Android Passes iPhone In US Market Share

Adrian writes "61.5 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in November 2010, up 10 percent from the preceding three-month period. For the first time, more Americans are using phones running Google's Android operating system than Apple's iPhone, but RIM's BlackBerry is still in first place, according to comScore. RIM fell from 37.6 percent to 33.5 percent market share of smartphones, Google captured second place among smartphone platforms by moving from 19.6 percent to 26.0 percent of US smartphone subscribers, and Apple slipped to third despite its growth from 24.2 percent to 25.0 percent of the market. Microsoft, in fourth place, fell into single digits from 10.8 percent to 9.0 percent while Palm was still last and further slipped from 4.6 percent to 3.9 percent." This is not unexpected, since Android sales have been outpacing iPhone sales for some time, but it happened significantly earlier than Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012.

Comments

One percent difference.

[noobermin]

Although the climb from 19.6 to 26 is impressive.

Re:One percent difference.

[aliquis]

Even more impressive than you consider that (atleast earlier, maybe we're too far into the year now, but it doesn't matter much for the comparision) Android only had a 3.5% market share just a year ago (eventually more, as said, so what if it was 13-14 months ago? ..)

People draw very weird conclusions for that though. Earlier I guess the conclusion was that Android would never get a foot in, and that iPhone was small but much bigger than Android. Now iPhone is pretty big and Android have had amazing growth. So now the conclusion is that everyone want only iPhones or that Android will beat all other mobile OSes.

And when Playstation bet Nintendo and killed of Sega (Sega killed themselves .. :D) and the Gamecube sold even worse people wheren't slow to conclude that Nintendo was dying and would never come back on top. And who thought Xbox would get in? Seriously? Before the mod chips?

People seem to only be able to look at the current trend and extrapolate it into the future assuming everything will be the same and nothing will change in the future and current trends can survive forever. Well guess what? ...

Atleast it's nice to see that totally new concepts and player can actually become a major player on the market and that everything isn't stuck in same old. As it more or less is and has ever been on the PC market.

Re:One percent difference.

[giorgist]

Well when your group outnumbers mine you would do it in a single member of whatever method your are counting.

Re:One percent difference.

[rtb61]

Even more impressive when you consider 12 to 24 month phone contracts, so consider all those customer still locked in that can not swap over. Subscriber numbers will continue to grow as those contracts expire. So really ouch, for the other phone 'software' companies, new phones contracts for alternates to android must be really plummeting.

Re:One percent difference.

[ericartman]

Exactly, I am waiting to ditch my IPhone TODAY! Why? I love the phone but ATT is the biggest joke I have seen, it is unusable! Just yesterday I got a text from my daughter about bringing home pizza for dinner, 2 weeks ago!! This is not unusual for my ATT "service" dropped calls "no network" are a daily thing with ATT. So when My contract is up August 2011 my Iphone is gone and I am buying an android smart phone with ANYBODY else but ATT.

Re:One percent difference.

[thrillseeker]

2 weeks late? ... I hope the pizza was free.

Re:One percent difference.

[natehoy]

Not that I'm a big iPhone fan, but you did hear that the iPhone will be on Verizon, supposedly this month, right? So if you're happy with your appley goodness, you can still get it in a Verizon crust, almost certainly by August of this year. Yet to be seen is if Verizon locks the GPS or pulls other stunts like they did with the Blackberry...

Re:One percent difference.

[DJRumpy]

I don't think Apple will let Verizon cripple the phone like they are often caught doing with other hardware. Apple is a different breed when it comes to end users and their own hardware. It cuts both ways, and I suspect this time it will cut Verizon. Right now the iPhone is the hardware to have and I don't think that Verizon has a lot of bargaining power as to "I Want".

Although they can twist their plans to whatever extent they want, I suspect the OS is off limits.

Re:One percent difference.

[aliquis]

Personally I don't get why you don't have the same technology used by all players.

If I bought a GSM/3G/4G phone here in Sweden I would be able to use it with all operators (well, maybe not 4G? I don't know if it's only Telia who got 4G yet?)

Though they don't all use each others antennas.

Re:One percent difference.

[uglyduckling]

I think the conclusion is that multiple device manufacturers are creating Android-based smartphones, some of which are pretty low-spec and with a contract sell for circa 100 pounds in the UK (which I guess would mean 100 dollars in the US). What would be interesting to know is how handset sales are doing - i.e. what are the top-selling handsets and what OS does each run.

I suspect that the OS at the "stack 'm' high, sell 'm' cheap" end of the spectrum is far less important in the long-term because those people are less likely to exploit the various ongoing revenue streams, and those handset manufacturers are more likely to hop OS whenever convenient because there's just selling a phone rather than a long-term revenue stream.

iPhone redefined the high-end phone market place, and I think it's fair to say that Android has redefined it again - what will be interesting is how it looks in 6 months when the dust has settled and Windows Phone starts to be a viable. It will also be interesting to see how much Android retains its image - there's a high risk of fragmentation as different handset manufacturers try to differentiate their products and people could begin to realise that buying 'Android' doesn't necessarily guarantee what you're getting.

Re:One percent difference.

[AngryDill]

And when Playstation bet Nintendo and killed of Sega (Sega killed themselves .. :D)

Actually, Sega's not quite dead yet, but I did hear that their business is "in the toilet"!

-a.d.-

Re:One percent difference.

[natehoy]

Nah. Because then cell companies would have to compete based on features rather than supposed technical advantages of their underlying technology. That's CRAZY talk. Next thing you know, people can use (gasp) UNLOCKED cell phones on any carrier they choose, then it's utter chaos when customers aren't locked into their comfortable multi-year agreements with multi-hundred-dollar early termination fees! Why, that'd be unAmerican!

Here in 'Merika, we believe in this thing called the "free market" which means companies are "free" to screw us over.

Re:One percent difference.

[aliquis]

Here in 'Merika, we believe in this thing called the "free market" which means companies are "free" to screw us over.

I lol'd :D

Our electricity market is free here in Sweden to. And I've got the understandard that really lowered prices, at first atleast.

Anyway around 50% of our electricity is hydro power and 50% is nuclear, but back in the days there was an election about when we should stop using nuclear power, not if, there was just three variations of "no" to nuclear power. Anyway, so I think it was decided that we should stop using it in 2010.

Well, last year was 2010, and I think they have closed down two reactors pretty recently, but the rest of the ones who's been around lately is still on. Or well, should be. Because there haven't been any real maintenance and upgrades lately since they where supposed to be shut down. So around 3.5 of our 10 are kinda turned off.

Two of our biggest players is Vattenfall and E-on, Vattenfall is owned by the government and have both hydrogen and nuclear power. The funny thing though is that because of all this the nuclear plants run like shit now and did last year aswell, so Vattenfall couldn't produce as much electricity (and maybe not E-on either?) as they would had done if things worked as they should. The expected fallout of that would probably had been that consumers would had to pay more since electricity was scarce and Vattenfall would had huge issues since they didn't got any money from the electricity they didn't produced and also had to spend money on fixing things up. Right?

But nah, since they are one of the biggest players of course they lost on the nuclear power and production, but the scarcity raised prices and since they also produce hydro power they could produce more of it and actually earn more than they would had done if everything worked ..

And also since it's owned by the government I think it would had been OK / cool if they just decided to keep profits steady or kept them low by selling the electricity cheap and hold prices down on the whole market for the benefit of all the consumers. But obviously they didn't.

Generally electricity cost is higher tens - lower forties öre (1/100 SEK) / kwh in the winter. Last year Swedish Kraftnät decided that it was a good idea to do maintenance on the electric grid close to one of the rivers producing hydro power which would then had led to no productivity there while they where working, in freaking February. They decided the day before that they shouldn't do it because it was cold and so on but that was too late so production was turned off anyhow and prices sky rocketed to 5 SEK / kwh .. (from like 0.4 the year before.)

Great.

I guess this is what you get when you've got idiots as politicians, let idiots vote and no-one takes responsibility.

1) Decide to turn of nuclear power.
2) Turn some off.
3) Ignore maintenance and upgrades.
4) Don't build any alternatives (a few freaking wind plants but who gives a shit? They just cost money.)
5) Wait.
6) Profit! / SNAFU

Maybe they could had thought ahead like 5-10 years and come to the conclusion that "wait, we don't have the electricity production capacity available that we can turn of the nuclear reactors in 5-10 years time. Maybe we should be running them for some time longer?"

And what good is the election anyway then there was no "Yes, I like to have nuclear power!"

Free market was also allowed to fix the ISP situation, when ADSL and cable became common. Back in 2002 at Nordic University Computer Club Conference /NUCCC there was this guy from Swedish University Networks / SUNET who talked about the cost of building fiber to everyone just as the electricity network connects to "everyone" for around 50 billion SEK. That never happened because politicians are retarded and I guess it wasn't the cool thing to invest in seen from the general public and old farts. So inst

Re:One percent difference.

[Dr Max]

you can buy old iphones pretty cheap as well.

Both are growing, however

[jo_ham]

It is telling to note, that both Android and iPhone are growing market share at the expense of Blackberry and others, rather than at the expense of each other.

The more competition the better, I say.

Re:Both are growing, however

[RoFLKOPTr]

Most sensible people will be buying iPhones until Google stop demanding an Internet connection to use their search engine instead of installing to local SD card.

... are you telling me that you've invented an SD card capable of storing several petabytes of data?!

Re:Both are growing, however

[Anonymous Coward]

Android has gzip built into the Linux kernels. It would take a while to run but it could be recursively gzipped until small enough to fit. The Scene do similar things, for example the downloaded Mariah Carey and inside the RAR file there was a ZIP file.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Anonymous Coward]

You downloaded Mariah Carey in a RAR file?

Re:Both are growing, however

[rhade]

It is telling to note, that both Android and iPhone are growing market share at the expense of Blackberry and others, rather than at the expense of each other.

They are obviously new sales, otherwise the market would be growing. Most sensible people will be buying iPhones until Google stop demanding an Internet connection to use their search engine instead of installing to local SD card.

seriously you must be trolling but i'll bite

wtf is the point of a search engine without the internet? your perfect world is a search engine that is locally installed and has to be updated constantly....which uses the internet to get your results anyway?

and what is a 'smart phone' without the internet?

Re:Both are growing, however

[Cinder6]

I want a Lucy Liu bot.

Re:Both are growing, however

[SuperSlacker64]

Um...you can keep 'compressing' things in whatever algorithm (gzip, zip, rar, mp3, whatever), but eventually it won't make the file any smaller at all. All compression does is replace repeated sequences with a key to replace it and strip those duplicates out. As soon as the file lacks that sequenciality, there is no more stuff that can be simplified. And even if you could, the processor power to continuous decompress it out of all those recursive compressions would kill the battery life of any smartphone.

In short, you could NOT replicate what Google search does on hundreds of dedicated servers, with only a cell phone and an SD card.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Nemyst]

I'm really trying to gauge whether you're joking. I want to laugh out loud but I'm not sure if it should be at you or with you.

Re:Both are growing, however

[deniable]

They are obviously new sales, otherwise the market would be growing.

So no new sales means that the market is growing.

Most sensible people will be buying iPhones until Google stop demanding an Internet connection to use their search engine instead of installing to local SD card.

OK, now you're not even trying. Kids today.

Re:Both are growing, however

[SpryGuy]

WP7 is the competition you speak of.

It'll be interesting to see if WP7 adoption causes Microsoft's erosion to halt and start growing again over time. WP7 is decent enough as it is, and has some good updates coming out over the next year that should keep some excitement going on that front.

As for Apple, I think the Verizon iPhone will probably help them a great deal against Android, and they should reclaim their second spot quite easily I think.

Re:Both are growing, however

[The End Of Days]

Well not with that attitude

Re:Both are growing, however

[Kitkoan]

I can't believe you'd even admit to downloading Mariah Carey. Thats just embarrassing...

Re:Both are growing, however

[Pikoro]

People still use word perfect?!? :)

Re:Both are growing, however

[RoccamOccam]

I still have hopes for Nokia's and Intel's Meego.

Re:Both are growing, however

[SvnLyrBrto]

Personally, I think most sensible people will be buying iPhones at least until Google stops outsourcing the hardware to awful designers and manufacturers like HTC and Motorola, and brings all of the engineering for the whole kit in-house to be worked on only by their own, competent, engineers.

It's funny, because Apple made the same mistake. For their first phone, they partnered with Motorola; and the result was that POS abortion, the ROKR. I'm not sure what Steve was thinking... considering what junk phones Motorola makes in the first place. But at least they learned their lesson from that mistake and did the hardware for the iPhone in-house as well as the software.

I know most people have forgotten the ROKR... it truly was that terrible. But somebody at Google should have remembered and raised their hand when the decision to let the likes of HTC and Motorola do the hardware for Android was being made. Google, however, has not only failed to learn from Apple's mistake. They've also failed to learn from their own mistake; and appear to be happy go on failing to learn.

Douglas Adams would be proud!

Re:Both are growing, however

[SnowZero]

s/hundreds/thousands/ [1]

We just need to wait for thousand-core smartphones :)

[1] "a typical query to Google can touch thousands of machines before returning the answer."
http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/profiles/whygoogle.html

Re:Both are growing, however

[Barsteward]

"For their first phone, they partnered with Motorola; and the result was that POS abortion, the ROKR. I'm not sure what Steve was thinking"

probably "lets learn how to design a cell phone at someone else's expense and risk"..

Re:Both are growing, however

[ncgnu08]

Personally, I think most sensible people will be buying iPhones at least until Google stops outsourcing the hardware to awful designers and manufacturers like HTC and Motorola, and brings all of the engineering for the whole kit in-house to be worked on only by their own, competent, engineers.

The Evo (HTC) and Galaxy line (Samsung) seem to be doing pretty well. I will grant you there are other, less than desirable manufacturers out there, but after being in the technology/wireless industry for 10+ years, I have come to trust Samsung (at least high-end Samsungs) more than any other phone. So nice try at a good point, but maybe your aim needs a little work; I'm sure there's an app for that!

Re:Both are growing, however

[ncgnu08]

I have been very impressed with WP7 for it to be so young.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Fjandr]

Less so than most may think. After Palm nearly died out, RIM was the only viable game in town. Of course a new platform would primarily eat into their market share. The clone PC market ate into IBM's market share too. :)

Re:Both are growing, however

[mjwx]

It is telling to note, that both Android and iPhone are growing market share at the expense of Blackberry and others, rather than at the expense of each other.

It's also telling to note that Android is still growing whilst Iphone is stagnating.

Android +6.4%
Iphone +0.8%

So the Iphone only just managed to grow beyond Palms 0.7% loss in share. RIM and Microsoft lost 4.1% and 1.8% respectively. This was in August, the Iphone4 rush was still ongoing but some reports suggested that 4 out of every 5 Iphone4's sold replaced an older model Iphone.

What happens if these rates are maintained?

Re:Both are growing, however

[MichaelSmith]

People still use word perfect?!? :)

Its been around for so long it can now read mail and function as a mobile phone OS.

Re:Both are growing, however

[metalmaster]

When i worked for MetroPCS the Samsung feature phones were our most solid and reliable among the bunch

Re:Both are growing, however

[jo_ham]

Then iPhone will continue to grow at +0.8% share? Clearly it can't do that indefinitely.

I suspect there will be an upswing when it is released on Verizon. These are only US numbers after all.

When the iPhone went from O2 exclusive to all carriers in the UK (a while ago now, since before or around the time the 3GS came out), there was a large upturn in new owners from people who wanted to stay on their original carrier.

Those figures are also for Android as a whole (many handsets across multiple carriers) vs the iPhone (two handsets on a single carrier), so there's that to consider too.

The smartphone market needs decent competition, just like the computer software market as a whole does, lest we fall into a sole supplier situation - that is when things stagnate.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Patch86]

You may have forgotten the fact that Apple still outsources all hardware manufacturing to contract manufacturers. This famously includes Foxconn, whom also manufacture phones for Nokia and Sony Ericsson. You also may have forgotten the hardware-related woes that afflicted the iPhone 4 release recently, or the iPod classic back in the day (not to rag on Apple too hard, these things do happen to the best of them).

You also seem to be implying that the only company in the world that is capable of designing nice phone hardware is Apple. That is, you assume they cannot be matched by HTC, Motorola, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony, Alcatel, Dell or Acer in any way. If this is your position- that is, that Apple has absolute superiority over all of their competition- then it is clear that you've already made your mind up (I hesitate to call you a "fanboi", but it's very tricky not to in the circumstances), and I can't imagine you suddenly being impressed by an in-house design from non-hardware-manufacturer Google.

For what it's worth, I've been very impressed by my Sony Ericsson Android phone so far, and have no complaints of any sort.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Bert64]

Not only does it not get any smaller, after the first round of compression (assuming it wasn't done using a ridiculously weak algorithm), compressing it again will typically make the files bigger as you now have extra metadata added which is associated with the compression format.

This is why things like rar'd video files, as commonly found on torrent sites are so ridiculous, the video is already compressed so running it through rar just wastes cpu cycles and disk space all round.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Timmmm]

Ah, the rare double-woosh!

Re:Both are growing, however

[zmollusc]

I actually was surprised when i saw an iPhone 4 . The case itself has small radius edges and the (more numerous than i anticipated) buttons seem sharp-edged and stick out more than one would expect.
I would have guessed it was some cheap knock-off from a nameless asian company if I hadn't known it was real, it felt so scratchy and rough to the touch.
This is just the hardware I am talking about, I haven't used the OS so I can't give an opinion on that.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Wild_dog!]

IPhones growth is not stagnating. There are more iPhones being sold this quarter than last quarter or for that matter year to year. The difference is that Android is selling more in growing market. Last year 30 million iPhones were sold. This next year 50 million will be sold. The following year 80 million will be sold. It is just that in a couple years 250 million Androids will sell at the same time. Meanwhile apple continues to make $300 bucks a unit while the 20 manufacturers of the Android phones duke it out and sell their phones sometimes at a loss. Profits are lean. Lots of 2 for 1 deals. An Android phone costs roughly $180 or so to produce. An iPhone costs the same to produce. That cost will come down perhaps as the economies of scale emerge with an increasing demand for smart phones.

Re:Both are growing, however

[RoFLKOPTr]

This is why things like rar'd video files, as commonly found on torrent sites are so ridiculous, the video is already compressed so running it through rar just wastes cpu cycles and disk space all round.

The RARed torrents come from whatever scenegroup originally created a given release. The scenegroups don't make their shit for the torrent downloaders... many of them hate the torrent downloaders, actually. Releases are split into RARs for ease of distribution across high-speed FTP networks. If you have an error transmitting a 700MB file, then you have to restart the entire transfer. If you have it split into RARs of 15MB each, then you only need to re-transfer the particular file that failed. And it's good for torrent uploaders to retain the original release as the group intended because then, again, if there's a fuckup in the copy you have you can download an unfuckedup file from another source knowing that it's from the same exact release.

Re:Both are growing, however

[mcrbids]

iPhone is only sold on a single provider (AT&T) which has perhaps the most sucktastic customer service ever attributed to a company that still managed to stay in business. Expect iPhone sales to jump sharply when available on other platforms.

My prediction: iPhone and Android might trade places a few times, but Android will take the long term.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Bert64]

So what you're saying is that splitting a file into annoying segments is a kludge to get around obsolete transfer protocols that do not do checksumming of data and cannot do arbitrary partial downloads?

If distributing using bittorrent or rsync, then these problems simply don't exist. It looks like splitting the files up is actually an attempt to gain some of the features offered by bittorrent (being able to source segments from multiple places to speed up downloads, and being able to download arbitrary segments as necessary)... That's like spending $100k fixing up a rusty old lowend car and improving its performance, instead of buying a decent $100k car.

Why would anyone want to use a dated protocol like FTP in preference to a modern one like bittorrent? At the very least they should be using SFTP or SCP for security reasons anyway, especially over the internet... Hating someone simply because they choose to use a modern protocol for their downloading, and have abandoned the antiquated protocols you use is ridiculous. Do these same people also hate fibre optic cables because they prefer copper? Perhaps they also love their monochrome television sets and despise anyone who dares use a color set...

I'm surprised anyone uses FTP at all anymore, it has extremely limited partial downloading (you can only append), all the transfers as well as the data connection go over the network in the clear, the protocol is very unfriendly towards nat - and attempts to add security such as FTPS make the nat problem worse.

Re:Both are growing, however

[EvanED]

Nokia used to make some of the best phones out there. Maybe they still do. But they've mostly left the US market after getting patent-trolled so hard by Qualcomm; and they're still clinging to Symbian anyway.

The N900, which doesn't run Symbian and is available in the US (though you may "have to" buy unlocked; I don't know if carriers offer it; I view "unlocked" as a positive, which is while I'll presumably never buy an iPhone) is a pretty spiffy phone. It's Maemo. Linux-based, but not Android, and actually way more open than Android phones are. Hell, you can run 'apt-get'.

Well, to be honest, the N900 does feel a little dated nowadays, but it was pretty top-notch when it first came out over a year ago.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Patch86]

So I guess that leaves Sony-Ericsson. And yeah, I've had good experiences with their phones in the past and I wasn't aware that they were doing an Android phone (The only ones I ever seem to hear about are the Motorola and HTC models.).

It's the "Xperia" range- X1 and X2 were WinMo, the rest since have been Android. Mine is an X10 Mini Pro; I like it because it is smaller than most smartphones (good for my pockets) and has a hardware QWERTY (an absolute requirement for me, I've never gotten on well with touch-screen keyboards including the iPhone ones).

Samsung are also a major purveyor of Android devices- you've probably heard of their Galaxy range, if only in connection to the Galaxy Tab as a rival to the iPad. LG make a bunch too, as do a whole swathe of other manufacturers who make a smallish number.

I remain unconvinced that Google- a company with little to no experience in hardware design or manufacture- could automatically do a better job than companies for whom hardware has been their sole existence for decades. I like Google and I like their products, but I don't have blind faith in their ability to pull a whole new department out of their ass overnight.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Kompressor]

From the "My killbot features Lotus Notes" department, eh?

Re:Both are growing, however

[MichaelSmith]

I am not about to claim that Lotus Notes can read mail.

Re:Both are growing, however

[The End Of Days]

You're trying to figure out the mindset of people who believe they are entitled to free entertainment using logic, which is a mistake. What you need to do is ask yourself "how would a 13 year old think?"

Re:Both are growing, however

[vegiVamp]

I'm not an expert, being a Nokia user, but could GP possibly mean "for local searches" ? As in, searches across your adress book, messages, files and whatnot ?

Re:Both are growing, however

[vegiVamp]

The advantage to providing the platform and letting other people bother about the hardware, is that it is exactly the same strategy that made the PC market boom: MS provided DOS, and later Windows, an ubiquitous OS that ran on most cheap-enough-for-the-home hardware you could find; and in return everyone and their dog started throwing together cheap-enough-for-the-home hardware to run the OS.

It's a shame that it's unlikely to play out in the same way, though - imagine having the ability to rig up your own phone from off-the-shelf components to do exactly what you want. I don't want no damn GPS in my phone, I'll just put in some more storage instead.

Re:Both are growing, however

[Bert64]

Efficient in what way?

Assuming the source server is faster than the destination and all links in between can keep up, then perhaps FTP can work out faster for a single file.. But then again, why use FTP and not just HTTP? Using HTTP works far better with NAT gateways and the like.

Also, keep in mind the original post which talked about chopping a file up into segments for FTP, bittorrent handles segments internally and will recover corrupted data far more granularly than 15mb files, as well as easily handling downloads from multiple sources in situations where the source server is slower than the client.

And why would you want to use FTP at all for anything, if you really must download from a single server why not use rsync over ssh, or even http? FTP offers no advantages whatsoever, only disadvantages.

Illiteracy

[Anonymous Coward]

"this is no unexpected"[sic]
Yeah. Neither is being able to be literate.
This is no flamebait.

Re:Illiteracy

[Eunuchswear]

Your no scottish?

History repeats itself

[madcat2c]

Its interesting to see Apple to have such great products, but get so hung up on the minutia of wanting to control the hardware so badly, that they fail to see the real gold was in getting the software on as many units as possible.

Re:History repeats itself

[aaronfaby]

How so? As far as I understand it, Google isn't make much if anything at all on Android. Also, Apple has never cared so much about market share as they do about margins.

