networks or devices actually exist yet). Some want MiFi.
These are the reasons Android is outselling all of the other device platforms.
Apple will always have both its loyal following and new customers based on advertising. Likewise, so will Nokia, Microsoft, RIM, Palm/HP, and Google, so long as they continue to make products. None of this is really a knock on Apple and the walled garden. I'm merely pointing out what I see consumers "saying" in the open market.
By the way, this was posted by someone who has used Blackberry, iPhone, and Android and continues to. I'm a mobile developer.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
...because you can still buy an Android phone today running shit old software?
That doesn't change the fact that newer Android phones are more powerful from a HARDWARE perspective, which, unless you are referring to the new API's in the brand-spanking new version 2.3, is all that matters.
You do realize that up-to-date firmware has NOTHING to do with hardware specs...right? You also realize the difference in hardware between a 2nd gen iPhone and a 4th gen iPhone is huge, right?
I don't understand why Slashdot has such a hard time with this.
And I don't understand why people have such a hard time understanding that hardware requirements are hardware requirements. Whether you give specifics or wrap them up in labels like "2nd gen" or "4th gen", it doesn't change the underlying meaning.
Living With a Nerd
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.
The best selling single android phone to date is the original Motorola droid (a high end smartphone). So, I don't think that you can say that the primary target demographic for android phones is "cheap".
God is imaginary
Two reasons I can think of: the phone is "free" or very cheap (with subsidized contract), and/or they don't want to pay for the data plan that's often mandatory with a full smartphone.
So, should we be excluding the low-end Android feature phones when comparing against iPhone market share? It would certainly be a fairer comparison.
Another problem I didn't touch on was the Android OS version. A friend bought a good Android phone late 2009, but its carrier-provided firmware was already a generation behind. They finally provided an update last month--to Android v2.1, released over a year ago by that time. And now Android's at v2.3. His phone is last year's news, they're probably not going to bother releasing another major update for it. In theory he could roll his own or install an unofficial one, but anyone doing that falls outside the realm of a regular user (hell, I know many regular iPhone users who don't update their OS).
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"
Good job refudiating his refuting, genius!
So, should we be excluding the low-end Android feature phones when comparing against iPhone market share? It would certainly be a fairer comparison.
Personally, I agree with that, but then of course you run into the problem of what a "low-end" Android phone is, sort of like trying to define "reasonable" in legislation.
Another problem I didn't touch on was the Android OS version. A friend bought a good Android phone late 2009, but its carrier-provided firmware was already a generation behind. They finally provided an update last month--to Android v2.1, released over a year ago by that time. And now Android's at v2.3. His phone is last year's news, they're probably not going to bother releasing another major update for it. In theory he could roll his own or install an unofficial one, but anyone doing that falls outside the realm of a regular user
See, that's the whole point though: things like that are part of what makes Android so worth getting into. Granted, official carrier updates can be a bit of a problem, but that's why I'm running NonSensikal (aka Froyo-based rom) on my Droid Eris (which doesn't have anything newer than the 2.1 stock version.) It runs better than the carrier provided version!
That's the beauty of an Android phone: the software or OS version it comes with is completely irrelevant. The only thing that really matters is the hardware.
Living With a Nerd
Heh, here in the UK the iPhone was an option from my carrier. I passed on the iphone because of how underwhelming my experience had been with an ipod.
Now, a couple of years later, I have a droid. It is the best handset evar.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Apple doesn't offer a whole lot of choice, that's true, but it's not a problem for them. Somehow a lot of people have the impression marketshare is what Apple is after, but it isn't. Profit margins and customer satisfaction is what Apple tries to maximize, and a single iPhone model a year is what enables them to do exactly that. Many people will pick another phone because of this, but as long as every iPhone generation sells 15 to 20 million units, Apple is on target.
What I meant when I said that the Android model is not sustainable is that another OS will take over eventually. Maybe WP7, maybe meego, maybe even something completely new, but I sincerely think Android will fall apart in the long run by manufacturers abusing it to serve their own agenda, which will hurt platform consistency and image.
"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?
Yet all the low end Android phones combined probably outsell the Droid by a factor of 20 or so. And these phones will not run the same Android apps as well as the Droid, which in itself won't run many applications as well as a nexus s or a galaxy.
