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.'"

Comments

I meant to comment earlier

[Rurik]

I meant to comment earlier, but my iPhone alarm didn't go off.

Re:I meant to comment earlier

[The End Of Days]

I tried to text you to warn you that might happen, but my Android routed the SMS to your mother instead.

Re:I meant to comment earlier

[Lev13than]

I just use my Blackberry as an alarm clock. Every night before going to bed I simply remove & replace the battery - I wake up to the sound of the finished reboot, alert and refreshed after about eight hours of sleep.

Re:I meant to comment earlier

[bennomatic]

I use my Windows Phone 7 phone, and it "just works".

Everyone wins.

[Pojut]

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.

Re:Everyone wins.

[XxtraLarGe]

Stop being so rational & let us rip on each other for our perception of other people's poor choices!

Re:Everyone wins.

[nine-times]

Fair enough, but if you really want to be able to modify your phone, be careful about which Android phone you get. Many are pretty locked-down, and having an open-source operating system doesn't necessarily mean that the device will be open.

Re:Everyone wins.

[gad_zuki!]

I'm not sure how much I agree with this, although its fair to say this has become conventional wisdom.

I've seen non-techies use Android-based phones with ease and not play around with any sort of tinkering. The UI is generally easy to tolerate, not much different than iOS, and the market is dead simple to use. There are millions up millions of Android users. These people aren't exactly Kernel hackers.

I've also seen techies with jailbroken iphones modify every little thing.

The conventional wisdom here is failing. These devices, for the end user, are almost identical. There's a low learning curve with both, but once people figure out how to use the market, use a virtual keyboard, etc they're golden. Heck, I might even argue that the Android devices are easier to use as they are boot up and play, while the iOS phones require an iTunes install, credit card information, connecting a USB cable to the computer, and the constant putting in of your complex password when buying free applications via the App store. Some end users find this challenging.

I recently setup an iphone for my gf and was pretty annoyed at all the hoops I had to jump through just to get started. My own Vibrant took a handful of seconds to create a gmail account and put in the username/password once. Not to mention my phone gets OTA updates and iphone still needs itunes and the USB cable to do this. A large part of the "it just works" myth is Apple marketing. Spend some time at the genius bar or get a job supporting Macs to find that "it just works" is more than a bit exaggerated and has more to do with the lack of malware writers targeting Apple.

Re:Everyone wins.

[JustinOpinion]

I agree with your position that both phones/platforms are good, and that it comes down to what people want.

However I don't think the main differentiator is "just works" vs. "customizable". In my experience, they both "just work" for the vast majority of things. Buy a new iPhone or a new Droid and you'll be answering emails and browsing the web within minutes. And both are extensible via apps: the app market for iPhone is somewhat bigger, but on Android you have the option to install non-approved apps. These balance out to some extent. Overall, both platforms are fantastic in terms of extending your phone's capabilities, because the "top" apps (the best thousand apps, say) are available on both platforms.

To me, the big difference is which ecosystem you're buying in to. If you use Google services (gmail, Google Calendar, Google Voice, etc.) then Android is simply amazing. Within a minute of getting your new phone, all your contact details, appointments, and so on are all working perfectly. (One of the times where "the cloud" actually works/makes sense.) If you buy heavily into iTunes and the rest of the Apple universe, then an iPhone will seamlessly integrate into your workflow.

Of course you don't have to buy into their technology the way they want you to (you can use gmail from an iPhone just fine), but the experience is more streamlined if you do. If you don't buy into either ecosystem, then both types of smartphone seem pretty evenly matched, at least in my experience.

I do agree, by the way, that Android is more customizable and hackable. For some people that's an important differentiator. But I think for the public-at-large the bigger differentiator has to do with what ecosystem they've already bought into (or want to start using)...

Re:Everyone wins.

[SiChemist]

My android phone does a similar same thing, but wirelessly (and automatically). When you sign in to your google account with your new phone, your contacts are synced and all of your applications are re-downloaded from the android market.

Re:Fatherly Advice

[The End Of Days]

Not to cast aspersions on your wife, but logically speaking, until she's dead you haven't disproven anything.

Re:The bigger questions is...

[MichaelJ]

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.

Advertising

[TexVex]

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.

It's not the tech, silly...

[cerberusss]

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.

What does "win" mean here?

[joh]

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.

Re:Fatherly Advice

[drinkypoo]

I don't know, let me ask my lady for her opinion.