Re:History repeats itself

[iluvcapra]

Yes. Google's seeing a lot of gold from Android installs.

Re:History repeats itself

[aaronfaby]

On second thought, they are making some money according to this URL. But 1bn a year is nothing compared to what Apple is making from iOS.

http://allaboutserver.net/google-android-revenue-now-running-at-1bn-per-year/

Re:History repeats itself

[demonlapin]

Mod up, folks. Apple is very happy to ignore the bottom of the market and focus solely on people who have enough money to afford a premium product. Why? Because if you can afford their products, you're not going to balk at spending $50-$100 more for one that looks great and has a fantastic UI.

Re:History repeats itself

[madcat2c]

Again, its not about the hardware or even the OS, its the cut of the APP sales...Google is destined to make waaaay more money on the deal by virtue of simply having more people running Android and thus buying apps from the Android Marketplace.

Google GIVES away android so that they can have handset marketshare, and thus a MUCH bigger cut of APP money than Apple will ever have.

Re:History repeats itself

[iluvcapra]

Is there actual numbers on this? I though the norm on the marketplace was to sell everything for free but with ads. And now Google has competition from Amazon's app store, which is probably going to have a much more favorable business proposition for devs than Google's, since Amazon can accept payments from most anywhere on Earth, has better tie-ins with their store, etc.

A phone OS that pays for itself by pushing ads to you will always be a very special sort of hell. At least when Windows was beating Apple, Windows didn't sell you flower delivery and movie trailers in the process.

Re:History repeats itself

[iluvcapra]

Its interesting to see Apple to have such great products, but get so hung up on the minutia of wanting to control the hardware so badly, that they fail to see the real gold was in getting the software on as many units as possible.

Google isn't dumb, though. They see the real money they can make by getting in bed with the phone manufacturers and network providers. Thus, they invented a phone OS that undercuts anyone that would want to make money making something better, and allows the phone vendors and networks as much if not more control over the end user experience than they've ever had.

Re:History repeats itself

[aliquis]

Its interesting to see Apple to have such great products, but get so hung up on the minutia of wanting to control the hardware so badly, that they fail to see the real gold was in getting the software on as many units as possible.

You're wrong though.

The later is more or less what they do.

You could install software on Windows Mobile and Symbian to, but few made it, and with a smaller amount of applications available I assume.

Like it or not but the centralized application repository has made many more install many more applications on their phones.

If it was up to anyone to provide them do you really think people would had installed in equal numbers?

Also I assume Apple want to keep the experience nice and tidy / secure, and hence be able to control the applications. If they let all kinds of crap (oh well .. ;D) and virus / trojan software become installed on the phones would it had been as much of a success?

So yeah, they control the hardware, and the applications you can install on it, _BUT_ that _DO_ help them get the phones to as many phones as possible and generate huge profits for Apple.

Additional crap:
Say the phone would had ran straight Debian or whatever and be totally open, and have no central repository but let people post whatever they developed on their webpages and have others download them. How many phone specific applications would you had seen on the phones? How many would had used them? Know which ones was popular? How many would had been developing them? So on so on.

Even though I don't like the lockin and don't have or will get an iPhone I just have to accept the fact that the AppStore has made many more people install third-party applications on their phones.

Re:History repeats itself

[deniable]

But remember Steve said "web apps only" when the iPhone launched. You're getting things out of order. The apps and App Store happened some time after the iPhone launched.'

Re:History repeats itself

[bonch]

How is that the real gold? That's like saying BMW is a failure because Ford outsells it. I'll never understand the quality-over-quantity argument.

This article is comparing a single smartphone to an entire operating system platform. When the platforms are compared, iOS is #1 in U.S. marketshare according to Nielsen. The Verizon iPhone is coming out, so that lead is going to increase. This is a pretty pointless Slashdot submission.

Re:History repeats itself

[BasilBrush]

i'm puzzled why people think Google's ultimate aim was or should have been to make money on Android. clearly their focus was on providing an open (in every sense of the word) platform for people to improve on.

Because they are a business, not a charity.

Re:History repeats itself

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Two issues with that line of thinking: One, it isn't clear that there is all that much gold in "getting the software on as many units as possible"(at least if you have to compromise as much as Google has to do so. We'll see whether MS ever makes any money on their more or less traditionally OEM licenced 'Windows Phone 7' product; but Google is basically giving it away, so much that they won't even have the 'give away razors, sell blades' strategy. There are already 3-4 competing app stores, and carriers can do whatever the fuck they want in terms of munging their builds. Only through branding arrangements or superior engineering can Google even keep the majority of 'Android' devices as 'Google Android' devices...)

Second, it isn't clear that Apple would be capable of creating the products that they do if they had to play nice with third parties that have their own agendas. Basically every part of the iPhone that AT&T has had a hand in(no tethering, using app store control to keep especially bandwidth heavy or voice-minutes threatening stuff nonexistent or wifi only, etc.) has been seen as among the suckiest aspects of the device. Similarly, they achieve spec and UI consistency(to the degree that they do, Apple has frankly gone soft about being the 'UI leader' after decades of competition with Microsoft...) by means of crushing third-party 'skins' and 'value added software' and carrier preloads and so forth. They also control all updates, and push them pretty aggressively. Were they deprived of these advantages, it isn't clear that a company of Apple's(relatively small) size could possibly manage what they presently do.

My personal suspicion RE: Android vs. Apple is as follows:

When Apple first released the iPhone, their stance was "Our applications only, everyone else can do webapps or go home crying, what're you gonna do about it, switch to Windows Mobile?" With this as Apple's stance, it was easy for Google and Apple to be bestest-ever buddies: Apple got premium integration of desireable Google properties(native youtube, native Maps), and Google got the first smash-hit internet-enabled phone that had virtually zero carrier control pushing people toward WAP-crap carrier stores or anything else that would keep mobile users away from the open internet, where Google scored its sweet, sweet adwords money.

At that point, Android was a relatively low-priority project, basically aimed at using the ex-Danger guys to build a phone OS with a good web browser, minimally acceptable other features, and good integration with google stuff(maps, gmail, bookmarks, etc.) Google had no real reason to try to go head to head with Apple, who had a markedly superior product(that relied heavily on Google services and drove well-heeled mobile users right onto the open internet where Google knew how to make money...); but they had a strong interest in giving the vast 'featurephone' and 'dumbphone' market that Apple would never deign to touch a major kick in the ass. As long as most wireless users had a worse-than-useless browser that was largely designed to dump them right in the carrier's walled garden 'o suck, they would be useless to Google. And thus, they shot relatively low in terms of specs and terms and conditions, and aimed to replace proprietary dumb and feature OSes as fast as possible.

However, once Apple opened their App Store(whether this was the plan all along, or in response to jailbreakers is unclear); Google had a problem: A huge percentage of "apps" were basically views of some entity's website; but iPhoneized. There were, and are, a lot that are much closer to traditional applications; but a lot are simply little chunks of the web that(because of the iPhone's commanding market share for web connected phones) could be iPhone only and still represent a viable "mobile strategy" for whoever put them out. At that point Google, sensibly enough, saw a real threat. To counter, they stepped up their android efforts and(while not cracking down on the low end, since the original objec

Re:History repeats itself

[WhiteWolf666]

Err....

i'm puzzled why people think Google's ultimate aim was or should have been to make money on Android.

Maybe because they are a business????

Looks, it's really simple.

Apple makes iPhones, so that people buy iPhones, buy cell service from ATT (and soon Verizon), so that ATT (and soon Verizon) pay kick backs to Apple. Apple also generates revenue off Apps and Media sales.

Google built Android; so that Google can collect data, which is then used to better improve Google's searches. Improving Google's searches, and Google's ability to manipulate knowledge, enables Google to sell ads and other "in-the-cloud" services better.

For Apple, the iPhone is the platform. For Google, the Cloud is the platform. That's why iPhones are expensive, droid devices tend to be cheaper, and Google's network services are better.

Oh, and that's why Google builds services for other platforms; its not about selling Android phones, its about collecting data! Android phones collect data better than iPhones, but why limit the market?

And the mirror image of that is why the Apple App store is not available on other platforms; selling Applications is a secondary goal; selling iPhones (and the monolithic iOS ecosystem) is the primary goal, and the primary revenue driver.

People are going to have to understand that both companies are working for the betterment of mankind, but both companies seek to maximize revenue while they are at it. Google's profit drivers push Google toward being and omniscient, if usually benevolent big-brother in the cloud. Apple's profit drivers push Apple toward a monolithic ecosystem with Jobs firmly in control. But it is a *very* well designed ecosystem in which 3rd parties who are willing to play by the rules can prosper.

Shades of gray. Capitalism at work. The invisible hand. An exhibit in how pursuing the amoral in a competitive landscape can achieve the greater good.

*shrug*

basically. Google didn't monetize the hell out of it. that's a selling point. i'm tired of people / corporations thinking they can control me through their product just because they invented it. stop using your services as a launching platform for your personal holy crusades and simply provide people with what they want.

If that's what you are looking for, you should give up. Google's very clearly "giving away" services so that they can learn everything about you, and then tell Kraft exactly how many boxes of Mac and Cheese you might buy next month. For me, that's a reasonable trade-off; hell, you can argue that its a reasonable thing to make advertising "more relevant" and "more targeted".

Re:History repeats itself

[smash]

No the real gold is in the profit returned vs effort expended. iOS is massively profitable for minimal support (they have two currently supported platforms, vs the hundreds of different android variants and processor specs out there).

Re:History repeats itself

[WhiteWolf666]

I think that for Google the primary driver for Android is not device/app revenue, but device/app data collection.

Google wants to know *everything* about you. With an Android device, they have expanded the realm of knowledge from:

Everything you do on the computer

To:

Everything you do on a Smart Phone.

This may include:
What time you get up in the morning (alarms)
What time you leave your home.
When you usually return to your home.
How often you go to bars.
How often you work (and for how many hours)
The length of time you commute.
How you commute.
The ratio of how much you walk/drive/take the subway.
Who you talk to.
How long you talk on the phone.
How long you spend in a given store!
How long you spend at a given mall; or restaurant; or gym.
What you comparison shop for via Smartphone while at a given store.
What you text your friends.
The content of your voicemails.
What you like to take pictures of!
How much you spend, and on what.
When you check your e-mail. When you check your text messages. What hours are you willing to take business calls. What hours are you unwilling to take any calls. Which hours are you most responsive to e-mails/texts/calls/voicemails/ads.
What books you read. What websites you frequent.
Etc.

Android devices are lifestyle devices, as are Google TV devices. Google can use this information to build a file on you as sophisticated as the Nielsen company can build a database on a given demographic.

All that being said, I'm relatively okay with it. We are inundated with advertising in modern life. Google's secret is to make it slightly more subtle, and a great deal more tailored to a given individual.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I have *NO* problem with a salesman selling a good product, at a reasonable price, to fit my needs. Particularly if he is a salesman who is easy for me to get along with. The more Google can work on making the ads I see less offensive to me, the happier I will be. Especially if Google continues to make a clear delineation between "Featured (paid)" listings and "Normal Search Data".

Re:History repeats itself

[WhiteWolf666]

One, it isn't clear that there is all that much gold in "getting the software on as many units as possible"(at least if you have to compromise as much as Google has to do so.

See my other posts in this topic.

I agree with you that Android was started defensively. At this point, however, as a company which primarily sells Ads and Commercial Information, I cannot imagine that Google sees anything as more important that collecting data from "smart" devices in individual pockets.

Android revenue, Google Market Revenue, NFC revenue; all that is small potatoes to the information that can be gleaned from location aware Android devices.

Re:History repeats itself

[aliquis]

I don't think they where after app store income but rather the information, users, brand knowledge and release more products.

Any app store incoming is just an additional bonus.

Re:History repeats itself

[BasilBrush]

the real gold was in getting the software on as many units as possible.

The real gold (goal) is making money. And Apple does that far more successfully than all the other smartphone manufacturers. And PC manufacturers come to that.

Re:History repeats itself

[BasilBrush]

The second thing you mention isn't a motive for any business. It's just your wet dream.

Re:History repeats itself

[BasilBrush]

Again, its not about the hardware or even the OS, its the cut of the APP sales...Google is destined to make waaaay more money on the deal by virtue of simply having more people running Android and thus buying apps from the Android Marketplace.

No. Apple's App Store sell way more Apps than the Android Store does. Android owners don't bother with apps as much, and when they do get them, they rarely pay. And yet even for Apple the income from Apps is dwarfed by iPhone hardware sales.

Besides Google have made it clear that the reason they did Android is because they want the income from Advertising - shame they didn't stop Microsoft from making deals with manufacturers to make Bing the default search engine.

Re:History repeats itself

[BasilBrush]

Were they deprived of these advantages, it isn't clear that a company of Apple's(relatively small) size could possibly manage what they presently do.

You can't really call Apple relatively small these days. They have 50,000 employees. By market cap it's the second most valuable company in the world.

I agree with the rest of what you say though, undoubtably their keeping as much as possible in house is a large part of keeping their quality high. Another example of the mess when other's get too involved is the original "iTunes phone", the Motorola "ROKR". A disaster.

Re:History repeats itself

[Bing Tsher E]

Say the phone would had ran straight Debian or whatever and be totally open, and have no central repository but let people post whatever they developed on their webpages and have others download them. How many phone specific applications would you had seen on the phones? How many would had used them? Know which ones was popular? How many would had been developing them? So on so on.

Hold on, man. If I want to run xfig on my phone, it's my right to run xfig on my phone.

heh

Re:History repeats itself

[Bing Tsher E]

I despise people who equate Apple with BMW.

A better comparison would be: "That's like saying RC Cola is a failure because Coca-Cola outsells it."

Let's pitch the notion that Apple is a luxury brand. That's hype.

Re:History repeats itself

[Man On Pink Corner]

Translation: I drive a '94 Escort with fenders and quarter panels in the +3 oxidation state

Re:History repeats itself

[jo_ham]

So you have the privilege of driving a well engineered Japanese automobile, designed for the world rally championship.

Certainly not a cheap car - more like those luxury european models that the original AC was rallying against (ha).

Re:History repeats itself

[brian.swetland]

I'd argue that having an open platform that Google can ship their apps on is extremely important in the huge and quickly growing mobile space.

It would be unfortunate if the only game in town for mobile OSes were a closed platform where only software approved by the platform owner could be installed. How could one defend against such an eventuality? Perhaps one might invest in building a competitive open mobile platform and make it widely available, no strings attached.

The "collecting data" thing is a bit tinfoil hat-ish for me. I see it much more simply as "if it's impossible for users to use your apps because the dominant platforms are controlled by folks who shut the door on you, you're going to have trouble obtaining (or keeping) users."

Re:History repeats itself

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

When assessing a company's engineering capacity, neither its market cap, its employee count(without further detail), nor its annual revenue are really all that useful. Indirectly related; but not directly informative.

Apple's retail employees, for instance, are quite numerous; but they are utterly irrelevant to the question of how many distinct platforms Apple could hypothetically deliver high-quality builds of iOS on. Market cap and annual revenue are, if anything, higher because of their ability to succeed while delivering a very small number of products.

Using "relatively small" without qualification was unclear of me; but in the context of the engineering work that would be involved in keeping an OS playing nice on multiple embedded platforms Apple is, in fact, relatively small. They are a large company; but once you subtract their retail people, product/industrial designers, and software engineers working on non-OS related stuff(final cut, aperture, iLife, iWork, etc.) the remainder isn't particularly large.

Re:History repeats itself

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The "ROKR" arguably suffered a triple blow:

While Apple licenced their "fairplay" secret sauce and iTunes sync for the project, Motorola puked up the actual device firmware. That is never a good sign. Those guys Just. Cannot. Do. Software.

While Motorola has a proud history of some superb RF hardware designs, they(for reasons unclear) decided to blow their big chance on the Apple market by dusting off one of their brutally mediocre midrange handsets and just giving it a new firmware and a new sticker. Not a high point in their history of industrial design. They didn't even bother to update for USB2 support, despite knowing that large file transfers were going to be a central use case...

Also for reasons unclear, Apple was willing to allow the project(since their DRM was involved, their consent was required); but seemed petulantly unwilling to let it succeed. They imposed a 100 song limit, in order to keep the phone from being a serious alternative to any but (perhaps) the smallest capacity shuffle, and then they announced the Nano at the same event(a comparison of Jobs' demeanor during the two unveilings is rather striking...) One wonders what sort of byzantine internal politics prevented them from killing it quietly, rather than letting it bleed out in public...

Re:History repeats itself

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

All the "apps" ( IRC, newsreader, SSH client, Jabber, Ogg player etc ) on my ancient-but-functional Nokia E61 were developed by people in their spare time and downloaded from "their webpages".

There was a vibrant community of cross-compilers targeting various platforms before the "App Store" concept came along and obliterated them.

Re:History repeats itself

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I agree that Google is likely harvesting delicious data from those android handsets that it has a useful degree of control over.

My point was merely that, in order to swiftly establish a broad presence among carriers and phone manufacturers, they licensed everything except their store and a few of their applications sufficiently liberally that it is entirely possible(and does, in some quarters, appear to be happening) for something that is, architecturally, and "android device" to be released with zero Google branding, somebody else's app store, and search and map features feeding location data to some other entity entirely. Their only way of controlling this is by deploying a variety of "carrots": license to use Google applications, ability to brand in certain ways, possibility of being Google's special flagship device buddy, etc. These are not trivial advantages, at least as long as Google can keep improving them at a sufficiently rapid pace; but they cannot stop anyone from building android devices that are completely disconnected from them.

Re:History repeats itself

[Anonymous Coward]

'The "collecting data" thing is a bit tinfoil hat-ish for me.'

He wasn't complaining, be fair. If you can't handle someone saying that a company collects data and doesn't even try to tell you not to use their products or whatever (which would be an acceptable opinion and wouldn't be "someone is evil"), maybe you should look at whether you are attached to a corporation and shouldn't be reading the internet.

Re:History repeats itself

[Anonymous Coward]

He wasn't saying that at all.

What is an example of a "Google-absent AOSP", as it can't be Motorola/HTC etc.'s editions.

If you want Linux to succeed in the mobile phone market it's MeeGo, not Android.

Re:History repeats itself

[drinkypoo]

People are going to have to understand that both companies are working for the betterment of mankind,

Uh no. Neither company is working for the betterment of mankind. They are working only for their own betterment. Any improvement of the lot of the rest of us will be coincidental. Arguably, selling people phones they don't really need is just squandering our precious natural resources; both corporations (these are not book clubs or charities, but public corporations whose primary goal is to make a profit and maximize shareholder value) are arguably doing harm to the entire world.

Re:History repeats itself

[narcc]

Yes, but it's not relevant in this context.

Re:History repeats itself

[Timmmm]

For Apple, the iPhone is the platform. For Google, the Cloud is the platform. That's why iPhones are expensive, droid devices tend to be cheaper, and Google's network services are better.

Huh? I'm not sure what you're saying here. The iPhone is (marginally) more expensive because it generally higher quality hardware than the competitors, and they have a monopoly on iOS hardware production.

Compare: 16 GB iPhone 4: £530; 16 GB Nexus S: £430. However the iPhone 4 is made of glass and metal, not plastic, has an (arguably) better display, tv-out and the best touchscreen on the market. Those things aren't free.

You're probably thinking "Apple fanboy" now, but actually I have had two Android phones, written a couple of apps for them, and even a patch for AOSP. I hate Apple's control freakery, but anyone who denies the superiority of their hardware (antenna issues aside), is frankly an idiot. That, and their monopoly leads to the slightly higher cost.

Re:History repeats itself

[jedidiah]

In the old days, Apple was the company that allowed both motives to simultaneously coexist.

That was the legend anyways....

Re:History repeats itself

[jedidiah]

No. "European luxury cars" are just the visible portion of brands sold in
Europe for all purposes including no nonsense durability. The hype and
nonsense is mainly an American phenomenon. The same is even true
to a certain extent with the Japanese cars where the "luxury brand"
name doesn't even exist in Japan because it doesn't need to.

Hype and quality are simply orthogonal to each other.

Re:History repeats itself

[selven]

They don't fail to see that that's the real gold. They just realize that if they go that way they'll be hitting a lot of competition and would have razor thin profit margins. Apple's strategy never is to be the majority player - not in the desktop, and not in the smartphone.

Re:History repeats itself

[madcat2c]

You realize that first to market with a great idea, reaps HUGE profits and marketshare...believe it or not, as much as Apple made with previous Iphones, it was only a small fraction of the cell phone market.

IF Apple had done what Google is doing, nearly EVERY phone in the world would be running Iphone OS. Every phone would be locked into buying apps from Apples APP store, and Apple would be able to sit back, lock the door (the market), while others scratched to get in.

Instead, you will end up with Apple and RIM with about 50% of the market, and Android with 50% of the market (baring some disruptive innovation).

I argue that this parallels Apple failure to successfully release its OS to third party computer builders in the 80's...which is why Apple has about 5% market share of desktop OS right now.

Re:History repeats itself

[cyfer2000]

IBM sold its PC business some time later, what will Google do if history really repeats itself?

Re:History repeats itself

[madcat2c]

That actually furthers my argument, because IBM realized (unlike Apple) that the gold does not lye in making the hardware, so they sold it.

Google has left the hardware to the hardware makers, preferring to write the structure (the OS) and reaping a direct cut of the innovations to come (the APPS).

Re:History repeats itself

[cowscows]

Waaahwaaah. I'm not going to argue that corporations are some sort of gracious fountain of good, but to argue that they're automatically destroying the entire world just because they're trying to make money is not a very good argument. The past few hundred years have seen insane advances in technology, serious improvements in quality of life for most of the world, and some truly amazing things being created and done by mankind, and the vast majority of it was driven in large part by good ol'fashioned capitalism.

Now we certainly don't live in a utopia, and completely unrestricted capitalism obviously presents all sorts of problems. The environment has suffered, not everyone has had their lot improved, and sometimes we seem to take steps back just as often as we take steps forward. But enabling people to make money by creating stuff and selling it to other people has driven progress more than anything else.

I feel that my smartphone makes a measurable improvement on my quality of life. I can afford to buy one. I look at the options and choose the one that appeals to me the most and hand over my money. I don't really care whether or not my quality of life was a consideration of the phone's designers or if their goal is just to make money, all I care about is the end result is that I can get a phone that I like. The emotions or ethics or whatever behind it are irrelevant to me.

Re:History repeats itself

[Bert64]

Yes, the app store / repository model massively benefits consumers, the hassle of looking for applications manually on the internet, running the risk of finding scams or malware instead of real applications.

It doesn't have to be locked to a single provider, open package managers have existed a lot longer, its just that apple has marketed the app store much better. I've been saying for years that end users would love the linux package manager model if only they knew it existed.

Incidentally, google's motivation with android is not to dominate the mobile space so much as to ensure their internet services don't get forced out the market by an aggressive competitor (eg microsoft)... The only reason msn has *any* market share at all (and the fact it still has relatively little is testament to how inferior their offerings are) is because MS have pushed it as the default homepage for years. If they'd had an offering that was good enough, not necessarily better than google but just good enough to keep people from looking for alternatives then google would be nowhere today.

Re:History repeats itself

[Bert64]

And how much time did you spend trying to find where "their webpages" were?
How could you be sure that "their webpages" actually contained genuine applications, and were not scams or malware?

Some people are technically literate enough, have enough spare time to jump through these hoops and can actually be bothered. Most people however, are lacking in one of those three areas and would rather have everything in one place being managed by someone who knows what they're doing.

Personally i think that all phones (and any other electronic device capable of running additional software beyond what it came with) should be configured by default to fetch software from repositories operated by the hardware or os supplier. Ofcourse, there should always be an *advanced option* allowing users to install their own software or to change the default repositories, but these options should only ever be used by technically literate people who understand what they're doing. The vast majority of users would be far better off by sticking to the defaults.

Re:History repeats itself

[jo_ham]

Sometimes they are, I agree. Like a Rolex or something; you're simply paying for a name, there's no added benefit (beyond brand name).

In the car space though, I agree to a certain extent. The VW Golf and the Seat Ibiza are pretty much the same car (literally), just with different body and interior, yet you pay a premium for the VW name with very little extra in the way of luxury or reliability.