My impression is that the reasons why people buy Android phones are overrated. Some people know about Android, and research what phone they will buy. Those people end up with phones like the Droids, the Desires, The Nexuses and the galaxies. The rest just gets their crappy, badly supported Wildfire or Tattoo with their phone plan without having a clue what OS it runs.
I definitely agree with you that Apple is not after market share. I think there's always another OS waiting in the wings though. In the mobile market, Palm had it, Microsoft took it, RIM took it from them, and Apple took it from them (strictly western hemisphere, Nokia still owns all worldwide). Android is poised to take it, and who knows what's coming down the road, although I don't think webOS or Meego are much of a threat.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
in most of the world, the iPhone is available on lots of carriers. Android is still outselling it in these markets.
as for "product fracture", yes it can bring some troubles. what you fail to mention is that it also brings a huge amount of innovation and competition that is not found in a single vendor, single device platform. basically, all your arguments against android's diversity could be easily applied to a PC vs Mac discussion. It's pretty clear how that battle turned out, and I anticipate a similar result in the smartphone arena. Apple's products will have their niche, but most the world won't really care about them.
-Lod
.. 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.
Isn't that the point? Both are just anecdotes and opinions and have no real value in the discussion. I mean I can say that I heard a train conductor (50+ years old) saying how much he loves his droid and doesn't even use his iPod touch anymore.
Consumers.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
IMHO Android would have been a non-starter if the iPhone had been available to all carriers (GSM & CDMA both) and not restricted to AT&T.
The iPhone would have been a non-starter if it weren't restricted to AT&T.
Unfortunately, your data is wrong. The biggest Android maker is HTC (who account for 30-40% of the total Android market, although Samsung is catching up). Their bestselling phone in 2010 was the Desire. (Hardly a low-end product.)
In fact, HTC's low(er) end devices like the Wildfire, have sold relatively poorly. That doesn't mean there isn't a substantial low-end Android user-base: there obviously is, and ZTE and co. are keen to benefit from it. But currently, the high end is pretty much a wash (in terms of total unit numbers) between iPhone 4 on the one hand, and HTC Desire/Desire HD/Samsung Galaxy S/Droid 2.
--- My dad's political betting
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
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
OK, but again unless you're talking about Android 2.3 where a bunch of new gaming APIs were introduced, the hardware Android is running on has a much bigger impact on gaming performance than firmware number...
Living With a Nerd
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?
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Android currently suffers from too much product fracture. Too many different customer experiences based on vendor customization, [etc]
That seems to be the biggest issue for Android. Saying it's an Android phone doesn't really tell you what you're getting. My wife just got an Android phone (Moto+Verizon) which was $100 or something (I think there was mail-in rebate that theoretically makes it free -- assuming the rebate center pays out). I was incredibly unimpressed with the interface. The button-capture was finicky, the scrolling was haphazard, and it didn't have indicators for edge-of-screen while scrolling. I have no idea if this is typical of Android, or if it's what Moto and/or Verizon did with it.
Setup was a hassle for her too, in that she was asking me about the setup for the various email accounts she has, etc. My response was "I don't know. I plugged my iPhone into the computer and it took care of all of that for me." Essentially, I made her go look it all up on her computer and type it in by hand. Perhaps there's some better way, but I didn't have any interest in doing the legwork for her.
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.
I'd agree it might be harder to test because of vendor specific modifications, but definately not to api version differences. The totally Android IDE lets you test on anything between 1.5 and 2.3 with ease. You could develop an Android app without even having a real Android phone and sell it.
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 wish I hadn't run out of mod points. That's hilarious.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Yeah yeah, thanks, Steve. Don't quit your day job.
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Over half of android phones are high end phones. That doesn't include the "other" segment of the pie chart which will include some high-end phones.
God is imaginary
Exactly this. For Google, Android is merely an ad serving OS, just like the iPhone, and every other phone OS. The only difference is they have a stronger hand in branding the Android OS, so they have an upper hand when it comes to putting ads on that OS.
And Bray's words in the summary, "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," shows exactly why Apple will win at least in terms of profit and handset manufacturer market share. What he said as possible is technically possible, but the examples of open source "user-experience rock-star teams" is vanishingly small. Thinking that it's reasonable to talk about such a thing happening is to enter the realm of extreme speculation.
As far as an "industrial-design rock-star team", that's far more reasonable, and even then, you are competing against the industrial design all-star Jonathan Ive, so it's still a very, very tall order.