However, a Subaru Impreza WRX is certainly a cut above your average American economy junker.

Re:History repeats itself

[aliquis]

But how many people used them?

If I have had a Symbian phone back then I would to. But would everyone?

Also I don't see why and I'd rather expect that all those applications would be available today aswell.

I don't know if Symbian^3 can run the non-QT Symbian apps but probably it can? And atleast on the Nokia devices you don't have to get the application from one specific source (which may be a disadvantage but as long as people _use_ one source atleast I guess it should be just fine.)
For MeeGo I guess it would be easier to port Irssi, OpenSSH, and so on.

Re:History repeats itself

[selven]

which is why Apple has about 5% market share of desktop OS right now.

My whole point is that Apple's strategy is not to be the ones with the 94% market share. Apple realizes that other companies are much better at doing that than they are, and prefer to focus on the high end market. They already are reaping huge profits, and their market capitalization is greater than Microsoft's. If they based their business on iOS and third party vendors, they would be catering to the low-end $200 phone market, where there are far less profits to be made.

Re:History repeats itself

[aliquis]

I switched from altavista and not MSN search though. I wonder if MSN really was the biggest/most used player even back then?

But then my sisters boyfriends IE uses bing by default.

(And the browser take a freaking minute to respond before starting up. I have no idea wtf is wrong with it. Either it's just all the crap starting up in the background after boot or it's Norton or he must have done something stupid with his browser. I don't feel comfortable telling him to ditch Norton (as if you could ;D) and use Chrome. If it was my sisters laptop the situation would had been different. Though she's old enough (29) to have her own opinion to ;))

Re:History repeats itself

[drinkypoo]

I don't really care whether or not my quality of life was a consideration of the phone's designers or if their goal is just to make money, all I care about is the end result is that I can get a phone that I like. The emotions or ethics or whatever behind it are irrelevant to me.

That much is clear. Yet you still feel you must make apologies for your corporate masters, probably to assuage your own guilt, know it or not.

Re:History repeats itself

[Mr_Silver]

Again, its not about the hardware or even the OS, its the cut of the APP sales...Google is destined to make waaaay more money on the deal by virtue of simply having more people running Android and thus buying apps from the Android Marketplace.

Not quite.

For Google it's all about your data and advertising. Remember they are an advertising company and everything they do is geared about getting more views of their adverts and being able to better target that advertising. They build products to ensure that they have a user-base to supply adverts and mine data.

If it was about app purchases then Google would have rolled out purchasing throughout the world. They haven't. Instead developers who wish to make money from products have to offer their products for free and place advertising inside the apps. The fact that the largest vendor of adverts for Android happen to be Admob which is owned by Google isn't a coincidence.

In short, the Android eco-system is geared around free software (because it generates more eyeballs than paid software does) supported by in-app advertising provided by Google.

Re:History repeats itself

[drinkypoo]

Their only way of controlling this is by deploying a variety of "carrots": license to use Google applications, ability to brand in certain ways, possibility of being Google's special flagship device buddy, etc.

Actually, all they need to do is keep kicking out new versions, and providing implementation assistance and accepting bug reports only from their chosen vendors.

Re:History repeats itself

[alvinrod]

They incidentally better mankind through doing business. If they were selling something that wasn't viewed as useful, they wouldn't be in business for very long. If their products didn't provide some perceived value, no one would be buying them. Some customers may not need a smart phone, but many people would say that these devices have enriched their lives. That doesn't happen in every case, but I could just as easily claim that, arguably, someone deciding what's best for the rest of the people is just as likely to squander resources.

Of course they want to make money, and one of the easiest ways to make money is to make a product that somehow makes another person's life easier, compelling them to purchase it. It's not a zero sum game. Apple/Google gets some money that they wanted and a person gets a device that they valued more than the money.

The system isn't perfect, but free enterprise has been a significant driver in mankind's advancement. Perhaps we're reaching the end of its usefulness and in another century we'll have found something better to replace it, but to deny that it's been useful in getting us to where we are is silly.

Re:History repeats itself

[Wild_dog!]

By controlling their hardware, it makes it easy to for developers. Apple has always been primarily a hardware company. They also work to ensure high profit margins. How many PC makers from the 1990's are still making PC's today? Apple is now the second largest company behind Exxon. I think their approach has proven successful. I think perhaps the real gold is Apple's 50 billion in cash reserves so they can buy up the technology that will define the next wave of innovation.

Re:History repeats itself

[jo_ham]

Well, you could buy a Seat - that's exactly what you're after. The "European" model, but with the cheaper pricetag. Seats are equivalent to VW, since they are made by the same people.

Re:History repeats itself

[Americano]

From your link:

It's not made entirely clear exactly how Android contributed that amount of money, although it seems to be mainly derived from display advertising on its mobile search products.

Google is growing the number of places where they can display ads, and I suspect they will continue to make money off Android in this manner.

Is it any wonder that Google would pursue a strategy that allows them to display more ads on more handsets (thus directly increasing their income), while Apple is pursuing a strategy that allows them to sell each unit of hardware running an exclusive piece of software that differentiates them from the competition at a tidy profit? Two different strategies for two different business models. Google is in advertising, Apple is in hardware.

Re:History repeats itself

[Americano]

Yeah, look at Linux. Once geeks everywhere started adopting it, Windows totally lost its cachet.

(Hint: "Geek cachet", while not necessarily orthogonal to "Popular cachet", rarely shares much overlap in terms of technology. The features an average consumer would use to evaluate a purchase are rarely the same reasons a geek would cite for choosing (or avoiding) a piece of tech.)

Re:History repeats itself

[Americano]

I'm puzzled why people think Google's ultimate aim was or should have been to make money on Android.

And in return, I'm puzzled why you think that Google doesn't view Android as another platform to push its advertising to. If you think Google doesn't view Android as a means to make money, and that they just released it out of the goodness of their hearts, I suggest you review their business model and ask yourself why Google suddenly seems to have a keen interest in "mobile advertising."

Re:History repeats itself

[Americano]

Google derives the vast majority of its income from search.

Advertising. The word is advertising. Search is a means to an end:
Consumer: "I wish I could find information about..."
Google: We'll help you find what you want, and while you're at it, we'll just display a few ads for you to take a look at - we're smart enough to even make them relevant to the term or phrase you're searching for!"
Consumer: "Wow, thanks Google!"

Just as GMail is a means to an end:
Google: "Pst. Hey. Want free email?"
Consumer: "Boy, do I!"
Google: "Okay, here you go. While you're reading your email, we'll just display a few ads for you to take a look at - we're smart enough to even make them relevant to the email you're reading!"
Consumer: "Wow, thanks Google!"

Just as Android is a means to an end:
Google: "Pst. Hey. Want a cheap phone that works like an iPhone, and integrates with all of your existing Google services?"
Consumer: "Boy, do I!"
Google: "Okay, here you go. While you're using it, we'll just display a few ads for you to take a look at - we're smart enough to even make them relevant to the location you're standing!"
Consumer: Wow, thanks Google!"

Google makes 95+% of their money off of advertising. Every product they produce is an attempt to find new ways to get an ad to capture your attention for a few moments, so they can make money from selling that ad space. I don't think it's a bad thing, and I don't fault them for it. In fact, I find Google's brand of advertising to be one of the least offensive, and most helpful. But search, gmail, maps, translation, googletv, android, and any other product Google makes is absolutely aimed at finding new ways and new venues to display ads. It's what they do, and they're awfully good at it.

Re:History repeats itself

[Bert64]

MSN never was the biggest, but the point is that noone would use it at all were it not configured as the default in IE...

Re:History repeats itself

[uniquename72]

Google built Android; so that Google can collect data, which is then used to better improve Google's searches. Improving Google's searches, and Google's ability to manipulate knowledge, enables Google to sell ads and other "in-the-cloud" services better.

I'll add that integration between Android and various Google apps is tight and generally very good. I didn't use gmail, maps, reader, or picasa before I had an Android phone. Now I do.

Re:History repeats itself

[RocketRabbit]

Apple is now a bigger company than Microsoft, and makes *MORE MONEY* which makes me wonder, how do you think they are losing?

Market share is nothing. Profit is what matters.

Re:History repeats itself

[SudoGhost]

A phone OS that pays for itself by pushing ads to you will always be a very special sort of hell.

I have no idea what you're talking about. But yes, apps with ads are the norm...if you install apps with ads. I have an Android phone, and I can't think of any apps I have that show ads (with the exception of Handcent, but it only shows ads when you're in the settings, which most people will use once and not touch it again).

Re:History repeats itself

[Agent__Smith]

Maybe someday Unicef will get into the cell phone business, but until then Google are the people to see...

Re:History repeats itself

[Enigma23]

I was going to pick up on that sentence too; the bottom line is exactly that - Apple, RIM and Google are all in the mobile phone OS business to make money. The interesting this is they are each have a different design philosophy and business model in mind. I'm sure a few dozen MBA students will be writing their dissertations on this subject right now...

Re:History repeats itself

[jo42]

geeks everywhere adopt Android

Geeks Want 'Roids!

Re:History repeats itself

[cowscows]

Thanks for the free therapy session. I feel like we've made a breakthrough here.

Re:History repeats itself

[Deliveranc3]

I'm not sure anymore. I think Google looked at it's income streams and decided that if they started to mooch profits they could literally have ALL THE MONEY.

By offering an open platform they pull people close enough that they can talk to them, selling things will come next. Right now, they're just selling us, and the phone companies can pay them "ALL THE MONEY" if they play nice.

Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012

[teh31337one]

Their prediction is for the whole world.

America != The whole word.

Re:Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012

[Anonymous Coward]

android already surpassed iphone in global market share. This happened quite a while ago. Look up smartphone on wikipedia

Re:Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012

[AHuxley]

In Capitalist rest of world you research cheapest sim to swap.
In Soviet America telcos swap you.
The USA can still ride the lock in profit on rust belt networks.

Re:Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012

[bonch]

An operating system running on multiple phones surpassed the sales of a single phone? You don't say! When you properly compare operating systems, the iOS platform is ahead of Android in U.S. marketshare according to Nielsen, and this is right before the iPhone about to become available on Verizon later this month. If you want to compare single smartphones, the best-selling Android phone is the Droid 2, which was crushed by the iPhone in sales. The only way the Android comes out ahead in numbers is when people pull the bogus trick of comparing an entire operating system platform to a single phone.

This is another inaccurate Slashdot submission.

Re:Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012

[angus77]

Then Google it.

Re:Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012

[Shihar]

Uh, no. It is perfectly accurate. It just depends if you are a consumer or a stock holder. If you are a stock holder, knowing that iPhone has more sales and bigger profit margins than the rest of the individual makers is important. If you are a consumer, knowing that there are a shit ton of competing phones with a single operating system and ecosystem is important. One assumes that Slashdot is not the business section, so what people care about is the largest platform with the most phones. Apple clearly is not that. They have almost zero selection in terms of phones, and they are not the largest ecosystem.

Next time I get a new Android phone, I'll have dozens of phones to pick from that all of my stuff will happily migrate over to. The iPhone users get the choice of the current generation phone, or the old generation phone which they are busy patching to its destruction. From a consumer perspective, having the most phones running Android, with the greatest phone selection, with brutal competition by multiple hardware makers is a GOOD thing. For stock holders, Apple milking the crap out of a minority of consumers and scoring high profit margins off of them and creating an ecosystem where others can't compete is a good thing. Guess which one of those two the Slashdot crowd cares about?

Re:Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012

[tepples]

So let's see, let's just compare operating systems penetration then. iOS vs Android. Compare the numbers and get back to me.

In that case, iPod touch (which is not a phone) just might push the numbers in favor of iOS. Unlike Android-based media players such as Archos 43, which lack official access to Android Market because they're not phones, iPod touch has the App Store.

Re:Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012

[Dean Edmonds]

You must be referring to the chart in that wikipedia article. It's talking about the new phone sales, not total installed base. I've corrected the chart's heading to better reflect that.

Re:Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012

[SudoGhost]

America != The whole word.

You're right. The whole word is 'The United States of America'.

Oh yeah?

[richdun]

But this other firm says iPhone is still in the lead, by a lot.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/apple-leads-smartphone-race-while-android-attracts-most-recent-customers/

Obviously, someone is wrong on the Internet!

Re:Oh yeah?

[nahdude812]

A 2 point market share lead according to Nielsen is "a lot"? Both reports are within 3 points of each other. But while Apple is growing less than 1 point per quarter, Google is growing around 6.5 points. According to either report, if the trends exhibited through November continued, Google would be ahead of Apple by today anyway.

It'll be interesting to see what the Verizon iPhone does for iOS. I don't know if it was legal obligations or what, but Apple being kept off the largest carrier has hurt them a lot, and allowed Android to build up a lot of momentum I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have had otherwise.

Re:Oh yeah?

[bm_luethke]

Only if you consider 3% market share "a lot". Indeed, the article quoted points out that Android is just slightly outside the margin of error to tie with Apple (rim at .3% higher market share is considered to be tied with either one due to margin of error). With respect to margin of errors both articles agree. However you may want to take a gander at the upper graph in the article linked, Android has 40.8% of new sales and iPhone at 26.9% - roughly a 14 point difference and that *is* major (indeed, at that different a rate the exact date in November of differences in sampling can certainly make enough difference for the discrepancy).

Not sure how that equates to the iPhone still in the lead by a lot, but oh well. Maybe all those people who were holding off purchasing an iPhone waiting on version 4 to come out are now going to rush out and save Apples Market share. Since we haven't seen that phenomenon happen yet (and a few months back it was *obvious* that was going to happen) it should within the next quarter. After all we were supposed to add those people in the last two quarters, might as well shift Apples market by them now too.

Re:Oh yeah?

[bonch]

This new article is comparing a single phone to an operating system for some reason, while Nielsen is properly comparing iOS to Android.

It's a common trick people use to give the appearance of Android being ahead. It's no surprise that lumping every Android phone together, including all the lower-class junk phones, is going to total up to a number that's greater than the iPhone. Given how many Android phones there are, it's a testament to the iPhone that Android's marketshare hasn't surpassed that of iOS, which is only on Apple devices and on one carrier. Wiith Verizon iPhones coming, the iOS userbase is only going to increase.

But yeah, this is a pointless and inaccurate Slashdot submission (surprise!).

Re:Oh yeah?

[bonch]

I don't know if it was legal obligations or what

Apple probably wasn't willing to concede control of iOS to Verizon. Now that iOS is a hit, Apple has bargaining power to retain control of the platform.

Android, however, is very much under the control of the carriers.

Re:Oh yeah?

[Shag]

I don't know if it was legal obligations or what, but Apple being kept off the largest carrier has hurt them a lot

Not legal obligations, but contractual, yeah.

And even though AT&T keeps sending me ads to "add a line" to my plan, suggesting all kinds of phones that aren't iPhones, everyone pretty much knows that if you're going to be on AT&T, an iPhone is the phone to have.

If Verizon gets the iPhone, I expect a lot of users will see it the same way over there.

Re:Oh yeah?

[AmericanInKiev]

I'm not one to gush about Apple; however, let's agree that whatever birthright apple sold to Singular, it sold in exchange for user's rights; specifically, the right of the user to shop for applications provided by other than the network carrier. For that I am a grateful Android customer.

Re:Oh yeah?

[mjwx]

It'll be interesting to see what the Verizon iPhone does for iOS.

This old chestnut.

I doubt it will ever exist, AT&T has an exclusivity contract with Apple until July 2012, so thats Iphone 6 territory and you can be certain that AT&T will sue the living daylights out of Apple if they decide to break the contract.

So the question for the great and mythical Verizon Iphone is what will Android be doing in 2012? Will Verizon even care by that point?

But as someone who is living in a country that has no exclusivity agreement I doubt that it would make one iota of difference. Everyone has the Iphone, but no-one is willing to ignore Android. In fact you can hardly see Iphone ad's on shop windows any more, Hell Vodafone has "Android Inside" stickers plastered everywhere. When Hellstra bought out the HTC Desire earlier this year there was a lot of demand awakened for Android. Every telco woke up and took notice, trying to get exclusivity agreements on new devices. Optarse got a 2 month exclusivity on the Samsung Galaxy S, Vodashaft on the HTC Desire HD.

So, would telco's even care. I'm certain Verizon is making a lot of money with their Droid line up and not having to pander to a petulant manufacturer.

Re:Oh yeah?

[narcc]

everyone pretty much knows that if you're going to be on AT&T, an iPhone is the phone to have.

Really? I've been an AT&T customer since they bought my old carrier. (I have no complaints -- and their coverage is significantly better than Verizon's in my area.) I've never once considered an iPhone -- their other offerings have been far more attractive.

I can see how it would be one of their most popular toy phones -- but I don't see any compelling reason why it would be "the phone to have".

Re:Oh yeah?

[nahdude812]

The public doesn't know for sure, but there's a whole lot of really strong evidence that's surfaced in the last week that they're announcing the Verizon iPhone this Tuesday (Jan 11), with a release date of later this month.

It's no guarantee of course, but there's a lot of oddly specific independent corroboration (including invites addressed to specific Apple-focused tech reporters instead of the news org itself, and no invite to Gizmodo [whom Apple has cut off from all events after the iPhone 4 leak]). Even WSJ has said that's what Tuesday's announcement is about (they've historically been right on this sort of thing).

Re:Oh yeah?

[choko]

I'm more interested to see what iPhone will do for Verizon, not the other way around. I think you will see more AT&T users switching to Verizon than you will see Verizon Droid users switching to iPhone. It will help the iOS numbers, but it will be short term. The "experts" will most likely use switching customers as a way to count the same iPhone user twice for a quarter - once for their old AT&T contract, and once more for their new Verizon contract. In the long run, you will probably see a few more iOS users out of the deal, but it won't be the windfall that "experts" keep telling us it will be.

Re:Oh yeah?

[dfghjk]

You are really hung up on presenting that "single phone" versus "operating system" lie, aren't you?

By today's standards, the original iPhone is a "lower-class junk phone" yet it's included in Apple's overall numbers. Goes both ways. In a few months, there won't be a single article that supports your crusade to claim iOS as number one. It'll still be true in your heart, though. Facts lie according to fanboys.

If it weren't for Apple's earlier time to market and initial sales lead, Android would be already be dominating Apple as the Nielsen 6 month numbers clearly show.

Re:Oh yeah?

[speculatrix]

It'll be interesting to see what the Verizon iPhone does for iOS. I don't know if it was legal obligations or what, but Apple being kept off the largest carrier

I'll turn the conventional thinking on its head. Maybe the situation hasn't been that Verizon were pleading for Apple to make a CDMA phone, but instead...

maybe Verizon knew that Apple weren't competent antenna/RF engineers and wouldn't agree to Apple coming to their network until Apple learned some humility?

Re:Oh yeah?

[jonescb]

You seem to forget that iPhone 1.0 didn't have an App Store. So I'm not so sure it was part of the original contract with Cingular.

Wha?

[jav1231]

I thought Verizon was getting the iPhone because they were supposedly seeing slowing Android sales. Sounds like Android is doing fine.

Re:Wha?

[demonlapin]

They're getting the iPhone because the iPhone causes them to lose customers to AT&T, not because Android sales are bad.

Re:Wha?

[jav1231]

From the WSJ article: A note filed by analyst Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros in December said the carrier was "still excited" about launching Apple's iPhone early next year "to combat slowing Android momentum in the US."

I read that and thought, What!?

Re:Wha?

[SudoGhost]

Yes, that's exactly why. They didn't want the iPhone at all before Android sales declined.

It's funny

[PCM2]

I, too, bought an Android phone in November (Motorola Defy). I like it, it's going to work out fine for me. But I have to admit, compared to the iPhone and BlackBerry both, my phone's OS is buggy and clunky, the stock Android stuff is lacking features, and the attempts by the handset maker (Motorola) to make up for its deficiencies don't mesh well with the core OS. Unexplained things happen every so often, which don't really phase me as a seasoned computer user, but would drive my mom bats.

The manual actually tells you to reboot the phone every so often. I don't disagree with this -- seems like sound advice for a device of this complexity -- but by comparison, my BlackBerry would actually reboot itself automatically every night if I wanted it to. And it turns out that if you don't reboot this phone, after a while it might do stuff like, oh, silently stop receiving your email. Reboot and ten messages show up. As a former BlackBerry user, that is not good. That is bad. And that's just one example -- it seems like random things will start to happen, which might frustrate you if you didn't feel OK with just rebooting the phone. (Though to be fair, any reluctance I have to reboot comes from me being a BlackBerry user, where rebooting is the last thing on Earth you want to do.)

I switched from BlackBerry because I felt like my BlackBerry Pearl was getting long in the tooth, and none of the new models appealed to me. Plus, change is good every now and then. I didn't pick iPhone for various reasons, mostly relating to not wanting to do business with either Apple or AT&T (and certainly not Verizon, when that happens). But I gotta admit, iPhone is the better phone. So what is making all these other people choose Android phones instead of iPhones, assuming they don't share my unique background and prejudices? It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.

Re:It's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

For us, iPhone wasn't available on Verizon, so we bought the Droid and the Droid Eris. At first they were good phones, but every successful upgrade has added irritating bugs. As soon as the iPhone launches on Verizon, these Androids go up for sale on eBay.

Re:It's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Android is the windows 95 of mobile phones.

Re:It's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had both an iphone and an android phone. I had more issues with my iphone than I have had with android. I currently use the HTC Aria with a froyo rom.

I have also noticed the availability of handsets for android has increased exponentially this year which will also factor into their higher sales as they tend to also be less expensive than tne blackberry.

Re:It's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

My Droid 2 has been pretty rock solid.

I've picked up some friends' iPhones (1 through 4) and had them freeze within the first few seconds of messing with them. Given they did recover, my point is the iPhone isn't bullet proof like so many people seem to think....

Re:It's funny

[NJRoadfan]

I, too, bought an Android phone in November (Motorola Defy). I like it, it's going to work out fine for me. But I have to admit, compared to the iPhone and BlackBerry both, my phone's OS is buggy and clunky, the stock Android stuff is lacking features, and the attempts by the handset maker (Motorola) to make up for its deficiencies don't mesh well with the core OS. Unexplained things happen every so often, which don't really phase me as a seasoned computer user, but would drive my mom bats.

Looks like the smartphone OS market is shaping up to be very similar to the desktop OS market, its Android vs. iOS instead of Windows vs. MacOS.... with one important difference... No Microsoft. Something that has Redmond very worried.

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

No, I don't think U.S. owners can expect a 2.2 upgrade until Q2 2011, and even then, Motorola's track record with upgrades is a little spotty.

My problems with email are not Exchange-related, though (and I think Motorola's "skin" adds some of the Exchange capabilities 2.2. brings anyway). My initial email problem, actually, was that it absolutely would not work when I tried to connect my email via IMAP. I wouldn't see any messages at all. Reconfigure the same account for POP, though, and everything works fine -- including push-like delivery within a minute or two of receiving the mail. If that makes any kind of sense to you, please explain it to me.

Still, although I am confused by the behavior, as I said before, ultimately it works for me (until it silently stops working and I need to reboot the phone). But someone else might never know to pick POP instead of IMAP if the guy at the store told them IMAP is better. I don't think iPhone users have this kind of problem.

Re:It's funny

[rfslocutus]

So what is making all these other people choose Android phones instead of iPhones, assuming they don't share my unique background and prejudices? It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.

For me, price was part of it. My previous phone was a Motorola RAZR 2 which is still slowly dieing (keyboard buttons are wearing out) and I now have a Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant. It took me over a week to get the phone because every store that carried it was sold out and yet, at the same time, I could have gotten an iPhone 4 from anyone as they still had hundreds in stock. I love this phone, its fast, it does slow down on occasion but it doesn't bother me much because I can do pretty much whatever I want to this thing. On a stock, non-jailbroken iPhone, can you install any app from any source? I don't believe so. That is called a walled-garden and is the SOLE reason that I didn't get an iPhone even though I could have had one on the spot. I love Android. the market is amazing and so is the ability to install any app by copying it to the phone and clicking on it.

This is the reason that I can see Android devices continue to out sell Apple. Also, 16 GB iPhone 4: $299. My 16 GB Galaxy: $150 for the phone and $30 for a double case, that is, I have a rubber case around the phone and a belt case. So even with a case, I still saved around $100 by not subscribing to Apples walled-garden.

Re:It's funny

[bonch]

The Android model is similar to that of Windows-based PCs. The carriers are like OEMs, complete with pre-installed junkware. There are actually articles advising people on how to tell when an Android app is malware, which is straight out of the Windows experience.

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

Have you tried alternative email clients like K9 and MailDroid?

No, because I like Motorola's integrated inbox feature. But this is typical of the answers I get from other Android people: "Oh yeah, it's easy, provided you ditch the software it came with and use some third-party alternative." Again, I don't believe iPhone users have these problems. On the extreme end of things I hear answers like, "Oh yeah, it's easy, as long as you root your phone." But now you're talking about something that's typically beyond the understanding of your average phone user, and for something like messaging -- which seems like a basic, core feature of a communications device -- it seems totally unnecessary.

Re:It's funny

[protektor]

There are many iPhone apps that tell you to do the same exact thing. If they won't run properly then reboot your phone and try again. I don't know what the percentage of the marketplace is like that but I have seen a few dozen or so that say that. These are apps that passed Apple's Q&A/review and got in their marketplace. So honestly I don't see much of a difference. If I don't reboot the iPhone 4 every so often it will get strange too. It's not surprising since most smart-phones are just computers that happen to be small, and are way more complex than other phones. There is also the variety of software/apps that run on smart-phones rather than a limited 2-4 apps of most regular phones. It doesn't surprise me that they aren't perfect and sometimes need to be rebooted. You even said your BlackBerry could be set to reboot every night, clearly it needs to be rebooted almost daily, otherwise why put in that option.

So it is clear that all of the top 3 smart-phone groups need to be rebooted from time to time so they function properly. So it's not really a liability since they all need it.

Re:It's funny

[fredmosby]

AT&T will let you use their smallest (200 mb/month) data plan with the iPhone.

Re:It's funny

[Skythe]

Not to throw anything away from your post, but I've got a Nexus One and don't have any of the issues mentioned. I generally don't reboot the phone (sometimes it'll be up for weeks as long as I keep to a proper charging schedule). Stock Android has everything i need, so much so that i consider the fact that it has stock Android to be a _feature_ (and anything else, i.e. Motoblur to detract from it). I'd be pointing to Motorola for your issues; there are phones out with rougly the same specs that run really smoothly (i.e. HTC Desire Z - 800Mhz processor as well but is snappy).

My friend does have a defy and i've noticed the lag. Whether it's just Motoblur (which is still garbage and just looks ugly, why do they keep including it!), or HTC are doing some optimizations that Motorola isn't, who knows - I still won't be buying a Motorola phone because of their poor upgrade support!

Re:It's funny

[BasilBrush]

It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.

Yes, it's price. Higher end Androids are price comparable with the iPhone. But there are lots of cheap (free with a contract) Androids. They're awful, but they look like a good deal in the shop.

Re:It's funny

[gmhowell]

When was the price increase on the 16GB iPhone 4? I thought it had been $199 since release, just like it is today.

Re:It's funny

[iamhassi]

"Unexplained things happen every so often, which don't really phase me as a seasoned computer user, but would drive my mom bats."

And this is exactly why I ended up with an iPhone.

It started simply enough, I bought a Motorola Q. Worse... Phone... Ever. Crashed often and nothing worked on it because while it ran Windows Mobile the Q didn't have a touchscreen so I'd have to search for special Windows Mobile programs that didn't require touchscreen input and without a Windows Mobile app store that provided to be almost impossible.

This lead me to upgrade to a HTC Mogul, a touchscreen with sliding keyboard running Windows Mobile. That was better but finding good programs that didn't crash was difficult, there was no Windows Mobile store and it wasn't designed for fingers since it used a stylus.

Next came the BlackBerry Curve. Great phone, amazing email access (better than iPhone), but beyond email it didn't really do anything right, tiny buttons to dial with, phone was slow, offered few apps and the decent apps were pretty expensive ($5-$10+) and there were almost no free apps or demos.

Enter the iPhone. Required a carrier switch but that ended up being a good thing since AT&T turned out to be much better than my previous provider. iOS was amazing, no more crashing, phone functionality was much better than Windows Mobile or Blackberry, and navigation was much easier. Tons of great apps for cheap (99 cents) or free, and most of the paid for apps offer free demos. App store allows real user reviews.

Really it's the apps that make the difference with the iPhone. There's currently over 300,000 apps, 63 from EA and even classics like Final Fantasy made by Square Enix. Android just don't have the pull iOS does to bring the big names to the table. I don't care if the iPhone's CPU is 600mhz or 1000mhz, I bought a smartphone for apps, not to brag about my cpu speed.

I have a feeling as soon as the iPhone shows up on Verizon we're going to see a 10% jump or higher. I also think price has a lot to do with it: most the people I know buying Android did so because Android is free while iPhones are $200+, there has never been a free iPhone with contract. But the 3GS is now only $50 so we'll see if that helps, and I know some people are saying "that's the old one, I want the iPhone 4!" but I guess they forgot about the reception issues. I'd buy a 3GS or wait for iPhone 4GS.

Re:It's funny

[Bing Tsher E]

That means that eventually, there will be an XP release of Android, and the entire market will belong to Android.

Re:It's funny

[AmericanInKiev]

I suppose iPhones lack of turn-by-turn navigation is ... a feature?

Re:It's funny

[adolf]

How about "it's easy, if you accept Google as your one true email provider"?

The default Gmail client works great, and you're required (at least on my D1) to set it up at first boot.

So, if you're stupidly and boneheadedly stuck on only using the default apps and services, this will work fine. Just forward all of your email to your new Gmail account, configure it appropriately, and you'll be golden. Integrated inbox? Check!

OTOH, IMAP and POP3 are both things which are inherently third-party on such devices. That the default non-Gmail mail client sucks (especially the one modified by Motorola, who seem to make wonderful hardware but fail miserably on the software side for now) isn't so much the issue. Rather, the problem is that you're not doing things in the (default!) Google Way.

(And, yes, both mentalities are absurd -- both yours, and my own devil's advocacy above. So please just install and use K9, exactly as you would install and use Thunderbird on a Windows XP machine instead of suffer the indignity of Outlook Express. And then simply be done, and try to enjoy and use the thing you've bought, you fucking pedant.)

In terms of "average users," average iPhone folks understand the App Store just fine. And, I believe, average Android users understand the Marketplace just fine as well. Which is quite good enough*.

Blackberry, meanwhile, came from a feature-limited world originating in it-just-works 2-way alphanumeric paging. The devices, historically, have not been all that flexible, so it was much more important that the default apps behave sanely.

Welcome to 2011, where that's no longer the case. Your Android phone, unlike an old Blackberry, is literally a pocket computer, and it will run whatever software you ask it to, just like any other modern computer...and it follows that the default software sometimes sucks.

*shrug*

*: Last I looked, and it's been awhile, the best way to integrate an iOS device with Gmail was to use Microsoft Exchange as a protocol selection. Yep: To get an Apple device to talk to Google most effectively, one needed to use a largely-undocumented Microsoft protocol. Huzzah!, or sth.

Re:It's funny

[bemymonkey]

One should note that this is specific to the crappy Motorola software. Stock AOSP Android is actually quite reliable, and has been for quite a while. Since 2.2 there are no more show-stopping bugs at all that I've seen, and even vanilla 2.1 was MUCH better than the builds Moto put out for the Milestone back when I still owned one.

Since CyanogenMod6 nightlies stopped building (a few weeks) I've stopped rebooting regularly (used to reboot to flash the latest nightly, well, nightly), and my Desire runs for 3-10 days at a time until I need to reboot for some reason (usually to flash an experimental Gingerbread build and see if it's usable yet). AOSP & CyanogenMod are rock solid.

Don't blame Android for Motorola's shortcomings... I was frustrated back when I had my Milestone too. Crashes (the camera was especially prone to those), lag galore, things just stopped working after a while, requiring a reboot. When I got my Desire and switched to AOSP builds, all that just went away.

Re:It's funny

[bemymonkey]

"No, because I like Motorola's integrated inbox feature."

Then realize that Motorola's modified E-mail clients are junk. You're blaming the entire platform for your handset manufacturer's faulty software. The stock Android e-mail client works just fine, both with IMAP and POP, and there are many alternatives that offer additional features if you're into that sort of thing. If Moto went and fucked that up, well, the blame needs to be placed squarely on their plate.

Re:It's funny

[volfreak]

Does that mean 'droid's going to have its ME day before then?

Re:It's funny

[narcc]

You even said your BlackBerry could be set to reboot every night, clearly it needs to be rebooted almost daily, otherwise why put in that option.

It must have been a third-party app as it's not a feature found on any BB I've ever had.

So it is clear that all of the top 3 smart-phone groups need to be rebooted from time to time so they function properly. So it's not really a liability since they all need it.

The only time I've had to reboot my phone were for certain "system" apps which required a reboot to install and OS updates. My current uptime is 20d 2h 16m. (Not bad, considering that I've only had my current BB for about a month.)

A lot of BB users will do a soft reset or pull the battery once a month or so to free up memory from leaky apps (as a 'best practice'), but a good "memory cleaner" app will completely eliminate the need. Though it hasn't been a problem on any model I've owned, with the software I had installed, I still like keep an eye on it.

(I think I may have missed some recent problems by keeping my last model, an 8820, longer than I normally do. I've heard of a number of problems on some late OS4 devices -- the 9000 and some Pearls being particularly weird with early builds.)

So it is clear that all of the top 3 smart-phone groups need to be rebooted from time to time so they function properly. So it's not really a liability since they all need it.

If I had to reboot even once a month I'd get a different phone. One of the many reasons I have a BB is the unparalleled stability I've had (and expect).

Re:It's funny

[narcc]

I suppose iPhones lack of turn-by-turn navigation is ... a feature?

Turn-by-turn is ancient history. The iPhone will revolutionize they way you get from one place to another.

You anti-Apple zealots just can't see how brilliant the lack of turn-by-turn navigation is.

Here's a clue: It's easily twice as good as not having multi-tasking. Which was so unimaginably awesome back when we didn't have it.

Re:It's funny

[TheClarkster]

You should look into sending your phone back in for warranty or something. But if the manual states it should be rebooted, they may not consider it a flaw. :( My phone has an uptime of about 4 months now. No issues at all. Stock Android. It's the Motorola hardware and software that is horrible.

Re:It's funny

[LodCrappo]

"So what is making all these other people choose Android phones instead of iPhones, assuming they don't share my unique background and prejudices? "

The answer to your question is quite obvious. People are choosing Android because they are not having the same experience you claim to have had, instead they are quite enjoying Android even when switching from iPhone like myself.

I don't know what god forsaken Android device you purchased, but I haven't rebooted my htc incredible in weeks, and even then it only rebooted because i forgot to charge it two days in a row and it ran out of juice. I've never had any issue with stability. Nothing random or strange has ever, ever happened on my phone. In fact, it's much more stable than my iPhone ever was.

Re:It's funny

[dfghjk]

More fanboy FUD. "junkware" and "malware" are not the same, and the iPhone has also had it's malware problems, even though the malware has to be approved and distributed by Apple (which has happened). Apple also has "junkware" on their phones, junkware being anything I don't personally want. And what exactly is "the android model" you refer to, considering you have spent so much time pointing out that there are so many?

Re:It's funny

[mswhippingboy]

Yeah, and everyone remembers what a flop Windows 95 was!

Re:It's funny

[zmollusc]

Heh, I had a nokia N95 (crappy GPS which i tried to fix with a rom flash which was only possible with the nokia tool which only ran on XP SP3 and didn't fix the problem and deleted the built-in UK map info and all user data. Thanks, Nokia) followed by an LG Renoir (could play divx files, but had flaky bluetooth and was pretty crappy all-round, no software updates ever made available) and a Blackberry (crap at everything bar receiving email).
When my contract finally expired I got an HTC Desire as I could put lots of PDFs, mp3s and txt files on a micro-sd card and cram it into the phone, I didn't fancy buggering about with iTunes in case it needed a certain OS and service pack etc.

Re:It's funny

[Deliveranc3]

I went here to try and help you. http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Main_Page Then I realized you're an idiot. Buy THE DEVELOPER PHONE! It costs $160! OR even better find an IT guy to help you make the transition to Smart Phones! What no one does that?! No wait I do that!

Re:It's funny

[tepples]

AT&T will let you use their smallest (200 mb/month) data plan with the iPhone.

But what minimum voice plan comes with this data plan? I asked in an AT&T store and a Best Buy Mobile store, and all data plans for smartphones were bundled with a voice plan costing at least $39.99 per month.

Re:It's funny

[AmericanInKiev]

Cool. Like maybe a JetPack app? That will be unimaginably awesome.

Re:It's funny

[Totenglocke]

Here's a clue: It's easily twice as good as not having multi-tasking. Which was so unimaginably awesome back when we didn't have it.

Well technically the iPhone still doesn't have multi-tasking - it has the OPTION for apps to use pseudo-multitasking. Only Apps that Appled designed and include in the OS are capable of actual multitasking.

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

How about "it's easy, if you accept Google as your one true email provider"? The default Gmail client works great, and you're required (at least on my D1) to set it up at first boot.

Ah, you've pointed out another example on my Defy. I like Motorola's Motoblur Integrated Inbox feature. Some people hate it but it works well for me. One reason why it works well, though, may be because I don't really use my GMail account for mail. If I did, it would annoy me, because GMail is one mail provider that does not integrate smoothly. You can set it up as an IMAP account but I understand you lose some functionality, so you'll probably want to continue to use the standalone GMail app. GMail Contacts import fine, though.

And then simply be done, and try to enjoy and use the thing you've bought, you fucking pedant.

I said I do. What I also said, is that it's buggy and inferior to the iPhone. And fuck you, too.

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

You're blaming the entire platform for your handset manufacturer's faulty software.

Am I? I bought a phone. It's an Android phone. I like it better than other Android phones I've used in the past, but it's still buggy, like all the other Android phones I've used. When a consumer goes to the store and buys an Android phone, what are the chances they are going to know how well that particular implementation works, any more than I can know how well mine works before I buy it? My understanding is that unless you get a Nexus phone you are always using non-stock Android, so I assume my experience is pretty typical.

As for Motorola's modified email clients, my understanding is that until FroYo the stock email client couldn't even attach a signature to outgoing email. Seriously? At least Motorola could cobble together that particular high-tech feature...

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

Just forward all of your email to your new Gmail account, configure it appropriately, and you'll be golden. Integrated inbox? Check!

Motorola's Integrated Inbox combines all your SMS text messaging, Facebook and/or MySpace mail, and email in one place. Yeah -- in my other post I said some people hate it. I get that. But I'm used to the BlackBerry, where messages are messages and you read them one at a time, one after the other.

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

I suppose iPhones lack of turn-by-turn navigation is ... a feature?

You make a good point. The fact that I get turn-by-turn for free on my phone is pretty damn neat. I live in a city, though, where that kind of thing seldom really matters, so I get a lot less use of that than most, I'm sure. It came in handy when I was out of town for the holidays, though.

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

One should note that this is specific to the crappy Motorola software.

If you read my post I believe you'll see that I did note it.

On the other hand, the Motorola software gives me capabilities I don't get with stock Android, and I use them often enough that I'll be sad if my next phone doesn't have something similar. So it's kind of a toss-up. I guess that's the real source of some of my frustration: Stock Android doesn't really work for me, and Motorola's mods... don't work [all the time].

But isn't every Android phone (except the Nexus) a non-stock build? So when you buy an Android phone, how do you even know what you're getting? People act like they can look at the screen, read the specs on the processor speed etc., and go "oh great, and it's Android" -- as if that means it's the same as every other Android phone. It's not, and that's definitely a platform issue, not a Motorola issue.

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

Buy THE DEVELOPER PHONE!

If by "developer phone" you mean the HTC Magic that's branded the Google Ion, I have one. I've had it since they gave them out at Google I/O, and I've never really used it, because it sucks. I tried it out for a few days, then stuck it back in the box and went back to my BlackBerry.

And this may sound strange to you, but although I suspect I know a lot more about IT than you (I certainly don't need an IT guy to "make the transition to smart phones"), I don't want to have to dick around with a modded ROM just to use a phone. I want a phone, not a hobby. I spend all day in front of the computer already. Twiddling around with a phone like it's a hot rod is a waste of time.

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

It must have been a third-party app as it's not a feature found on any BB I've ever had.

It's stock. http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2988/blackberry_set_your_device_to_automatically_turn_on_and_off/

Re:It's funny

[shallot]

"Unexplained things [...on a Motorola Defy running Android...]"

And this is exactly why I ended up with an iPhone.

It started simply enough, I bought a Motorola Q. [...] it ran Windows Mobile [...]

This lead me to upgrade to a HTC Mogul, [...] running Windows Mobile. [...]

Next came the BlackBerry Curve. [...]

Enter the iPhone. [...]

But the GP was complaining about an Android phone. If you didn't use that, rather you used WM and BB, how is your iPhone experience relevant to his? He could just as easily switch to a better Android phone, rather than go through all of these hoops to get to an iPhone ;)

Do you also own Apple stock by any chance? ;)

Re:It's funny

[narcc]

It's stock.

No, it's not. The feature the link refers to won't actually reboot the phone.

Re:It's funny

[adolf]

Oh.

I didn't know that it was completely integrated-ish -- I thought it was just for email. I don't know why anyone would ever want such a thing, but if it works for you then rock on, I guess.

In any case, please ignore the previous tirade. It is, I've just learned, without any basis in reality.

Apologies for the imputation.

Re:It's funny

[bemymonkey]

"When a consumer goes to the store and buys an Android phone, what are the chances they are going to know how well that particular implementation works, any more than I can know how well mine works before I buy it? My understanding is that unless you get a Nexus phone you are always using non-stock Android, so I assume my experience is pretty typical."

That is PRECISELY the problem I currently have with the whole Android ecosystem. It's so big and confusing that unwitting consumers are pretty much fucked.

Rule #1: Avoid Motorola devices at all costs. Not only are they locked down completely so that you can't swap out the software for custom builds (with the exception of the original Droid, that still had an unsigned bootloader), but the software itself is not very good, and their track record with bugs (not to mention with pushing out updates to FIX these bugs - Milestone and Defy are STILL waiting on Froyo o.O) on Android has been quite horrendous. The builds I used for a year on the Motorola Milestone (2.0, 2.1xx32, 2.1xx36 and the leaked Froyo [only played with the last one for a few hours on a friend's phone though, because I'd already returned my handset at that point - completely fed up]) were slow, buggy and unstable.

Rule #2: Buy a Nexus phone, OR be prepared to root and install a custom ROM that you really like (you should research this BEFORE buying). Of course, some devices run quite well even without tweaks - HTC's last- and latest-gen high-end devices are astonishingly polished (at least compared to other manufacturers' Android builds) in terms of software. This is, however, unfortunately not the norm, with companies like Samsung and Motorola bringing up the rear as the worst offenders.

People who know what they're doing are all running custom builds like CyanogenMod, with rock-solid custom kernels tweaked for insane speed and stability (I haven't had an unwanted reboot for months, and I'm running experimental nightly CyanogenMod builds), so they're all fine. It's the people who go into a store and buy the coolest phone in their price range that are getting screwed... getting stuck with the equivalent of crapware-loaded Windows XP, but with worse stability and reliability in many cases.

As for the feature issue: Yep, you're right, Android really is lacking features that many people see as complete no-brainers (So go star the issues on the bugtracker)... However, it's largely bug-free until the manufacturers start fucking with it. And hey, it has copy & paste, so stop complaining ;)

Re:It's funny

[Skuld-Chan]

For me - AT&T coverage blows chunks. Verizon - fwiw really does have a solid network with solid coverage.

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

I guess it depends what you mean by a reboot. In the case of my Android phone, a power cycle will fix the problems. You don't need to pull the battery (and I seldom did it on my BlackBerry), you just need to let it shut down and start up again (a classic reboot, in PC parlance). FWIW, though, in addition to the reboot the BlackBerry feature in question saved me enough battery so that I didn't actually have to plug it in but every 3-4 days. That's a lot better than the Android phone, which (while typical) needs to be recharged pretty much every day.

Re:It's funny

[narcc]

The scheduled "off" doesn't really turn it off in any way that would be meaningful in terms of a reboot.

If you have access to a BB, use the power-off icon to turn the phone "off" and then on again. (this is equivalent to what the 'scheduled off' does)

Now do the same thing with an alt-rshift-del or a battery-pull

You'll see what I mean.

Re:It's funny

[shellbeach]

Sounds like you're suffering from Motorola's own software they've placed on top of plain vanilla Android. I did have a quick look, and unfortunately Defy development seems pretty low-key at the moment, but if someone can get Cyanogen running on the Defy I'm certain you'll have a much better time with your phone.

I had pretty much the same experience with my HTC Desire. Once I got HTC's "Sense" software off it, and Cyanogen modded AOSP goodness onto it, it was a whole lot nicer to use and a lot smoother too ...

Re:It's funny

[josath]

Top of the line Android device (T-mobile G2, aka HTC Vision): Free, with two year contract
Phone plan: $65/mo, 500 minutes, unlimited data, 400 SMS

iPhone 4: $200, with two year contract
Phone plan: $65/mo, 450 minutes, 2GB data, no SMS included

I'd say Android does compete pretty well on price.

Re:It's funny

[wondafucka]

I, too, bought an Android phone in November (Motorola Defy). I like it, it's going to work out fine for me. But I have to admit, compared to the iPhone and BlackBerry both, my phone's OS is buggy and clunky, the stock Android stuff is lacking features, and the attempts by the handset maker (Motorola) to make up for its deficiencies don't mesh well with the core OS. Unexplained things happen every so often, which don't really phase me as a seasoned computer user, but would drive my mom bats.

The manual actually tells you to reboot the phone every so often. I don't disagree with this -- seems like sound advice for a device of this complexity -- but by comparison, my BlackBerry would actually reboot itself automatically every night if I wanted it to. And it turns out that if you don't reboot this phone, after a while it might do stuff like, oh, silently stop receiving your email. Reboot and ten messages show up. As a former BlackBerry user, that is not good. That is bad. And that's just one example -- it seems like random things will start to happen, which might frustrate you if you didn't feel OK with just rebooting the phone. (Though to be fair, any reluctance I have to reboot comes from me being a BlackBerry user, where rebooting is the last thing on Earth you want to do.)

I switched from BlackBerry because I felt like my BlackBerry Pearl was getting long in the tooth, and none of the new models appealed to me. Plus, change is good every now and then. I didn't pick iPhone for various reasons, mostly relating to not wanting to do business with either Apple or AT&T (and certainly not Verizon, when that happens). But I gotta admit, iPhone is the better phone. So what is making all these other people choose Android phones instead of iPhones, assuming they don't share my unique background and prejudices? It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.

Some of the android phones meet and beat the iphone for features and performance. Some of them are a little buggy and require the reboots you mention. Aside from the software that controls my camera and performs terribly in low light (ironically oversaturating the subject with a flood of light), I love the HTC Evo and think it's the phone for Apple to beat. On the other hand, the iPhone 4 is a work of art and a fantastic phone.

Re:It's funny

[RogerWilco]

I think I've rebooted my iPhone 3GS only once in the almost 2 years I have it. I'm unsure if some of the iOS updates also rebooted it.

But it seems fine running for months with intensive usage without any need for a reboot, just like my Macbook.

Re:It's funny

[RogerWilco]

It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.

Yes, it's price. Higher end Androids are price comparable with the iPhone. But there are lots of cheap (free with a contract) Androids. They're awful, but they look like a good deal in the shop.

I have to agree. Most of my friends who buy an Android instead of an iPhone do so because of the price.

Re:It's funny

[RogerWilco]

TomTom has been around on the iPhone for several years now. It has nearly worldwide coverage by now. I've used it to navigate in most of Europe (about 20 countries) and New Zealand. Sure, it's not free, but it's entirely offline, so no roaming and works fine in even the most remote areas of New Zealand, and has been very reliable and available. It's basically the only iPhone app I paid for, but it's been a really good investment.

Re:It's funny

[PCM2]

Maybe, but on the Android phone all it needs to start working again is a power cycle, not a battery pull. Unfortunately, that has to be done manually.