The only advantages Android has to the broader consumer market are that it allows any handset maker to ship with a modern platform (very few have the resources or expertise to do this themselves), provides the consumer with a wide variety of hardware choices, and is available on more carriers in the US (this is about to change). The Slashdot-friendly features of being Open Source and having multiple stores are both virtually meaningless to the average consumer.
Betting on someone out-designing Apple in terms of hardware or software is setting oneself up for failure. Or in the case of Tim Bray's blog post specifically, it's a case of providing a hypothetical situation that will never be tested, so it can be used to make an un-disprovable claim.
>Volume is also a much bigger deal due to market share. If android outsells apple 10 to 1, and apple makes the same profit on the device, apple isn't making the same profit on any additional profits to the device due to having 10% of the volume (app store purchases, advertising, etc).
You're making some pretty big assumptions. Right now Android is significantly less market share than iOS (although in the phone space they're about even, iOS also has iPod Touch and iPads selling millions a month). And Apple has fantastic economies of scale. Imagining Android pulling ahead 10-to-1 is some mighty wishful thinking. And in the meantime, Apple can re-invest the profit its making into better products and better manufacturing/distribution.
In the iPod market, Apple didn't go bottom of the barrel but they did go much, much cheaper than just sticking to the top 10% of the market. They maintain about a 70-80% share of the MP3 market despite not being the cheapest. And no one can seem to match the iPad at $499 yet. The thinking that Apple only sticks to the high end forever is wishful thinking and about a decade out of date.
E pluribus unum
The seamless integration of Google applications with Android is unbeatable to me. I have Google voice (old Grand Central), and I don't have any advertisement, yet I use it for international calls due to competitive rates. Why do you think everything is search and advertising for them?
The fact the they became successful with those two and managed to provide user services for free, makes me think their strategy. If they had managed to get the 700 MHz spectrum, and started to offer free cellphones and data plans, with some advertisement, would you ever go with them?
The main problem with your mentality, is that you keep comparing Apple and Google, when Apple makes devices and Google provides services. Two very different things.
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.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Android phones can be updated to the newest OS version. There are some hardware specific games out there but the underlying OS has excellent backwards compatibility.
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
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.
the group of buyers they know will appreciate exactly those attributes of their products they spend the most time on: ease of use, polish (both in terms of software and hardware), longevity (in terms of planned obsolesence).
Seriously, polished hardware and longevity? Their latest hardware offerings show a distinct lack of polish. Quite how they missed the antenna issues I can't imagine, or the fact that the curved back of the iPad makes it impossible to lay on a desk and use the touchscreen without it rocking back and forth.
As for longevity having a battery you can't replace without prying open the case and voiding the warranty isn't exactly conducive to a long life. They love to break your peripherals too - am iPod dock with speakers designed for an older iPod won't work with a new one or an iPhone, despite the connector being the same. They have been better of late with iOS updates, but particularly with older iPods they only ever did software updates to support new DRM. If you wanted new features you bought a new iPod, or installed Rockbox. Apple's business is built on selling you updated versions of the same stuff you already have.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I don't think many people realise just how well integrated Google apps are in Android. It isn't just contacts and mail sync, it actually backs up the settings for all your apps too. If you move to a new phone you just sign in and it re-installs all your apps and copies the data over. Even stuff like your search history is synced with your account so carries over to every device you use including your PC.
I don't know how well the iPhone versions of Google apps compare but I think the key difference between iOS and Android is that iOS is based around iTunes where as Android is cloud based. You load photos onto your iPhone from iTunes, but Android just uses your Google Picasa account seamlessly. There is no sync or local data any more, just your stuff in the cloud.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Of course there are. For years, the only decent next-gen smartphone was an iPhone, so everyone who wanted that type of device got an iPhone. Those who wanted something different are changing to Android, really the only other viable option. Few people wanted an iPhone but bought an Android device instead, so the movement isn't symmetrical.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Thank you. I find it irritating that offering a carefully thought out opinion with a good background behind it is 20% flamebait and 40% troll. Proof that you gotta be SC when you post. SC being the slashdot equivalent of PC, Politically Correct. What's most frustrating is the "Apple vs. Android" in the Title of the Article. It's not like I dropped that opinion on some tangential thread.
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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.