Re:It's funny

[magus_melchior]

One thing I'm not as fond of about Motorola's Android strategy is their penchant for marketing 6 underpowered crap Android handsets for every Droid X.

Sure, this may appease the marketers and the cheapskate crowd, but Moto doesn't have to sell both Pintos and Cadillacs, if you get my drift.

Re:It's funny

[rfslocutus]

It would seem that the price has gone down a bit. I do remember it being $299 for the 16 GB on launch here in Canada. Current price is $159.99 on a 3 year term.

Re:It's funny

[gmhowell]

Ahh, perhaps that is where the discrepancy comes from: $US vs $CA. Which, despite near parity, still results in price differences. Tariffs?

6+ Companies and 20 Devices...

[Anonymous Coward]

So Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC, LG, Meizu, and more have created well over 20 handsets on four networks which all together sell more in America than two models of 1 handset from Apple only on AT&T. These guys should be patting themselves on the back for a job well done.

Re:6+ Companies and 20 Devices...

[catmistake]

I believe they are too busy sweating the massive and perhaps incalculable revenue fail Android is facing outside the cell phone market... in, say, the media sales/media player/gaming device/tablet computer markets. How is Android still in business?

Re:6+ Companies and 20 Devices...

[Daetrin]

Er, what? The only heavily promoted non-mobile phone Android devices have been the Galaxy Tab and the Barnes & Noble Nook, and those have done quite well. And this is before the "real" tablet version of the Android OS has been released. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that a significant number of people actually involved in the business consider Android to be failing in that regard?

Re:6+ Companies and 20 Devices...

[catmistake]

I'd love to answer your question but you failed to see I was being facetious (Where do I buy Android stock?). However, considering Android isn't selling music, and "the real" Android tablet hasn't hit the market yet, I'd say IF Android were a company, it's painfully obvious they've already lost all those sales in 2010 to iPad, and if there were Android execs somewhere, they'd be worried that someone might notice they didn't sell anything in 2010 other than a few phones. If there was a revenue loss, I'd say it was failing to sell any tablets in 2010. Massive revenue loss there... failing to pick up the money.

Re:one to many

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no. See, the one many compared to many of the many ones have one more than the one but not as many as many other ones. Idiot.

Gartner?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gartner? Who are they?

Re:Gartner?

[mswhippingboy]

Gartner? Who are they?

Our thought leaders. Without them how could we make decisions?

I think its all a load of BS

[Octorian]

Seriously, I've come to the conclusion that all of these cellphone/smartphone marketshare/sales statistics are full of crap. Why do I say that? It seems like every single one of them shows a different contender in the lead, and usually whichever contender the presenter of said statistics is favoring at the moment. There are probably a hundred different ways these statistics can be compiled, and each one takes a slightly different approach. Sometimes they're comparing a particular quarter, alighted to a particular fiscal calendar. Sometimes they're limited the class of devices. Sometimes its US-only, and sometimes its Global. Whichever platform you like best, you'll find someone showing a survey/pie-chart/analysis showing how they're ahead of the competition.

Regardless, here's how I see the three mentioned players handling their game:

• iPhone - Single device (multiple revisions), OS and hardware by same company, limited cherry-picked markets
• Android - Device-independent OS, plenty of fragmentation, available in as many markets as handset-makers/carriers want
• BlackBerry - Device and OS by same company, tons of models, available in most markets globally

Re:I think its all a load of BS

[zmollusc]

Maybe you would be better off with lies and damned lies?

iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever

[tkprit]

If apple would clean up their act and not try to make iPhone/pod software bigger than the (or the) operating system, I'd support iPhone; apple does great innovation! But they need the competition, so I'm glad android and even ms and rim are giving apple run for their money.

win vista > iTunes

Yeah, i hate iTunes that much.

Re:iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever

[SpryGuy]

I agree, though to be fair, iTunes has gotten slightly less annoying over the last couple of years.

But I loathe iTunes so much that when my iPhone 4 contract is up, I'll be taking a hard look at WP7. If I can't find something I like there, I'll look hard at Android. And ONLY if I can't find anything there, will I even remotely trying iPhone.next.

Re:iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever

[Concerned Onlooker]

"apple does great innovation! But they need the competition"

I can't tell you how much that pleases me to read that. For so long all PC users could croak out was how little market share Apple had. Now that the shoe is on the other foot the PC crowd has had to find different reasons to make slurs about Apple products. Keep in mind that we wouldn't even be having these smart phone or tablet discussions if Apple hadn't broken those markets wide open for everyone else to follow.

You may not like Apple products, but Apple is setting the pace of the game.

Re:iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever

[jo_ham]

The feature is obvious:

* Plug in iPhone with iTunes open
* iPhone backs up automatically

If automatic syncing is turned off then do the following:

* Plug in iPhone
* Click iPhone in the left panel when it appears
* Click sync

The very first step of the sync process is backing up your phone, and it tells you it is doing that, every time you sync *unless* you sync shortly after already doing a full backup without disconnecting it or unlocking the phone with the slide control. The button is large and easy to see. And if the user has been using their phone "every week" then it will be immediately obvious.

Alternatively, if you want to use right click, you can do so by doing this:

* Plug in iPhone
* Right click on the iPhone when it appears in the left panel and select "back up".

Hunt around the net for how to back it up? Goodness me. Have you never used a computer before? It took you "over ten minutes" to find this? I'm amazed you managed to even register for a slashdot account. How did you find out how to submit the form?

Even if you had never used iTunes before, a computer literate person should have no trouble finding out how to back up an iPhone. I googled "how to back up iphone" also, and timed how long it took me to get to a page that told me how to do it: seven seconds, including the time it took me to open the tab and type the words and for the page to load. I could have shaved off some time by clicking "I'm feeling lucky" since I clicked on the top result, which was an Apple knowledgebase article.

Also, not to drag up that old flamebait nonsense, but the Mac has been supporting multi button mice since OS 8, and shipping with them since the mid 90s.

Re:iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever

[tkprit]

iTunes isn't even 'music manager'-proper, but a store. A store that is as large as an operating system, tries to install a browser and movie player with every update (even though you always opt out and can't use that bloatware from within the software anyway), and takes up a HUGE memory footprint. It lacks support for other music formats (because, I know, it's more of a store than a music manager). And while you have to tell it not to sync/delete your music (under advanced settings), I still haven't found a way to tell the giant music manager how to automatically detect new music on my computer.

It is gargantuan, when all it really does is let you make playlists and buy music. Yes, it's plug-and-play, but what ISN'T? Bitpim does that; is that even a 'feature' these days, or a basic requirement?

Over the years, I've had (and proudly still have) original iPod, and other versions of the h/w thought iPod Touch, and in each iteration the h/w has gotten better; the iTunes software has gotten worse. (Genius, for example). The safeties have been a PITA (like I'm never going to register more than 5 machines in a LIFETIME). iTunes is sorely in need of a hollywood diet; it's default modes shouldn't delete anything and the default installs shouldn't install anything except iTunes itself.

Re:iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever

[jedidiah]

The "obviousness" of iTunes fails as soon as you have more stuff than can fit on your phone.

Even on Linux the idea of running rsync on an entire directory is not that complex.

Re:iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever

[Phroggy]

Also, not to drag up that old flamebait nonsense, but the Mac has been supporting multi button mice since OS 8, and shipping with them since the mid 90s.

Minor nitpick: 1) while Mac OS 8 supported contextual menus, activating them with a right-click was only supported by third-party drivers (which some mouse vendors provided, but many did not), 2) you meant the mid 2000s, not the mid 90s, and 3) right-click on Mac laptops wasn't available until they introduced multitouch trackpads less than three years ago.

Re:iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever

[jo_ham]

Correction, it warns you *very explicitly* that your are not syncing with your "home" computer, and you have to click through at least two warnings that it will restore your phone if you proceed to sync with a new computer.

It doesn't just "rebuild your phone".

You get plenty of warning.

Re:iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever

[jo_ham]

Oh I did mean mid 2000s, my correction - in my head I had "5" and thought 95 instead of 05.

I was certainly using a two button mouse in OS 8.6 though.

Re:iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever

[Phroggy]

Oh I did mean mid 2000s, my correction - in my head I had "5" and thought 95 instead of 05.

I do this all the time too. :-(

I was certainly using a two button mouse in OS 8.6 though.

So was I, with a third-party driver. Also, InputSprockets supported multi-button mice natively, but that only worked with games, not regular apps.

Not a Surprise

[BondGamer]

When you have 100+ handsets sold by every carrier under the sun, of course you will sell more. Microsoft just dropped the ball and Google swooped in to take advantage of Apple's contract with AT&T. If it ended a couple years ago who knows if Android would even exist today. When it expires and Apple is allowed to sell the iPhone with whoever they want, Google is going to be hurting. The only complaint about the iPhone is you can only use it on AT&T. Compare that to all the criticisms of Android phones (bad user interface, slow upgrades, no upgrades, poor support, etc.)

Re:Not a Surprise

[Microlith]

If it ended a couple years ago who knows if Android would even exist today.

Because suddenly everyone would have Apple phones? Not everyone likes Apple.

The only complaint about the iPhone is you can only use it on AT&T.

Because it's otherwise flawless, right? Oh right, anyone with actual complaints against Apple is irrelevant and shouldn't be using smartphones anyway.

No, even with its flaws Android would still have a market.

Re:Not a Surprise

[Belial6]

There are a lot more complaints about iPhones than it being only on AT&T. Whether you prefer an iPhone or not, claiming that it's only flaw is the carrier is simply delusional.

Re:Not a Surprise

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unless Apple suddenly decides that they are going to abandon their strategy of focusing exclusively on premium markets, Android isn't likely to go anywhere(though the ground is going to get a lot rougher for 'flagship' android devices that land at or above iPhone price-points and attempt to go toe-to-toe on hardware and features...)

What all the bloviating about smartphones ignores is that there is a Gigantic pool of dumbphones and low end featurephones out there(and that a nontrivial slice of "smartphones" are the cheapest blackberry hardware available, being blown out as part of RIM's attempt to keep subscriber acquisition numbers up). Google has a strong interest in getting the users of these phones online, where they can contribute advertising revenue on the go just as they do at home, and there are plenty of OEMs who know how to make cheap hardware but have sucky or nonexistent software and localization skills who are perfectly happy to take advantage of the fact that you can be Google's hardware bitch for free, while MS wants to charge you per-phone for the same privilege.

Re:Not a Surprise

[BondGamer]

Of course there are other complaints about the iPhone. The point is the #1 reason people either don't like the iPhone or have not purchased it is because it is only available through AT&T. When the iPhone is offered through other carriers, AT&T will likely lose many customers. But overall Apple would gain the people waiting for it to go multi-carrier, plus the people who hate Android, and the people who don't get good AT&T coverage in their area. Google is already maxed out their customer base, Apple has tons of room for growth in the US.

Re:Not a Surprise

[an unsound mind]

I do prefer my half-cost Android phone over an iPhone. ... I'd have bought an iPhone at the same price point, but I am already worried about it breaking. No way I'm gonna pay for an iPhone without insurance.

Re:Not a Surprise

[narcc]

Google is already maxed out their customer base

I don't see how you can draw this conclusion from the data available. We haven't seen Androids growth plateau.

Apple has tons of room for growth in the US.

Do you have any data to support this assertion?

Re:Not a Surprise

[Cimexus]

When it expires and Apple is allowed to sell the iPhone with whoever they want, Google is going to be hurting.

Doubt it. Remember that the carrier exclusivity of the iPhone only exists in the US and maybe one or two other countries. In the vast majority of the world, it's a GSM phone like any other that you buy, pop your SIM card in (from any carrier) and off you go. And in all those countries, Android is doing quite well.

So I don't think the carrier exclusivity is holding Apple's sales in the US back as much as you might think. I mean, sure, it has SOME effect. But Android is a quality platform and I don't think the population of "people who would have got an iPhone but for their carrier" is ~that~ significant (I mean, if you REALLY wanted an iPhone in the US, wouldn't you just change carrier?)

Disclaimer: I own an iPhone 4 and like it a lot. However I am not a blind fanboi: Android is pretty sweet too. I've used both and both have some points better than the other.

Re:Not a Surprise

[LodCrappo]

wish i had mod points for ya.

you make exactly the comment I was about to write. Android is competing with the iPhone on multiple carriers in world markets and doing just fine. And here in the US, most people who want an iPhone have simple switched to AT&T so they can have one.
There will be some gain for the iPhone when it comes to VZ, but it just isn't that big of a deal. Apple isn't a stupid company, if they could have changed things dramatically with a VZ iPhone, they would have released it long ago.

Re:Not a Surprise

[mswhippingboy]

The only complaint about the iPhone is you can only use it on AT&T.

The only complaint? Really? Do you read much? Does "walled garden", "antenna-gate" or "unusable 3G/3Gs with iOS 4 until 4.2" ring a bell? What about continuous problems with syncing, data restoration and lost contacts? Overall, iOS is much less buggy than Android I will agree, but claiming that the only complaint about the iPhone is AT&T is just bunk.

Re:Not a Surprise

[Pecisk]

It is a surprise how do you got +4 insightful. Sorry to burst your dream, but in Europe, where huge bulk of mobile phones are bought without contract Android is already very popular and making huge inroads. And that was just first wave, with bugs and hiccups. Sure, lot of HTC droids where kinda experimental, but after that everything vent smoothly. HTC Dream, Desire, Desire HD, Samsung Galaxy S - those are big names in Europe and they are sold like hot cakes. Heck, even Sony Ericsson first Android phone Xperia X10 with 1.6 (while rest already using 2.1 or 2.2) did quite good and they brought upgrade to 2.1 customers some three months after release, which is first such upgrade for SE phones. I have bought HTC Tatoo for my girlfriend and she is quite happy. It is not the best of droids, but it is small, quick, resembles more of phone than super remote control, and it has HTC Sense UI.

Also I wouldn't write down Nokia just yet. It is high tech monster with lot of potential. Yes, there are kinda late with their MeeGo smartphone line, but their customers love their brand and if they will start their line just in right time this year, I'm looking for a lot of smartphone converts from Nokia dumbphone users.

Re:Not a Surprise

[Wovel]

You will eat a statistically significant percentage of your words tomorrow :)

Re:Not a Surprise

[Wovel]

99% of the worlds population prefers the walled garden, antenna-gate was always a load of BS, and there was never a problem with 4.2 on the 3GS.

So I guess other than the fact that you made up all your problems, I agree with you.

Re:Not a Surprise

[Wovel]

err 4.0->4.2 on 3GS

Re:Not a Surprise

[mswhippingboy]

99% of the worlds population prefers the walled garden,

I don't even know what that means.

antenna-gate was always a load of BS,

You think? Jobs disagreed. After 22 days of getting beat up about it with Apple denying there was a problem, Jobs himself stated "We've been working really, really hard for the last 22 days to try to understand what the real problem is, so that when we solve it, we actually solve it, rather than just putting a bandaid on it." Of course, they did wind up putting a band-aid on it in the form of a cover.

and there was never a problem with 4.2 on the 3GS.

Perhaps you missed the "until" portion of my statement above. 4.0 brought mine (and a lot of others) to it's knees, to the point that I had to restore back to 3.1.3 to have a usable phone. 4.1 still had issues (slow), but it at least worked. 4.2 was the release that the previous two should have been.

So I guess other than the fact that you made up all your problems, I agree with you.

All praise our thought leader "Jobs"!

Re:Not a Surprise

[RogerWilco]

Exactly, Google isn't fighting Apple, it's fighting Microsoft. It's the browser wars in reverse. Google giving it away for free while Ms charges money. Apple is in the end only interested in it's high-end niche like it is for laptops and desktops, it has just shown Google the way to one of MS's blind spots, just like it's trying with Chrome OS.

2-3 years from now, either MS will have crushed Google, or Google will be 70-80% marketshare with Apple owning most of the rest.

MS has only just woken up. If it starts giving it's OS away for free you'll know that the real battle has started. The Apple Appstore might stay the biggest as far as mobile apps go, because their market segment has the money to pay for the apps, while MS and Google will be fighting for the user group that will go for the cheapest option.

Moot point

[Radiophobic]

The conversation is about the market penetration of cellular phone OS's, not about the market penetration of the physical phones themselves. Really, if apple wanted to brag a higher market penetration, they would provide users with more options, like devices made by other manufacturers, or more affordable phones.

Re:Moot point

[dangitman]

The conversation is about the market penetration of cellular phone OS's, not about the market penetration of the physical phones themselves.

Did you even read my comment? If it was about OS penetration then why are they excluding some of Apple's devices that use the same OS?

Re:Moot point

[crossmr]

Because they're not phones.
The android devices are all phones.
an iPod is not a phone. Yes, using a wifi connection an app you can make VOIP calls, but it is not a cellular phone.

Re:Moot point

[dangitman]

an iPod is not a phone. Yes, using a wifi connection an app you can make VOIP calls, but it is not a cellular phone.

I'm not sure what your point is. The iPad is available in versions that connect to a celular network. What exactly are you trying to measure?

Re:Moot point

[BasilBrush]

So if it's about phones, and not the OS, then it's market share by manufacturer that matters. You can't have it both ways.

Re:Moot point

[crossmr]

Is it a cellular phone?

Re:Moot point

[crossmr]

It's about cellular phones that use a certain OS regardless of model or manufacturer not rocket science and if it's that hard to follow for you I might recommend getting off the Internet as you are likely to injure yourself or others.

Re:Moot point

[BasilBrush]

It's about cellular phones that use a certain OS regardless of model or manufacturer

Hey, if you're cutting the pie in two ways (device type and OS), why not go one further and make it by carrier too.

If it's about OS, then it's Android vs iOS. That means iPod Touch, iPad and Android tablets should be included.

If it's about smartphones, then it's the manufacturer of the phone that matters, not the developers of the OS they happen to run.

not rocket science and if it's that hard to follow for you I might recommend getting off the Internet as you are likely to injure yourself or others.

You're blowing smoke now.

Re:Moot point

[crossmr]

Because that is not the statistic being presented here. You want to cut it a dozen ways you are free to do so what is up for discussion here is cellular phones running operating systems and not random handheld devices that have nothing to do with cellular phones. Maybe we need a remedial.slashdot.org with pictures.

Re:Moot point

[BasilBrush]

Because that is not the statistic being presented here.

That's the point. It's a stupid statistic being presented here. Other surveys exist that make more sense.

Maybe we need a remedial.slashdot.org with pictures.

If you think it'll help you understand.

Re:Moot point

[dangitman]

Is it a cellular phone?

Why does it matter?

Again, I asked what are you trying to measure? Perhaps more importantly, why are you trying to measure?

Re:Moot point

[crossmr]

The article is measuring what OS is running on all cellphones regardless of make or model. I'm carrying on with this discussion on an iPhone and I'm not as bent out of shape or butthurt as the pair of you

Re:Moot point

[crossmr]

Why is it stupid because android is ahead of iOS?

Re:Moot point

[BasilBrush]

Why is it stupid because android is ahead of iOS?

With that sentence you demonstrated quite well why its stupid. Because it's misleading. Because it made you think that Android is ahead of iOS. When that's not the case.

Re:Moot point

[dangitman]

The article is measuring what OS is running on all cellphones regardless of make or model

But for what purpose is it doing so?

I'm carrying on with this discussion on an iPhone and I'm not as bent out of shape or butthurt as the pair of you

WTF?

Re:Moot point

[crossmr]

Why do we do anything? It's a statistic that tells us that app makers targetting cell phone users will find a larger market in android for example.

Re:Moot point

[crossmr]

Are there not more cellular phones running android than iOS in this market?

Re:Moot point

[dangitman]

Why do we do anything? It's a statistic that tells us that app makers targetting cell phone users will find a larger market in android for example.

That doesn't make any sense. If it were about selling apps, then why would developers care if the buyer owned a phone or a non-phone device? More to the point, if it were about selling apps, wouldn't the relevant metric be the number of apps sold, rather than the number of handsets sold?

Re:Moot point

[crossmr]

Because some apps are specifically for phones only like dialer apps. What good is a dialer app on an iPod?

Re:Moot point

[dangitman]

Why would you need a "dialer app" when the phone can already dial numbers out of the box? Moreover, why would this have any relevance to market analysis? I think you're grasping at straws here.

Re:Moot point

[crossmr]

Try a search, there are plenty of 3rd party dialer apps on the iPhone. What is measured by this analysis is relevant to people who are interested only in those who have cellphones, not in other devices. I'm sure they have their reasons for wanting that data.

on the iPhone you also have triangulation for gps-like navigation. You can buy a kit for the iPod but it's an add on and doesn't support it natively. That might also be relevant for developers.

Re:Moot point

[narcc]

Because it's misleading. Because it made you think that Android is ahead of iOS. When that's not the case.

It's only misleading if you're functionally illiterate.

That is not the fault of the article.

Re:Moot point

[BasilBrush]

Says the guy that thinks that because he has to reboot his phone regularly, that means all phone OSs need to be rebooted regularly.

Just how dumb do you have to be to make that leap of logic?

Re:Moot point

[narcc]

Says the guy that thinks that because he has to reboot his phone regularly, that means all phone OSs need to be rebooted regularly.

I believe I said the exact opposite of that.

Literacy is cool.

Re:Moot point

[BasilBrush]

Actually it turns out you copied the text of the person you were responding to, and forgot to mark it as a quote. Thus making a statement yourself that you didn't intend to.

Literacy - it's not just reading skills, but writing skills too. You fucked up.

Re:Moot point

[narcc]

Actually it turns out you copied the text of the person you were responding to, and forgot to mark it as a quote. Thus making a statement yourself that you didn't intend to.

Literacy - it's not just reading skills, but writing skills too. You fucked up.

That would be post #34813886

I see that I failed to format one quote. However, it was your inability to read which caused to you fail to put in the the proper context.

Sorry, a formatting error cannot account for you're unimaginable illiteracy. The meaning and intent of my post was quite clear, even with the minor formatting error.

Less significant tham claimed

[Anonymous Coward]

Android has multiple makers and carriers. Apple is the sole maker of the iPhone and so far AT&T the only carrier. If Verizon is becoming a provider for iPhone the percentages are likely to change. Most of the considerations for the geek community aren't even on the average users radar. Android isn't likely to replace iPhone so neither is likely to go away any time soon. The more likely thing is they will both pass Blackberry.

The real surprise here....

[beaker8000]

...is that microsoft actually has 9%. Am I the only one who thought that Kin commercial (where the dude takes pictures of his ex-girlfriend) was super creepy?

Re:The real surprise here....

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm pretty sure that Kin makes up less than .001% of that. WM 6.5, while pretty sucky, was(until fairly recently) your option for Exchange integration unless you could afford BES. Totally unsurprising to see some of that still floating around.

Re:The real surprise here....

[bledri]

...is that microsoft actually has 9%. Am I the only one who thought that Kin commercial (where the dude takes pictures of his ex-girlfriend) was super creepy?

It was definately creepy. I was amazed that commercial got past the story board phase. But I'm pretty sure the Kin did not effect MS's numbers much, there are a lot other Windows phones out there.

Re:The real surprise here....

[atengyuer]

i really agree.just like i do Thomas Sabo shop online if i can do iphone as so.

Enjoy it while it lasts

[mr100percent]

Once iPhone comes to Verizon (likely the announcement is Tuesday and release February), the iPhone will again rise to the top.

Re:Enjoy it while it lasts

[fermion]

I don't know if the iPhone will gain market share, but it will provide a relatively objective comparison. The iPhone will be Verizon shops along with OHA phones, and the consumer will be able to choose based on value. When this happens we will see what promotions will be required to encourage the OHA sales, such as the Droid buy one get one free.

Re:Enjoy it while it lasts

[mjwx]

Once iPhone comes to Verizon (likely the announcement is Tuesday and release February), the iPhone will again rise to the top.

Funny,

They've been saying "this coming Thursday" for the better part of 3 years now. This also ignores the exclusivity agreement between AT&T and Apple that doesn't expire until mid 2012

Re:Enjoy it while it lasts

[dbcad7]

Uhh yeah.. keep hearing that.. Yes the iPhone will be better on Verizon, but that's because the hardware will be fixed.. Some die hard Apple users will switch from AT&T to Verizon.. but then market share is not increasing is it ?.. just moving.. I don't foresee a mass migration of Android users to iPhone.. there may be some, but I think a lot of Android users will be looking more towards other Android devices to upgrade to (sorry the opportunity was missed by a long shot).. There is just not the iPhone envy out there that people seem to think there is... but speaking of envy, there seems to be a bit building for this device ... http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/motorola-atrix-4g-hd-multimedia-dock-and-laptop-dock-hands-on/#disqus_thread ... but keep thinking that the iPhone on Verizon is the next big deal if you want to..

Re:Enjoy it while it lasts

[evilviper]

You're making an idiot out of yourself. First of all, there is no "they", so they haven't been saying anything. Secondly, the rumors of a Verizon iPhone are not just random idiots here and there... Its been announced by major news media players like The Wall Street Journal. The millions of orders for CDMA iPhones went to the manufacturer some time ago, and at this point, Verizon has already sent out the press inventations for the big announcement coming in just a few days, and Apple has prepared their support staff for heavy call traffic next month. The evidence is overwhelming. And if you'd just kept your mouth shut for a few more days, you wouldn't have had the opportunity to make yourself look foolish...

BTW, Apple and AT&T renegotiated their contract some time ago, so your information on exclusivity is horribly out of date at best. Additionally, I don't see why you would be skeptical. Verizon is the biggest carrier, and Apple is losing marketshare to Android... they desperately want to get together with Verizon, and Verizon sees the chance to take a bigger piece of the wireless market. They've been the biggest promoters of Android phones because they couldn't risk getting left behind by the AT&T iPhone, and soon wont need to fight nearly so hard for their share of the smartphone market.

Re:Enjoy it while it lasts

[evilviper]

Its a nice theory, but people most certainly do NOT choose the cheapest wireless phone service they can, with good cellular service as low as $35/mo unlimited, and most everyone paying 2-4x that... so why wouldn't their apparent myopic behavior extend to initial prices of the phones themselves?

Re:Enjoy it while it lasts

[Cimexus]

I'm wondering what approach Apple will take with the increasingly-likely-looking VZW compatible iPhone:

1. Special CDMA iPhone for use on Verizon's network; no 3GSM/UMTS ability;

2. A single global phone model with both 3GSM and CDMA chipsets.

It would seem to me that option '1' would require Apple to have confidence that they will sell a lot of Verizon iPhones. After all, they'd have to have a separate R&D and manufacturing run for a separate model of phone that is completely useless to anyone but Verizon users (CDMA is virtually unused outside of the US ... it's GSM all the way in most places). Apple tend not to like fragmenting their models like that: in the past they have just had a single model each year (with different on-board storage capacities).

Which would suggest that option '2' might happen instead. BUT I'm wondering what having both chipsets in the phone would do to manufacturing cost, and to the size of the battery (since you have more internal components, you have less space for the battery). There are VERY few existing phones that can roam between CDMA and GSM networks so it would be a very unusual beast to say the least. On the plus side it would be great for Verizon users who travel internationally. (I imagine most CDMA users in the US normally have to rent a phone when they go overseas since CDMA networks are non-existent over most of the rest of the planet?)

Re:Enjoy it while it lasts

[MMC Monster]

Apple missed the boat. Agreed.

Andoid phones are both good enough and cheap enough. Apple will now have to compete on price, which is somewhere Apple is just starting to get good at.

It's a win-win for consumers. And I say that as an ardent iPhone and desktop Linux and Mac user.

Re:This all seems kind of wonky

[SpryGuy]

iPhone isn't really a single device... it's 3GS and iPhone 4, along with a few 3Gs and even some of the original phones still around. So really, four devices/models.

The iPhone commands a huge market....

[HerculesMO]

With JUST AT&T as a carrier.

When Verizon gets the iPhone, I say that the market share proposition shifts big towards iPhone.

Re:The iPhone commands a huge market....

[Clazzy]

But look at the UK, where the iPhone is on every major network. Apple is currently stable at about 30% (although the article seems to write it as a large gain for Apple) and Android's growth is skyrocketing.
http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2010/12/symbian-still-leads-uk-smartphone-market-but-apple-and-google-are-gaining/

Re:The iPhone commands a huge market....

[Totenglocke]

Wrong. Look at the rest of the world, where Android beat out the iPhone awhile ago. Yes, when Verizon gets the iPhone, iPhone market share will increase SOME, but not by massive amounts because the majority of people who want an iPhone already switched to AT&T and bought an iPhone. Contrary to popular myth, the majority of people are not so enamored of Verizon that they wouldn't change to AT&T if they really wanted an iPhone.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Cwix]

Your own article states that there is only a 1% lead on android. It looks like it could easily surpass iOS in less then a quarter.

That units in use

[obarthelemy]

I'm sure Apple is still making a lot more money from their hardware + software + cut of service fees + content sales + app sales + data harvesting.... ecosystem than all other players... combined, and creating nice lock-ins and network effects is the process.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Kitkoan]

The article you posted seems to being using information that was released sometime in Nov, while the /. article is using data from the end of Nov, making it the newer report.

Andriod - restarting Asian Consumer Electronics

[acomj]

At the expense of the Canada/US/Europe (Blackberry/Apple/Nokia).

    Seriously all those companies (Samsung/LG/HTC.....) would never have agreed on a standard OS if it wasn't for being scared into it by Apple /Blackberry.
Google really saved there hides by coming up with a very competent mobile OS.

A free OS with expectation of pumping us full of ads.

Seriously competition is frustrating when Apple/ Google start copying the worst parts of the OS (Google got rid of the return policy/ Apple buys an ad company)...
Not to mention the new trend of providers "Capping" all you can use mobile bandwidth.

Competition is good for consumers but I see a disturbing trend.
Sigh..

Hopefully because there are more players in this market "the web" remains a viable platform so the device matters less.

I don't own a smartphone....

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[poetmatt]

too little,too late.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Kitkoan]

I was mentioning that because you said that according to your linked article (and your posts title), iOS is #1 in the US (and might have been in the middle of Nov), but by the end of Nov Android was #1 in the US.

Re:one to many

[tao]

One? Apple has released 4 models of the iPhone by now, TTBOMK. Besides, I'm fairly sure the comparison is about mobile OS (so it should really say iOS rather than iPhone).

Re:This all seems kind of wonky

[oldhack]

Same thing as comparing Windows vs. Macs.

I guess Google is trying to pull MS in the 80s/90s with cell phones today.

Re:This all seems kind of wonky

[protektor]

iPhone is a single device? That's really strange I thought I could buy 3 different versions at my local AT&T store. The iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (16 gig) and the iPhone 4 (32 gig). Not to mention all the older iPhones out there that count as marketshare since they haven't been upgraded/updated yet. The iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4 series are very different from each other in features and horsepower. So no there is not just 1 model of iPhone no matter how you look at it.

WP7 Data Problems

[protektor]

If Microsoft doesn't explain what is going on or fix the problem people are having of random unexplained large data transfers, then WP7 will end up a has been. People are reporting 50MB transfers during calls, and 500MB transfers each night. I would never own a phone that randomly or without my knowledge started sending large amounts of data out.

http://windowsphonemix.com/news/unusual-usage-of-data/

Until this is addressed I would say Microsoft has a major issue. It is either a PR, such as it needs to be explained, or a software issue and it needs to be fixed. Either way the longer Microsoft doesn't address the issue the more it hurts them.

Re:WP7 Data Problems

[Enigma23]

If Microsoft doesn't explain what is going on or fix the problem people are having of random unexplained large data transfers, then WP7 will end up a has been. People are reporting 50MB transfers during calls, and 500MB transfers each night...

It's not so much a problem for Microsoft, but it will be a huge problem for consumers, as the network carriers all have clauses that say something like "The customer is ultimately responsible for all of the billable transactions (phone calls, SMS, data use) detected by the network and billed back to you, the customer."

Caveat emptor!

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Cwix]

You keep telling yourself that.

how is this news?

[grapeape]

Lets see every carrier having at least a couple android phones vs one carrier with a single phone the only news would be that it took this long. When a single model of android based phone on a single carrier overtakes the iphone then it will be news. I have an Vibrant myself...love it but by the same token my mother has an android phone and didn't even know it was android until I pointed it out to her. She picked up a My Touch a few months back because it was free with her contract renewal and it was pretty. Its great that Android has made such headway but lets be real, while some are actively seeking out a decent android phone because its running android, many people are getting android phones because some are cheap and/or free from their carrier. They really cant be compared.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[angus77]

It ain't hard to be number one when you have no competition. Let's see what you have to say about the situation come 2012.

Re:This all seems kind of wonky

[BasilBrush]

Market share is phones that are currently selling. So just the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS. They don't sell any of the earlier models any more.

Re:This all seems kind of wonky

[BasilBrush]

iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 is fair enough. It's pushing too far to make out a variant of memory counts as another model though. And no model earlier than 3GS counts because they don't sell them any more. Market share is how many have been sold in the most recent period. It's not how many have been sold ever.

Re:one to many

[tao]

I didn't include the iPod or iPad; iPhone,iPhone 3G,iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4; four models.

Re:one to many

[BasilBrush]

I thought iPod Touch and iPad was what you meant when you said "I'm fairly sure the comparison is about mobile OS (so it should really say iOS rather than iPhone)."

As far as iPhone models are concerned it only covers iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS. Market share is units that have been sold in the most recent quarter, not installed user base. The older two revisions you mention have not been for sale for some time.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Fjandr]

Comparing iOS marketshare to other smartphone OSes is even worse than the method used in this story's article. It's like bringing up Windows Mobile #s and claiming they're doing better in the cellular market than they are because of the total installed base (which includes a huge number of non-phone devices).

If you limit it to the installed base of devices that are designed primarily for cellular voice networks, the numbers might actually provide a realistic means of comparison. With them included, it's a journalistic hack job.

Re:Andriod - restarting Asian Consumer Electronics

[mjwx]

A free OS with expectation of pumping us full of ads.

I dont know where you got this expectation from. You've clearly never used Android.

I've been an Android user since May 2009 so I've had quite a bit of experience with the OS and not once have I had an advertisement foisted on me, let alone pumped full of them. Ad's are only displayed in an application if the developer chooses to do so. This can have negative effects, when Astro File Manager adopted ad's, I switched to EStrong. As it stands only 3 out of the 25 odd applications on my Motorola Milestone have ad's and these take up about 1/8 of the screen.

So... not pumped full of ads.

Re:Not Surprised

[MichaelSmith]

With Android I like the fact that I can install desktop widgets which run all the time. With iOS it looks like I have to run applications on demand.

There's room for both Apple and Google

[symbolset]

Apple is having amazing growth in smartphones also and the inclusion of more carriers in the US may help them some. I know a lot of people who just won't do business with AT&T even for an iPhone. There are a lot of Verizon customers who would like to give it a go. The share numbers don't exactly tell the whole tale either as the market for smartphones is also growing at an amazing pace. Apple makes a lot of money on every phone, they're selling a huge number of phones, and they're having huge growth. They should see a good bump when they open up to other carriers in the US. Their vast economies of scale are saving them on the Cost Of Goods Sold also. Any time Apple wants to take market share from Android all they have to do is indulge in that fragmentation bugaboo that seems to not be holding Android back and offer a variety of phones with different feature sets and price points for the folk who aren't a good fit for The iPhone. Frankly I hope they don't - they're consuming a large enough share of the world's production capacity for displays and Flash memory already.

But Google and Apple are not Microsoft. Neither of them has taken the position that for them to win everybody else has to lose. Their goal is not to own the market and use their dominance to suppress progress like it's some tech version of King of the Hill. Apple is going to take for the most part the premium end of the business and Android will take the volume. They'll each get a chunk of RIM's enterprise share. Every developer worth their salt is writing for both platforms now so they're getting some app-fusion going on. In the end there will be a lot more Android phones than Apple phones if for no other reason than not everybody in the world can afford an iPhone and the iPhone feature set doesn't meet everybody's needs and can't, no matter how awesome that feature set is because people have conflicting needs. Some people need battery life, some daylight-readable displays, some huge storage, some need low price, some need a physical keyboard, some want the thinnest possible phone. Apple will get a bunch of dollars, Google will get many more dimes and it will work out well for both. They'll both innovate as fast as they can to compete with each other, so we all win.

Everybody else though? It sucks to be you. You can't have the premium end, you can't have the volume end. You can't crack enough market share to get good developers because one cheesy breakout app on iOS and Android (Angry Birds) moved 50 million units and that's the KaChing lotto developers are looking for. You can't get the mobile ad dollars either. If you create a niche hardware feature it'll be on an Android phone in six months. If you create a useful evolution of the user interface it'll be a UI skin available on both iOS and Android with a dozen competing versions in three weeks ranging in price from ten dollars to free, and the developers will make more money on the skin than you will on the platform. Apple and Google have between them got this thing sewn up. Just to make it completely unfair those app and media stores and the Google home page are awesome places from which to sell the next generation products that latecomers are not going to have access to.

Tablets? I don't see any reason why the same story shouldn't play out there. Android's getting a late start like it did with phones, but there's only one iPad just like there's only a couple models of iPhone. There are hundreds of Android slates coming out to hit every price point and feature desired. They're not quite too late to the party. Apple should get the premium end again with the lion's share of the profits at a good margin because they have the innovator's advantage, the product is damn good, and the iPad 2 will be even better. Android should get the volume again and have to work harder for their money but rake it in too. By the time a credible third player shows up we

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[EsbenMoseHansen]

What I don't get is that the freedom-loving Americans are so crazy about such a restricted and tied-down product. Must be one of those opposites attract.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[Tanktalus]

I'm guessing here (translation: pulling it out of my ass), but I expect that while most Americans get that there is a concept of freedom which America is supposed to stand for, few realise how it affects them in day-to-day life. There was NOT a massive rejection of the Repubs after the Patriot Act. There was NOT a massive rejection of the Dems after Obamacare or the TSA's groping powers (it was pretty slight so far, and I'm betting on term #2 for Obama regardless). Why should something so minor as a phone to garner a bigger reaction?

It's not opposites attract. It's the plebs eating cake.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[LodCrappo]

Wish I could mod you up!

It is so disappointing to see my fellow Americans surrendering their freedoms in exchange for convenience,
though many of them are simply unaware of the the bad deal they're getting by purchasing Apple.

The bright side is that awareness and rejection of Apple's restrictive platform seems to be growing.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[drinkypoo]

Americans in general love it when they are free. Only a subset love it when everyone is free. Most people are content to be told that they are free. Note how many Americans, when you ask them about themselves, will tell you about their car and their house. Yet people are having their house sold out from under them illegally by banks and ending up on the street, and your car can be taken away from you and impounded at your expense on a pretext, and eventually sold at auction for probably far less than its value. Illusory freedom is apparently sufficient for, if not the majority, at least a number which can safely be called "many".

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[uglyduckling]

I know! You're so right. I'm ditching all my Apple products. I've also looked into my other equipment around the home, and it turns out that my Ford car only runs Ford software so I'm ditching that. Also I can only get upgrades to my Sony TV firmware from Sony - how closed is that!! - so that's in the bin too. And it turns out my dishwasher is closed! Damn! And my PS3, Wii and Xbox are all out too. Man, freedom is inconvenient.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[LodCrappo]

If your Ford car could only use Ford gas and only drive on Ford roads, or if your Sony TV could only tune to Sony channels, then you might have a point.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[cyber-vandal]

Although I agree with most of your post, as this is Slashdot I need to point out that Angry Birds is also available on Symbian and Maemo too. The developers have targeted every platform with more than a few thousand users by the looks of things.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[Americano]

Good thing my iPhone can run non-Apple apps and use non-Apple electricity and access non-Apple sites on the non-Apple internet.

Yeah, if iOS were as closed as you suggest, then you might have a point.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[LodCrappo]

You can't install apps that Apple hasn't approved. You can't use internet formats that Apple hasn't allowed. You generally can't replace Apple programs or even have access to programs that provide the same functions.

If Ford restricted their customers to approved gas stations or only roads which they deemed appropriate, people would be furious. As we are seeing more an more often, people don't like Apple's attempt to do similar things any better.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[Americano]

You can't use diesel fuel if Ford hasn't allowed it. You can't just drop a Toyota engine into your Taurus. You can't win an off-road race over rocky terrain in a Focus.

Yep. Your car analogy just keeps on working. Please develop it further, I'm interested to see where you can take it.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[Nyeerrmm]

I choose the corporations i buy from, and the cost of switching platforms is relatively easy. However, I don't have nearly as much control over the government I live under, and emigrating to another country to switch is a much more difficult thing. Also, the penalties for buying from an oppressive tech company are much less significant than living under an oppressive government.

Comparing one to the other is ridiculous.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[exomondo]

Although I agree with most of your post, as this is Slashdot I need to point out that Angry Birds is also available on Symbian and Maemo too. The developers have targeted every platform with more than a few thousand users by the looks of things.

And it's been announced for WP7 too.

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[Americano]

Right, because god knows swapping out an engine in a Ford doesn't require any specialized knowledge or equipment, amirite? I'd suggest that installing "whatever you want to install" on your iOS device is far easier for someone who doesn't know a lot about computers than modifying your vehicle "to run on diesel fuel or run better over rocky terrain" would be for someone who doesn't know a lot about cars.

And guess what, Ford designs the the Focus from the ground up without necessary ground clearance, air intakes, and special undercarriage protection that you would need on an off-road vehicle. Sounds like they're *actively* preventing you from using your vehicle in any manner you wish to me.

Here's the thing: products are designed for a set of requirements. If you want or need a Jeep, buy a fucking Jeep, don't buy a Ford Focus and then bitch that it's not a Jeep. If you want or need a Linux phone, buy a fucking Linux phone. Don't buy an iPhone and then bitch that it's not a Linux phone.

If you buy something that's unsuitable for your requirements, whose fault is that? You're not being misled, you know exactly what it does before you even open the package. Or are you going to admit here and now that you're "just one of the poor sheeple who buys whatever His Holy Jobsness commands them to buy"?

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[cyber-vandal]

That's another 5 customers then *ducks*

Re:There's room for both Apple and Google

[Deliveranc3]

This is foolish, the iPhone will be forgotten like OS2 Warp and Android will be everywhere! The iPhone is supposed to be "the one true phone" but it was designed to appeal based on simplicty. The perception of simplicity needs to remain for apple to hold onto it's customers. That's an illusion with huge costs.

Apple needs to evolve or die, and I don't think people are ready for an iPhone with more Gizmo's yet because they know nothing or they would have bought Android plus Apple simplifies everything with no choices and no training.

Re:bad comparison

[hpoul]

the real question is if you have a bigger market when writing mobile applications for Android or for iOS. you will obviously write for both right now, but when you need to decide with which platform to start this might still be relevant (although you probably still want to evaluate deeper and check which OS version is used mostly or what your target audience uses - if you target Mac users, you can probably assume that more of them use recent iphones than android based phones) .. for me the most interesting thing is how WP7 develops - as someone who has no desire to develop for WP7 i would love to see it fail. (It's really enough to develop for 2 OSes - and i don't think any cross plattform development solution feels "native" enough right now.)

my point beeing .. just because a statistic doesn't show who is "better" it might still be relevant..

Re:Not Surprised

[Zelgadiss]

I do wonder at times though, just how many Android phone sold are cheap low end "barely smart" phones.

Apple for most part has been keeping a "unified" front on their phones. All phones they are still selling have roughly the same abilities.

Old phones like the 3G are no longer sold, 3GS is the "current" baseline.

Apple is really selling "one" product. The Apple Phone. Of which there currently are 2 versions.

Re:The feature does not do as you say

[jo_ham]

I just tried it, using the built in help for iTunes.

Took me under a minute to find a step by step walkthrough of how to back up your iPhone.

Seriously, it's not difficult.

You also said "...a platform that only has one mouse button" which is either clear ignorance, or deliberate trolling. Given that it took you so long to work out how to back up a device that backs up automatically (unless it is manually disabled) and that can be made to back up manually in a single right mouse click, or in two left clicks if the main screen for the iPhone isn't already visible, I'm going to go with the former rather than the latter.

Re:bad comparison

[Totenglocke]

Except that this IS comparing the iOS operating system with the Android system. Just because Apple is foolish enough to severely limit the number of models is NOT Google's problem. I love how every time an article comes out about Android's rapid growth, Apple fanboys come out of the woodwork trying to make excuses for why you can't compare Android market share to iOS market share.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[TheRaven64]

All I can say is bye bye Apple.

Yes, poor Apple, doomed to be confined to the most profitable segment of the market. Sucks to be them...

Re:one to many

[robinvanleeuwen]

No it's comparing marketshare of two different paltforms. Android and iOS. It doesn't matter if iOS has only 1 phone and Android a gazzilion phones. Differentiating between an HTC Android or a Samsung Android would be the same as saying that a black, blue, red and white iPhone (pun intended) are four different phones. I mean that's what your doing. It's only because Apple has only one phone on the iOS platform the terms "iOS-platform" and "iPhone" are used interchangeably. In that sense it's completely fair to compare 'iPhone' with 'Android phone'.

You guys are like Vista lovers

[symbolset]

For years here on /. there were Vista fans who would not stop praising that piece of ineffable crap. A few persist still. It sucked. We all knew it sucked. "Buy a new PC" they would say, and the replies came back - "It is a new PC and it came with this crap." And still they would not quit. A thousand sockpuppets praising it from your Bangalore blog center are not going to make it not suck. Berating honest folk who tried it and share their sucky experience are not going to make it fly, nor quench the flood of people who are reporting that yes, it does have negative atmospheric pressure. The problem with it wasn't the marketing. It was the engineering. To get some traction here on /. and in the real world, the thing has to actually not suck.

WP7 is not good. It's not even close to good. It STILL lacks features like multitasking and copy & paste in 2011. A new contender doesn't have to have some good stuff - it has to hit all the corners and then have something special nobody else has got. Some new WP7 features are now promised, but updates to the KIN were promised too. Top-ten category apps are moving in the single digits of units - lifetime, not monthly or daily. It is a joke on itself.

I'm rereading this before posting, and am finding that this part doesn't have enough emphasis. So I'll say it plain: There are Top Ten apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace that have five sales total ever. This is not going to fund a development budget. They've reached 5,000 apps now so the vast majority of developers have to have no buyers at all, and probably less than a dozen downloads too. That is some serious suction.

Microsoft has somehow pushed 1.5M units into inventory at the merchants, probably on consignment, but they have no hope of actually selling them. The backlash when this all unravels will be epic.

Do you want to make a product that gets the /. crowd fawning all over you? I'll tell you how: raise the bar. Deliver something that does something current tech won't do. Make something that enables and empowers us to do the stuff that we want and need to do. Let us connect better with the people we care about. Let us get our work done more easily. And when we want that, get the hell out of our way.

Quit trying to believe that enough money thrown at marketing will put over a product that sucks. I know the advertisers you're working with say they can sell a turd sandwich, but we're not buying it. Their job isn't really to sell us stuff, it's to sell you advertising.

We here know that KIN had 300,000 facebook friends and under a thousand buyers. You can't put that BS over here any more. Try PCWORLD or Computerworld or whatever. They'll take your ad money and fluff your dolphin, or whatever the euphemism is today.

Re:You guys are like Vista lovers

[Bert64]

I can't say i've used windows phone 7 myself, nor have i been tempted to try, and neither has anyone i know... When talking about phones, there are a lot of things putting people off windows phone 7...

It looks ugly in the commercials, the big bland tiles that don't quite all fit on the screen, not very enticing...

It's associated with windows, microsoft seem to view this as a good thing and try to associate all their products with windows but it's really not, windows is associated with crashing, viruses and the other unpleasantness.. Now on desktops people assume that this unpleasantness is unavoidable because they don't realise alternatives to windows exist, but on phones consumers know that there are better options.
Also when you advertise a device as running windows, people will assume it therefore runs the same software that their windows based desktop does (and some of the advertising i've seen actually infers this)... Many people buy a windows ce based arm laptop, or a windows mobile phone and are severely disappointed to discover that this is not the case despite what the advertising leads them to believe. A mobile OS is a different product doing a different thing, give it a different name!

It misses basic features like cut+paste and multitasking... This isn't so much of a big deal as most users don't even know about such things, but its more of a problem than when Apple started out... When the first iphone went on sale many of the people who bought it were coming from dumb phones where such features didn't exist and were therefore not missed anyway. Today things are different, many more people already have smartphones and there is plenty of advertising in the mass media which mentions things like multitasking and cut+paste, wether users know what this means or even need these features the fact is windows phone 7 doesn't have it and is therefore perceived as inferior.

Re:You guys are like Vista lovers

[jez9999]

It's locked into the Microsoft App Store. All the lock-in of the iPhone. In my book this is a MASSIVE strike against WP7, to the point of my not even considering it.

Re:You guys are like Vista lovers

[Strudelkugel]

So I'll say it plain: There are Top Ten apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace that have five sales total ever.

Not sure about your numbers...

I have done some iPhone programming using XCode and Interface Builder. I have also used Monodevelop and Monotouch, which I found to be preferable. In my view, using XCode/Objective-C and IB is like being dragged back to the 90s. I have a friend who has completely dismissed WP7, who does a lot of iPhone programming. But what does he use? Monotouch because the Apple dev tools and Objective-C are archaic.

I started using Expression Blend and Visual Studio, which you can get for free, to try WP7 programming. The contrast between ExB/VS and IB/XCode is shocking from a developer's point of view. I would guess a team using the Microsoft tools could be anywhere from 2x to 5x more productive than an iPhone team, simply because the Microsoft development tools are that much better. No way is WP7 Vista. The dark horse might be Microsoft, but as developers start to realize how much better the platform is from a programming perspective, I think that will change. As soon as my carrier has a WP7 phone, I will be getting one.

Re:You guys are like Vista lovers

[recoiledsnake]

I thought Computerworld was the one that successfully trolled Slashdot anti-MS zealots by faking Vista and Windows 7 benchmarks? http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/why-we-dont-trust-devil-mountain-software-and-neither-should-you/31024

Vista was okay if there was no OEM crap and on speedy hardware with loads of RAM and your hardware and software was supported. That's why it worked for some. Coloring all of them as sockpuppets is juvenile.

And do you have a citation for the Kin's 30k facebook friends and under 1k friends? Thought there were only 9000 earlier.
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/08/microsoft-kin-facebook-app-shows-over-8800-active-kin-phones-debunk/

WP7 has polish and is ultra smooth and the metro UI is really innovative and good. If it was made by Apple, people would be singing praises of it over here ad nauseum. Cut and paste is coming in an update this month and has already been demoed at CES. And there are LOTS of non-geeks who don't care about multitasking. It's a good 1.0 product but MS is not pushing updates fast enough.

MS has the financial muscle to see it through. Remember Windows 1.0, the original XBOX, Word, Excel etc.?

Re:You guys are like Vista lovers

[iznogud]

I'm rereading this before posting, and am finding that this part doesn't have enough emphasis. So I'll say it plain: There are Top Ten apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace that have five sales total ever. This is not going to fund a development budget. They've reached 5,000 apps now so the vast majority of developers have to have no buyers at all, and probably less than a dozen downloads too. That is some serious suction.

Do you pulling these numbers straight from your imagination, or you have some source (as far as I can see, there's no any download numbers in Zune marketplace)?. Look at this guy:

http://www.nilzorblog.com/2011/01/android-vs-wp7-for-developers-case.html

He sold 36 copies of his app after a month. I'm looking at top 100 WP7 apps on Bing, can't find his app. Are you sure about that five sales total?

Re:You guys are like Vista lovers

[exomondo]

WP7 has polish and is ultra smooth and the metro UI is really innovative and good.

Absolutely, and when you go from using a WP7 phone to using an iPad, iOS feels very dated. WP7 doesn't include copy+paste, yes that is quite annoying, but at least it's coming, same as when iOS was first released. It doesn't have multi-tasking - which is apparently also on the way - and coming from an N900 this takes some getting used to, but then iOS's odd attempt at multi-tasking is far from the true system of the N900 anyway.

Re:You guys are like Vista lovers

[exomondo]

WP7 is not good. It's not even close to good. It STILL lacks features like multitasking and copy & paste in 2011.

That hardly qualifies as 'not even close to good', iOS doesn't have multitasking either (just some specific services that can run in the background). They have announced that those features are coming in the next update.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Bert64]

But consider other countries, where the iphone is already available on every network in the country, either officially via a carrier subsidised handset or unofficially by simply using an unlocked handset.
It's only really the US where the iphone is restricted to a small subset of networks.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Bert64]

Apple aren't going anywhere... Once the market settles down you will likely see iOS taking a significant portion of the highend, with various android handsets occupying the lower ground. I imagine RIM will get pushed into a niche with business users as they don't really have a very good consumer offering.
Also remember that android is a platform used by multiple manufacturers while iOS is used by only one, there may be many more iphone 4s out there than any given model of android phone even if android as a platform has far more market share.

Plagiarism and lies

[FrootLoops]

I agree, their reporting is not rigorous. The first sentence, "61.5 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in November 2010", is saying the number of smartphone owners did not change by more than 100,000 for 3 solid months. The next clause of that sentence, "up 10 percent from the preceding three-month period", clearly contradicts this. They don't link their source, though they do at least say "according to comScore". I found a press release by comScore which appears to be the source of the table from the TechSpot article. Interestingly, the first sentence of the TechSpot article I quoted above appears verbatim in the comScore press release. Neither discusses how the numbers were compiled or possible sources of error or discrepancy with other, similar reports.

Really, it's poor reporting for TechSpot to plagiarize from comScore, and for comScore to report patently false information with insufficient discussion. And this is why I so often get mad when I read journalist's statistics.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[gilesjuk]

Not to mention that in the US the iPhone is only available on one network, one which many people don't like.

Rumour has it that Verizon will soon be selling the iPhone 4 and that will result in more sales.

Everywhere else in the world the iPhone is available on multiple networks. It would be interesting to see the EU figures.

Meanwhile in the rest of the world...

[mvdwege]

The global numbers are more amusing. Over the year, Nokia/Symbian has retained its majority market share, only dropping 7% in a market that has grown 64%; with Android and iOS more or less in equal competition for second place. (Source)

For some reason the discussion on the completely distorted US marketplace is amusing. But I question the relevance.

And finally, let me add that I vastly prefer my phone run an operating system that is designed to run phones, not an app or advertising channel primarily, no matter how shiny it looks.

Mart

Re:Meanwhile in the rest of the world...

[Xuranova]

The US discussions tend to focus on smart phones (ones that tend to require data plans). Anytime you mention Nokia/Symbian and the global market, stats tend to refer to any and all Nokia phones that run Symbian (which isn't that pretty much any Nokia phone that isn't running Maemo/meego/etc?)

Re:Meanwhile in the rest of the world...

[mvdwege]

US discussions tend to redefine 'smartphone'. In general, it has always meant a phone with PDA capabilities (addressbook, calendar, capable of running non-preinstalled applications). In that definition, anything running Series60 or better is a smartphone. In the U.S. discussion, this is redefined as 'feature phone'; usually to artificially inflate JesusPhone market share.

Mart

Re:Meanwhile in the rest of the world...

[Shihar]

Symbian never gets mentioned because 90% of the Symbian phones would be called "feature phones" in the US. The line is fuzzy, and I hear Nokia is desperately trying to jump back into the game, but if you gave most people who have an Android or iPhone a Symbian phone and told them it was a smart phone, they would laugh at you. Most Symbian phones don't pass the "this is a smart phone? lolz" test. You can dice it up any way you want... but in the US the assumption is that when you talk about a smart phone, it has to be an actual smart phone with a data plan where you might end up using some data. Maybe this isn't fair to Symbian, but Symbian clearly is not in the same class as Android or iOS. Hell, Blackberry is just barely in the same class with Android and iOS.

Re:Meanwhile in the rest of the world...

[Totenglocke]

No, there's a distinction made between "feature phones" and "smart phones" because smart phones can DO a lot more. I have a friend with a "feature phone" and it annoys him to no end that it's completely useless when compared to the smart phones the rest of our friends have (his contract isn't up for a new phone for like another 4 months). I hate to break it to you, but even the crappiest flip phone has a calendar, address book, and often can add in some extra programs - are you really going to try to claim that those are "smart phones"?

Re:Meanwhile in the rest of the world...

[saihung]

Because people who don't know what it is would laugh at it? That's your gold standard, huh? Nice.

Re:Meanwhile in the rest of the world...

[mvdwege]

Actually, yes, I am claiming exactly that most phones in the bulk retail segment could be considered 'smart phones'. The 'smartness' has been moving downmarket a lot since the days of the Psion and the Nokia Communicator (the original smartphone). Apple in fact bucked that trend by aiming at the high end, as they always do. Whereas Nokia does what it does best: selling lots of hardware in bulk, and slowly moving more features from the high end into the bulk product.

And as for the data plan: that's a carrier thing. My old Nokia 6820 already came with full Internet access (then again, I live in a country with a sane mobile phone market), so if that's your criterium, then yes, so-called 'feature phones' are just smartphones redefined so that the JesusPhone won't have any competition.

Mart

Re:Meanwhile in the rest of the world...

[Etiko]

Your definition of a smartphone makes no sense. Please can you clarify?

Re:Meanwhile in the rest of the world...

[Skuld-Chan]

On Nokia when I used to use there Symbian phones I was the only one who ever had one... I see android and apple phones every single day everywhere and I have a decent sample size since I work at a university.

I really wonder who is buying and using Nokia smart phones in those quantities?

Re:Meanwhile in the rest of the world...

[mvdwege]

A Nokia. Duh.

Mart

Re:one to many

[icebraining]

Market share is units that have been sold in the most recent quarter, not installed user base.

That's not what TFA numbers are about. They're counting "Total US Smartphone Subscribers", not just last quarter sales. In fact, they specifically say the total "cake" (the 100% of the numbers) is 61.5 million people. That can't possible be only new sales in Q4 2010.

Due to model options

[nurb432]

Its due to the fact you have tons of models from many carriers to choose from. With the iPhone, you basically have 1 choice for both.

Sort of what happened to VHS and Betamax... the better product lost out due to Sony's lack of willingness to license out and keep control over it ( until it was too late ).

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[DJRumpy]

I think you are both correct. The iphone probably remains the single largest handset on the market. I would imagine there isn't a single handset out there that comes close to iPhone numbers since it commands such large market share off of no more than an iPhone, an iPad, and an iTouch device, with the iPhone taking the lions share.

I'd be curious to see what hardware model on Android is the top seller and what it's numbers are compared to the top selling iPhone.

Re:hahahahah

[jedidiah]

Is there a simple way to delete all of your SMS messages on an iphone yet?

All of my previous non-smart phones could do that.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Tanktalus]

Perhaps you're so deluded by your fan-boism that you don't realise what the /. crowd generally find distasteful about the iPhone and iPad. It's not that it's from Apple (Macs are generally still well-liked around here, partially based on the BSD kernel - though I have no use for Macs myself). It's the lock-in. In general, /. hates lock-in from any vendor. Heck, I remember even ChromeOS getting the hate-on for being so locked down, and that's from one of our favourite companies (Google) based on one of our favourite OS's (Linux). It's not Apple. It's lock-in.

If I could flip a switch to say, "I'm an advanced user, get out of my way," on either the iPhone or the iPad, I'm sure it wouldn't be nearly so bad. Some way to get arbitrary applications from arbitrary locations would solve pretty much the whole /. issue with these devices. That there isn't even a secondary app-store that is recognised by the devices in the meantime also grates on the collective consensus. If there was at least competition in stores, that would mitigate, though not eliminate, concerns. Yes, newbs would have to look in multiple places to find what they want, but since nearly everything goes through a search engine anyway, that's probably not such a big deal.

In the meantime, the disregard your attitude gets on /. is simply for your lack of stand for freedom. Instead of saying "I am happy with the device," people may be expecting you to say "I may be happy with the device, but it's too locked down for general use, so I'm going to vote against lock-in and not buy it to discourage vendors from attempting such restrictions on freedom." Maybe that's a bit harsh of a requirement, though I understand where it comes from. (Largely, a mob-mentality on some issues. Oddly, /. seems to have multiple mobs on issues, so there is likely a mob that supports you, too.)

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Ronin Developer]

Does it really matter? These sound so much like religious or political argument wars - its crazy. Next, we'll see people getting shot over them like what happened in Tuscon yesterday. Stupid.

Android is on more phones because there are more manufacturers selling phones with Android on them. Why? It's free.

iOS is simply for Apple devices for the foreseeable future. It's not free and closed. The closure means, theoretically, that Apple is trying to maintain some control over quality and market saturatation of a given app type. Verizon did that with BREW. Symbian apps required approval also.

Tablet wise, until Android 3 is actually out there, the iPad is the King of the Hill. And, when Android 3 tablets become available, there will still be a market for both.

The consumers of a particular device, Apple or Android are two different types of consumers. I have an Incredible - I like it (no-I haven't rooted it yet). It behaves differently from my iPhone and is taking some getting used to. I have an iPhone and I love it. I have an iPad and an iPod Touch. I love the iPad - it goes everywhere with me. Why? Because I can do what I need to with it and it's not bulky like my laptop. If I need more power, I'll work on it at home or in the office on a desktop or laptop.

For me, I see a bright new world out there waiting to be explored. Lots of opportunities. And, if Android 3 takes off - and, I hope it does - it potentially means more money in my pocket.

If you want Open do as you please - go with Android. If you want a market that's a little more conservative but likes cool toys, go with Apple. Or, go for both.

Re:This all seems kind of wonky

[jedidiah]

This is exactly what the iphone nay-sayers have been saying all along.

Of course the Apple fanboys all screeched that this would not happen.

Now it has.

Now I suppose many of them will change their tune. It seems some already have.

Verizon iPhone data plan

[Isaac-Lew]

I don't think a lot of people are going to switch to the iPhone on Verizon, simply because I believe Verizon will charge an excessive amount for data (especially if it's LTE-capable).

Re:Verizon iPhone data plan

[Americano]

especially if it's LTE-capable.

It almost certainly won't be, at least this year. My bet is a GSM/CDMA "iPhone 5" model (using the Qualcomm dual-transmitter chip) that runs on any US network this year, with a 4G "iPhone 6" next year, or perhaps with "iPhone 7" in 2013 (which, coincidentally, is when Verizon predicts their LTE coverage will "match current 3G area.")

The LTE chips are still very power-hungry, which means you either carry around a big battery pack, or you get sub-par battery life when 4G is active. It's also available in only a couple dozen cities around the US so far, with plans for "aggressive growth" this year and next. Early adopters may want the 4G, but that feature is pretty pointless outside of a fairly small number of urban areas. My guess is Apple doesn't want to limit itself to 10% of Verizon's customers, and will push for an initial release that will appeal to lots of people - a 3G-capable phone. I suspect we'll see one GSM & CDMA version, rather than two separate "Verizon" and "AT&T" versions, because Apple tends to favor simplicity in its product lineup, with a few key differentiators that are easily grasped: 16/32GB; Black/White. I don't see them willingly entering into a "Black/White, 16/32, GSM/CDMA, 3G/4G" type of model lineup - gets too confusing too quickly for customers.

Of course, this is just pure speculation, but I think it's the most likely course, given Apple's recent history and current product lineup.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[dfghjk]

So first you are claiming that Apple's marketshare is composed of a single phone (when it's actually 4) and now you are adding in the iPad. What a sad, fanboy hypocrite you are.

From the article you linked to:

"Android OS is still the best-selling smartphone OS among recent acquirers in the last six months, with a 40.8 percent share, compared to 26.9 percent for iOS and 19.2 percent for RIM."

I'm sure the Verizon iPhone is going to reverse that trend. ;)

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[KarrdeSW]

This article is stupid. It's comparing a single smartphone to an entire platform running on multiple smartphones.

Not it's not, it's comparing Smartphones to Smartphones. TFA is just including Android smartphones, which makes it a fair comparison. Of course, your article makes the exact same comparison. What is different about your article is that it excludes all smartphone users under 18 for no apparent reason, while the primary article includes everyone 13+.

Believe it or not, people under 18 still make and spend money. Though if your selection bias makes your point stronger, feel free to try to fool people with it.

PS - Even your article shows that Android's growth make Apple and RIM look like dead fish.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[dfghjk]

Except you are wrong. The article refers to "Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+"; it would include any Apple "smartphone" of which there are several. The point is moot, either Android has passed iOS or it is about to. Why you are motivated to lie about this is the interesting question.

Next thing you know...

[Jawnn]

Someone will be publishing a story on how a "totally dominant" phenomenon like Facebook is beginning to show predictable signs of decline. Oh, wait...

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[metamatic]

Does it really matter?

Yes, it does matter.

I'm a Mac user. I have been for 20+ years. I have two Macs, an AppleTV, and four iPods in the house. So I'm not religiously opposed to Apple, far from it.

But I am utterly opposed to a future where the hardware vendor is allowed to decide what software is allowed to run on computers. That's why I want to see iOS fail. I want to see it drop to single digit market share and be abandoned by developers. I want it to fail so badly that nobody ever tries the same thing again. Same for Windows 7 Phone.

...Though if Steve Jobs added a jailbreak checkbox in the preferences and opened up the platform, I'd probably buy in immediately. Though frankly at this point Android is blatantly outstripping iOS in capability, so Apple's window of opportunity to open the platform and get more buy-in is closing quickly.

Re:Where do you get this idea I'm knocking the App

[jo_ham]

You're backtracking, having been called on something. I might as well say "lolz, Windows bluescreens all the time, you have to reboot it every night" but it doesn't make it true, and using it as an argument for something totally unrelated is just nonsense.

Your eMac supports a two button mouse, and always has. All of the menus and OS, plus shipped apps support it. Reality wins again!

That "crappy interface" that confused the user is not the issue - a "well educated computer literate" user that took over 10 minutes to solve a problem with the help files available (under a minute to find the right bit, with a walk through) or via google (under 7 seconds to search for and load a relevant page, but he said that the guy's computer had "some restrictive internet policy" that apparently blocks google, but only mentions this after I bring it up) is seriously clutching at straws.

The interface may be a little less streamlined than a dedicated phone sync app, since the iPhone features were grafted on, but it's not *that bad* that it takes a computer literate person all that time to work out. Even just randomly pressing buttons gets you to the right thing, or just right clicking on various UI elements (like the iPhone, displayed in the side menu for example) that has it all listed for him.

If he's going to play the "oh woe is me, it's so hard! the UI is so bad I can't find anything I need!" then I can play the "yep, you're stupid" card in response.

Re:This all seems kind of wonky

[dfghjk]

Apple has made 4 different iPhones and multiple versions of each. All count toward its marketshare, Total marketshare matters to a whole lot of people whereas how many manufacturers and permutations does not. The iPod Touch and iPad are not phones. It's not a contest of who is the greatest, it's a comparison of smartphone marketshare.

If you want to look at trends, consider recent sales numbers. After all, smartphones don't often have long lifetimes. In this comparison Apple gets beaten soundly.

Re:one to many

[BasilBrush]

You're right. Looks like the /. editor chose a bad title.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

Your eMac supports a two button mouse, and always has. All of the menus and OS, plus shipped apps support it. Reality wins again!

The software runs properly with one by design just as I have said it does. What is with this childish game of pretending I wrote something different and this "backtracking" shit? The words are all there above.

is seriously clutching at straws

Or relating an real anecdote that shows how poor the user interface of iTunes on the MS Windows platform is. You brought all the other baggage in yourself by not comprehending my line that the help should be available with the software. I then had to explain what you should have worked out from the information available.
Instead you blame the user and call the messenger names. If a user that may use things on three different operating systems in the one work day and has two degrees can't work it then there is something wrong. I didn't bother to work it out (just googled it instead) and then could understand from the directions that the user couldn't work it out due to an utterly stupid inconsistency in UI design. You can't just go around calling users stupid in cases when it is the developers that are quite obviously at fault. It's like calling a Zune user stupid because they don't know to change the date if it won't work at the end of a leap year.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

The help *is* in the software, that is what I am saying, It took me less than a minute to find it *in the software's own help*.

The point about the mouse was that if you really can't see someone stating "a system that only has a one button mouse" with a correction from me stating that it supports multi button mice and has for a very long time, even if it can still use a one button mouse if you like... well, we'll just leave that one in the "you're not going to see the debate my way". I corrected an erroneous statement, such is life.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

Your first example was of how do it was completely incorrect which makes your above comment a very stupid and transparent lie.
The "some idiot" line was not there as bait to try to catch one so please stop acting like one. Please go away and find something useful to do instead of implying that we should lock out most of the users instead of improving the software.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

How was it incorrect? Plugging in the phone and having it sync automatically is the default behaviour, and includes a full phone backup as the very first part of that process. The only time you would have to do anything else *ie, looking for options of how to backup) is if the automatic sync had been disabled by the user (or someone else who set up his iPhone for him) on purpose.

For the record, go to help, type in "iPhone", then the go to the section about backing up your iOS device. From the help files from within iTunes itself:

When you connect your iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad to your computer, certain files and settings on your device are automatically backed up to your computer. You can restore this information to your device if you need to (if you get a new iPhone, for example, and want to transfer your previous settings to it).

Automatically backed-up information includes text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, and more.

In addition, photos in Camera Roll (iPhone or iPod touch 4th generation) or in Saved Photos (iPad or iPod touch 3rd generation or earlier) are also backed up. Other media files (such as songs, videos, and some photos) aren’t backed up, but can be restored by syncing with iTunes.

iTunes can also encrypt your backups to secure your data. iPhone OS 3.0 or later and Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later are required for encrypted backups.

(emphasis mine)

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

Plugging in the phone and having it sync automatically is the default behaviour, and includes a full phone backup

If it actually was like that there would be no thread here.

certain files and settings

and here's what the context actually was:

how to back up their phone in iTunes before sending it in for repair

It appears you are playing the childish trick of pretending that something means something else. Grow up.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

Yes, there's not "special" backup needed before sending it in for repair - a normal backup will do just fine for that, so any of the three methods that I indicated (the automatic one, the normal manual sync, or the right click and backup from the side menu) are all perfectly suitable for backing up your phone before sending it in for repair - the iTunes help file even states that the backup is suitable if you are completely changing to a new phone and want to restore everything on the old phone onto it.

You are looking for ways to make me wrong here, and are rapidly running out of options. The original poster was called on some total bullshit in his attempt to use hyperbole to make iTunes and the iPhone look bad, and ever since then him and other people have been attempting to justify it in the face of cited evidence to the contrary. The only two choices in this situation are either trolling or stupidity - pick your poison.

I turned 30 two days ago, insofar as growing up goes, it seems that it doesn't stop me arguing on the internet. I guess I am retarded.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

Bullshit. If the user did what you described in your simplistic non-answer above (just let it do it automaticly which is not what it does) they would need to buy all their apps again. You have failed your own computer literacy test dismally in addition to insulting the user.
 
As for making it look bad - it is bad. Hence the example of how bad it is.
Your comments are getting a long way from a rational discussion. Are you playing some sort of game here to see how many times I can state the obvious?

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

No, the auto backup solution, as described stops if it discovers apps that are on the iPhone but not on the computer, during the auto backup sequence and ASKS THE USER IF THEY WANT TO COPY THEM OVER TO THE COMPUTER DURING THE BACKUP SO THEY DON'T LOSE ACCESS TO THEM, OR HAVE TO REPURCHASE. It says this *very explicitly* and you have to confirm *very explicitly* if you want it to ignore the apps that are not on your computer already (and thus lose them) or copy them over as part of the backup process.

If you select "yes, transfer my purchases" (the button is also labelled 'transfer purchases') then it will copy your apps (that don't already exist on the home machine, so it will copy over apps you have updated on the phone in between sync sessions), and then it will perform a full backup and sync.

My apologies if I am making you (or the original commenter) look ignorant, but you don't seem to have any actual experience of what iTunes actually *does* in these situations. All of your comments reek of heresy and half-truths, retold from second hand experience of ill-informed slashdot commenters.

If you had actually experienced what iTunes does (or actually read the prompts that it gives you) then you wouldn't be making such absurdly false statements that I could disprove to you with an iPhone, a copy if iTunes that it is synced to (or not synced to even) and a fresh purchase (even of a free app) from the app store, followed by plugging that iPhone in, even if auto sync is turned off.

  My computer literacy is not in question here - I have actually done these steps personally.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

What you described at the start of the post did not actually happen when the user ran the software. I was in the same room doing something else so I am quite certain of that.

heresy

Now we get down to it you horrible little fanboy. Blind fucking tribalism is leading to you spewing vast amounts of bullshit and childish insults because somebody pointed out a problem in something you worship. That explains why you didn't bother to read most of what I wrote. Please have the decency to actually read the remainder of this post where I attempt to outline the problem. Please look at it in isolation and ignore any baggage about the brand - I like the brand - just one aspect of one bit of their software maybe thrown together by a third party is being presented here as a textbook example of crap design.
In my opinion your insults really reflect the poor UI design even more. If the user has to be highly computer literate and if somebody with two degrees is considered too stupid to run consumer orientated software then there is something seriously wrong with it. IMHO it's the mixture of menus and icons combined with left then right mouse clicks. It's like a fucking hidden special combat move in a video game and does not belong as the way to get to a primary task of a piece of consumer software. If it was me I'd put it on the file menu along with all the other file operations. It's a short menu, sync is already there so why not backup as well? It should be simple enough that a user does not have to ask for help. Even the Nokia crap software doesn't mess it up so badly.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

Do you know what the term "heresy" actually means. It's not a religious term, it specifically means "rumour" - which is exactly what your attempts to tell me that factual information that I have posted, cited by official sources, and personally experienced by me on many occasions across several iOS devices across numerous generations (since before it was even called iOS) is incorrect.

You have latched onto one word, that you do not seem to fully understand, and have resorted to throwing ad hom attacks at me, which is fair enough I suppose - I have suggested that you are either stupid or a troll, not quite in an ad hominem way (I have backed it up with evidence and questions), but I suppose it's inevitable eventually that you would go that route, in the face of no other available direction.

In terms of what I "worship", Apple would not be among them - Apple stuff is a tool to get the job done, and it has plenty of flaws both in terms of corporate policy of Apple as a whole and in various hardware and software implementations - ask a Mac user about what they think of the Finder, for example. Now *there's* code they really need to go back and start again with, never mind iTunes. Since we are actually talking about iOS and iTunes, I think it is *crazy* that the iOS calendar app doesn't have a way to show (or sync) ToDo items that are part of the iCal app on OS X - those go into your Mail.app, and don't across that way either, meaning I need a third party app to enable that function.

I also think it is stupid that in 2010, now 2011, you can't do a bluetooth file transfer using your iPhone - you have to go via USB to transfer files, usually photos, onto your computer.

Anyway, we're getting sidetracked - I shouldn't have to justify that I'm not a blind "worshipper" of Apple to point out flaws in your own arguments.

You said you were going to "outline the problem" in the rest of your comment, that you asked me to read. I read it all and it doesn't appear that you have actually outlined a problem - just posted something vague about UI issues. What specifically was the problem you were having? The sync operation (listed in the menu) includes a full backup. Perhaps it could be labelled "backup and sync" to make it more explicit, but other than that "a computer user with 2 degrees" should be able to handle it. It's not rocket surgery.

As an aside, "2 degrees" doesn't necessarily mean you can use a computer (not saying you personally can't) but I have met a couple of extremely smart academics with multiple PhDs who are totally clueless when it comes to computers. You can be smart and not computer literate.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

and have resorted to throwing ad hom attacks at me

Oh really? That makes me a bad man? Let's look at your first post to this thread?
Goodness me. Have you never used a computer before?
What a truly worthless piece of hypocritical shit you are.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

How's this for a failure of computer literacy - because it is different to what I actually saw on Friday I'll bet you are describing how it works on a completely different platform! If you had actually read what I wrote above you would have seen it was about iTunes on MS Windows.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

I see you have devolved beyond reading the rest of my post - in much the same way you accused me of doing, when in fact I read everything in there and attempted to troubleshoot your issue, or at least offer a potential explanation about the UI issue, which you only stated vaguely.

Your quote is also not an ad hominem attack, it is an expression of surprise, based in satire (clearly you are using a computer to have posted the comment) and an initial setup on my skepticism over the problems of a clearly computer literate person (anyone posting on slashdot is de facto computer literate, although I'm sure that will make people laugh) would have so much trouble performing a simple operation in iTunes, and that really what the post was, was hyperbole designed to state "isn't iTunes terrible".

Now, it may be terrible (it's not the best program ever written), but it has genuine issues that can be addressed on that point without needing to severely exaggerate a trivial backup issue.

If it *wasn't* trivial to solve or troubleshoot, then we are back to computer illiteracy, which leads me to "stupid or trolling (or stuck digging a hole and too stubborn to admit he lost the argument when called on some bullshit)".

You then drop into even further aggressive namecalling, with swearing. Not once have I stooped to that level. I may call you slightly foolish or stupid (or rather question that you might be based on the evidence you have presented with me, although I am erring on "not stupid, just stubborn"), but I have not gone as far as calling you a piece of shit.

What purpose does that serve?

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

I tested this on MS Windows - I dual boot. Admittedly Vista, so who knows what's going on with that, but I checked to see if it was the same as my primary OS. It is.

Whether something else is at play, who knows - the most likely cause is the iTunes helper agent process (which also exists on OS X) not working.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

It is an indication that you started at a level that you should have grown out of long before reaching high school. Why should I be patient and polite with your silly little game of attempting to prove superiority over a person that you pretend is attacking something you like? Why shouldn't I use words which indicate the extreme disgust that you provoke with your insults?
You started with unprovoked insults so don't pretend a bit of emotive language is too much for you to handle. Personally I think I've made quite a fair description based upon what you have written above and it appears I did have to use emotive language to actually get you to take your own words seriously.

This attitude of yours of jumping to conclusions and calling computer users that have problems stupid or computer illiterate gives the entire industry a bad name. It is disgusting and highly unprofessional and I'm looking forward to using this thread as an example the next time someone here blames a user when the software design is at fault.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

Now who is being all emotional? I'm completely unmoved by this, I simply questioned your need to descend to calling me "a piece of hypocritical shit" in response to some satire and a query over whether it *really* took you all that time to diagnose an issue with a piece of software that you had preconceived ideas about. I'm not saying it's the best piece of software in the world - it's a little clunky here and there with the grafted on iOS sync features, but it's not horrible and virtually impossible to navigate (like, for example, the EvE Online UI).

I haven't sworn at you, nor have I thrown baseless insults at you. I presented some options about whether you were stupid or not (with the disclaimer that I don;t necessarily think that you are, but given the thread it's hard to come to any other conclusion since you were so dead set on telling me that everything I was saying was wrong, despite citations and other evidence to the contrary).

Certainly at no point have I called you a piece of shit. So, feel free to use this thread as an example in any case you wish - it doesn't present your discourse abilities in a good light at all, regardless of whether you think you're right or not.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

Faux high moral ground now? You lost it with your first post.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

You can think that if you like, but it doesn't make it any more true. Just look at the way the discourse has gone - a certain level of pseudo-friendly satirical jibing is natural, but you went in for the "stuff you wouldn't say in polite company" route.

Like I say, I have no dog in this fight - I'm ambivalent to whether you solved the problem or your personal outlook on life or the state of iTunes. I was correcting erroneous information, and then later offering a potential reason that an automatic sync may have failed.

My initial post was hardly combative; merely a comeback to the initial post, written with some clear vitriol towards a piece of software that isn't as bad as everyone makes out.

You set yourself up with *your* first post for a combative reply - you just didn't expect to get one that would argue against you with some actual facts. I've said nothing to you that wouldn't be allowed in a debate. You, on the other hand, have.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

"stuff you wouldn't say in polite company" route

What part of calling people stupid is polite? You failed that with your first post and now you are pretending to take the high moral ground when I put a fitting label on you for what you have posted.

You set yourself up with *your* first post for a combative reply

I did not expect anyone identifying themselves as an idiot to make up some shit that pretended what I had witnessed had never happened and act like the early teens that sometimes reply to such posts. Look back at your post - insulting, misleading, incorrect and apparently written just so that you could appear superior to some imaginary apple hating strawman. My judgement of your character stands.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

Have you ever been in a debate? You are free to question someone's intelligence *if* you can back up your assertion with fact.

So, I can say "you must be stupid if you think the Earth is flat, because it's been well documented that it is not the case".

What I can't say is "You're stupid", with no qualifying statement.

So, I can question your intelligence based on the supposed issues you have had with iTunes, but in reality what I am doing is framing an argument that says "you're not that stupid, you just have a serious axe to grind with iTunes".

That is a long way from "you hypocritical piece of shit". Even if you totally disagree with me, you went beyond the typical level of "agree to disagree". Not that it offends me or anything - I swear like a sailor with the clap, but I don't go around calling people pieces of shit.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

There is no debate here, simply a refusal for you to take responsibility for what you have written and then hypocritical surprise when I applied an insulting label to you.
As for the "debate" angle, is this a new tactic to win your silly little game of proving your superiority to other posters since your strawman approach didn't work? Do you have to "win" just because I shot down your criticism of my example and your pretence that it could never happen? I've got plenty of time this week so can spend a lot of it rubbing your nose in your own verbal excrement to show and unfortunate readers that get this far exactly what a nasty little bully you are.
You went around calling people stupid and got it wrong yourself. Everything else is shallow tactics designed to make you look good to some hypothetical reader that will never get this far. You are not fooling yourself or myself but just wasting your time and give me something to do while procrastinating.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

I have yet to see how I am wrong - everything I have posted in this exchange is verifiable fact. I know because not only did I look it up, I also tested it (on Mac OS X and Windows Vista). Admittedly only with an iPhone 3G, since that is all I have to hand right now, but I figure it covers me enough.

I'm not bullying anyone, and if you consider me calling you on questionable content as bullying then I suggest you toughen up a little. Whether I "win" is not really at issue here - I presented my arguments and people are free to take what they will from them. Rather than just blindly assert "I'm right" I would prefer people actually look things up and test for themselves, with my information as a starting point, rather than simply taking me at face value.

My only surprise is that you resorted to abusive swearing rather than actually address the points. It doesn't do much to bolster you're claim that you're *not* an idiot, but each to his own.

For the record, I do not think you are an idiot per se, just that you have demonstrated that you are willing to stick to a stupid argument in the face of evidence to the contrary.

The original assertion by you was that iTunes was difficult to use because it took a long time to discover how to back up an iPhone. I pointed out three easy ways to do that task, in order of simplicity, including a quick run down on how to find out this information, both via the internet and via the program's own help files. You then went off on a non sequitur about how my first suggestion was "wrong" because that didn;t work for you "hence the post in the first place". You may have noticed that my post continued with two further methods to use if the first one did not work (usually because auto sync has been turned off - I do it on my iPhone because it's annoying - I don't always want to sync when I connect the phone). I included the default behaviour for completeness, and to indicate one of the three ways I know to do the task that you had indicated was so difficult.

The other two methods are not all that complex either, but I figured including them all was thorough.

This is when it got somewhat sidetracked and you started calling me a hypocrite and blind Apple worshipper and it only went downhill from there. Something tells me you don;t often retreat from an argument when defeated, you just resort to slinging insults until your opponent gets bored and goes away, or is browbeaten into "defeat". Suffice to say "a piece of shit" is not the worst thing I've been called, and it's not particularly offensive to me. At least I know you're actually getting worked up trying to dig yourself out of a losing position. Enjoy your procrastination.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

The points were addressed in the first post. You just chose to reply with insults, misleading information, a strawman ad hom attack, pretending it's a debate and now denying the words above as if they can't be read. Pretending it was correct does not make it so and you have failed what you say are your own standards at every point. Pointing this out had no effect until fairly mild emotive language was used, you keep scratching that sore and skirting around that you were just as blunt and insulting in your first post yet are too much of a weasel to admit so (satire indeed, what a pitiful excuse thought of after the fact). Why bother keeping on replying? It's not going to change the embarrassing bullshit that you have written above.

dig yourself out of a losing position

There we go - you are confirming that you are playing a very childish game.
You really need to learn that you can't just go around calling people stupid on the first point of contact and then try to justify it after by bringing up Jerry Lewis Absent Minded Professor bullshit.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

When you're done, can I borrow your spade? I have some gardening I need to do.

You honestly think I thought "oh wait, that was satire I used!" after the fact? Come on, that's just weak. You're also trying to frame my initial reasonably light hearted satirical musing about whether you had ever used a computer before (come on, you think that's not obvious satire?!) as some heinous attack that justifies your response that I'm a "hypocritical piece of shit".

You can try and justify stooping to that level as much as you like, but you're not going to find solace here. Try again with another argument if you like.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

You honestly think I thought "oh wait, that was satire I used!" after the fact?

No, I'm utterly convinced you thought "this guy is accusing me of insulting him because I called him stupid and that makes me look bad. I'll try the weak excuse that it's satire instead even though it's obvious it isn't. That way I look good, put him down and win!". Of course that's not really quoting you but that's what you would say if you were suddenly struck with honesty.
Weak, but only in terms of it being an incredibly weak excuse and a transparent lie. Who do you think you are fooling? You know the "satire" bullshit is not true, I know it's not true, nobody else cares but if they did it's extremely obvious.
There you have it liar - calling a spade a spade and my label for you is appropriate and far far less insulting than your "Have you never used a computer before?". No point being thin skinned when you are handing out far worse just to shoot the messenger. I was young but I was still playing with computers with LOGO and BASIC before you were born and work with them professionally now, so that is truly a "heinous attack" in a way that my label of you from your behaviour is not. I suggest acting your age instead of twenty five years less. You owe myself and the user with problems an apology instead of this long string of excuses. That is the mature thing to do. The immature thing is this long string of whining, pretending to be offended by mild language and a changing parade of weak excuses.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

That comment is the very definition of satire. I asked you, admittedly in a less than perfect medium of text (so it is hard to judge the tone of the comment) whether you had ever used a computer before, on an online forum for a technology-focused site with probably the highest ratio of computer literate people on the whole internet (pause for laughs as people mock the decline of slashdot over the years). There's no getting around that. The very fact that you are spelling out how long you have been using computers for is proof of my point, and the reason I went for it in the first place. I have no doubt that you've be working with computers since before black and white monitors were all the rage - you're a 6 digit UID on slashdot - by no means the "early adopters" but certainly been here a while.

Add to that fact the point that I have never been vulgar, and it's clear what my intent was. My apologies for wounding your clearly thin skin with some gentle satire, in surprise that someone using computers for more than 30 years (x > 30, since that is my age) couldn't work out how to back up an iPhone. Something I immediately put down to you sitting down in front of iTunes with a preconceived "I hate this software, rar!" level of anger, making it harder for yourself that necessary and instantly frustrating you when then answer wasn't obvious to you within 5 seconds (It took me 7 seconds with google, and I'm a woful typist).

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

Posting AC by accident I will assume. I have nothing to apologise for because you can't handle a bit of satire, that you're now desperately trying to say that it *wasn't*, which is funny because earlier in the argument you were fine to accept that it was satire, but that I "had only thought of it after the fact".

You need to pick one argument and stick with it.

You're asking me to act my age? I have had a "robust" debate/argument with you, and you're the only one so far to resort to childish vulgarity. I'm not really the one who needs to be acting my age.

You're also grasping at the thinnest of straws to try and slither out of this. I did wonder when I wrote that sentence whether I should really clarify it with an lengthy addendum or parenthesis but I went for the slightly imprecise statement since it read better. You and I both know what I meant there, especially since you've spent the better part of the argument saying how unfair it was that I inferred you might be stupid.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[dbIII]

I don't like putting passwords into public terminals hence AC above - but why the f* does it matter anyway. Is this another way to score points in some little game just like your crosshairs into surveyors marks of insult into satire? I'm sorry you do not understand such an obvious social skill, but if you need imagination and wishful thinking to read behind the lines to pretend that it is satire then it is obviously not - it is still an insult.
You and I both know what I meant there

Yes, you wanted to score some sort of points by belittling strangers. You owe me an apology.

Re:Blaming the victim and fake words in the mouth

[jo_ham]

It matters because I was just double checking you were the same person. Yes, it was written as if you were, but I was just confirming so I don;t look like a muppet responding as if you were. You're really trying to make my question "are you the same guy?" into some negative "points scoring"?

I don't think we're going to achieve anything productive if that's the way you're approaching this.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Ronin Developer]

Somebody mentioned that Jobs stated that the Macintosh was meant to be an "appliance". He meant it then as something common in every home or business - easy to use - not needing to be a genius to operate (back in 1984, that was the case for most people). I had a Apple DU - the Macintosh 128K as it was called before general release. I went to Drexel where we were forced to buy Macs (and, I fought it and I had just purchased an IBM PC with 64K of memory and a single floppy disk a year earlier using my own money).

iOS apps are restricted to the App Store. That is true - unless you jailbreak your device. If that negatively affects Apple's revenue, they will alter course as they have done in the past.

Java - I'd love to see Java apps accepted. But, a decision has been made and Apple is providing the tools to make it happen. There is nothing that precludes Mac apps from being sold by independents - and, that includes Java apps. Could it change? Possibly. Don't expect to see Java on the iPhone or iPad, though.

If iOS becomes the OS for Macs....and we see a closed environment ... that WILL piss people off ... including me. But, right now, I have a choice. I can choose to develop for Apple OSX and iOS or I can choose to develop for Android or both. And, I can continue to develop for Windows (I prefer Java and Delphi). The linux environment, while a great OS, still hasn't reached a point where its consumer friendly. Businesses will embrace it, though. It took Apple and Google to make *nix environments friendly. Why is that?

So, it doesn't matter. If Apple wants to stay relevant, they will need to give the customer what they ultimately want or another ecosystem will evolve and endanger them. So far, the Apple ecosystem and Android/Google ecosystem (and even MS Windows) ecosystems can co-exist.

"Android Passes iPhone In US Installed Base."

[walter_f]

The headline should read "... in US installed base" - i.e., in the total number of smartphones currently in use. The shifting percentages for Android vs. iPhone vs. RIM smartphones in that installed base is what the techspot.com article is talking about.

In terms of market share (i.e., the respective percentages for Android vs. iPhone vs. RIM in the total number of sold units per period, like month etc.), Android already passed iPhone in the U.S. several months ago.

Apples and oranges

[noidentity]

The iPhone is a physical device. Android is an OS. How does the iPhone compare to a single company's phones that run Android?

Re:Apples and oranges

[LodCrappo]

The samsung galaxy sold 10 million units in the same time period that the iPhone 4 sold 14 million. given that the galaxy has to compete with several other Android super phones while the iPhone is the only iOS option, I'd say it compares pretty damn well.

Re:This all seems kind of wonky

[Zelgadiss]

But the question is, will it work?

Apple seems to have learned from it's mistakes of the past.

For one the price of their products like the iPhone aren't all that far off from their competitors' products of equal capability.

Being crazy over-priced for what they were selling was what killed them against IBM PCs back in the past if I'm right.

The current Apple seems a lot more capable at managing cost and keep an eye on what consumers are willing to pay.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[metamatic]

Read more about the early history of the Mac. Jobs intended it to be a closed box with no expansion slots for third party expansions, much more closed than the Apple II. The Mac II and other expandable Macs only came after Jobs was dethroned.

Re:This all seems kind of wonky

[mswhippingboy]

Funny, I was under the impression the iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3Gs and iPhone 4 were different devices. :)

I agree, that the comparison should include ALL iOS devices vs ALL Android devices as we're really talking platform comparisons, not devices comparisons. iOS is probably still in the lead if that were the comparison being made. However, there is no denying that the momentum is in the Android camp and when Gingerbread devices begin hitting the market in Q1 2011, this will most likely increase it's momentum. In addition, there are many devices that have not made it to market yet (book readers, media devices, etc) for which Apple has no competing product. These will, in all likelihood adopt Android as their OS (it's certainly won't be iOS). This will again, increase Android penetration. Even devices not invented yet, when faced with the decision of what OS to run their device on, will most likely choose Android.

Re:Andriod - restarting Asian Consumer Electronics

[Shihar]

Clearly you don't own a smart phone. Android has no more ads than any other piece of the web. If anything, it has less. If you get an application for free and it will probably have an easily ignored ad bar somewhere that you can turn off by paying a dollar or two. The phone doesn't push ads to you, pop them up on your home screen, or anything of that nature.

Many vs. one. . .

[n2art2]

OK, I'm tired of people acting like Android isn't locked down to the end user as much as the iPhone is. The only real difference is The phone/OS manufacturer locks down the phone, and requires a jailbreak to get it out of this state, for iOS devices, and Android based devices are locked down by each and every one of the service providers instead, and still require a jailbreak to get it out of this state. Oh, and. . . . Since when is it a news story when an OS, that is on many many difference models of phones, each with different features, and appeal to difference people shouldn't have higher market share than an OS that is on one phone. One phone. Make a big deal about it if any other single phone sells more than the iPhone, and it might mean something.

Re:Many vs. one. . .

[metamatic]

OK, I'm tired of people acting like Android isn't locked down to the end user as much as the iPhone is.

It's not an act. My Android phone allows me to install any application software I like, from any source, without having to jailbreak it or engage in any kind of hackery. The iPhone does not. Same goes for every T-Mobile Android phone. The only locked down Android phone is one of AT&T's.

Re:Many vs. one. . .

[atrizzah]

While the Android market is managed, it's not managed nearly as stringently (or anticompetitively) as the iPhone market. Also, almost every Android device has a checkbox in the Options screen that will allow you to install apps from outside of the market, so it's patently false to say that you have to jailbreak your phone to have freedom of what you want to install. Furthermore, there are even alternative markets to the standard Android market, so your point is entirely moot. No Android phone on its own will ever have the market share the iPhone has, but this isn't because the iPhone is better, it's because there are so many alternatives, and it's unrealistic to expect that any particular phone model will be so superior that it would achieve dominance. But therein lies the difference between Android and Apple: Android is about choice, Apple is not.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Americano]

That's how marketing works - you issue the press releases with graphs that show your product in the most flattering light.

By individual handset, no Android phone compares to the iPhone in terms of unit sales. By individual unit, no Android tablet compares to the iPad in terms of unit sales. But taken as a whole, Android, the platform, is outselling iOS, the platform, in the smartphone market - there are some important qualifiers there. If the Droid had sold more units than the iPhone, you'd see Motorola and Verizon trumpeting that from the rooftops.

It's entirely possible for both of these statements to be factually correct:
1) "Android now has the largest market share by platform in the smartphone market." (Notice we're looking only at the Smartphone market, where a flood of new & inexpensive Android devices is bound to eat away at Apple's market share.)
2) "iOS is still the number one-selling mobile platform for small touch-screen devices in the United States." (Notice we're looking at the broader 'touchscreen device' market, where no serious competitor to the iPad still exists; the Galaxy Tab is nice, and certainly not a bad attempt, but it still hasn't gained traction. I suspect we'll see that change in the next 2 years.)

Apples, oranges, and bananas

[yelvington]

This article is stupid. It's comparing a single smartphone to an entire platform running on multiple smartphones. When you compare platforms, iOS is #1 in U.S. marketshare according to the recent Nielsen report.

Beware of what's being counted, and how.

The Nielsen report you cited lumps iPad users in with iPhone users. That's hardly a single platform; the iPad is far more akin to a laptop or netbook in terms of "mobility" than a smartphone. It's also based on Nielsen's Web usage monitoring, and it's well-known that iPad users are very heavy Web browsers -- mostly from home.

Overall, I find the tech "journalism" about this issue to be a dismal example of the innumeracy that mars much of the profession. Reading tech blogs, I can't tell what's being counted: Web unique users? Pageviews? Units sold? Units in a distribution pipeline? Activated smartphone accounts?

Each number has its own importance to different interested parties. Fanbois can pick the one that reinforces their word view. Those of us building mobile websites or applications need to know the difference between users and usage, and between the iPad and the iPhone.

What I've found, looking at (I am being very specific here) mobile Web pageview counts by users of pocket-sized devices connected to mobile networks, is that Android smartphones are racing way, way, way ahead of the iPhone.

I don't really care that some of the devices are made by Motorola and some by Samsung and some by LG, because I'm not fanboi-ing for any manufacturer; I'm just trying to understand how the mobile market is unfolding for planning purposes.

If I were planning to develop an app, that information would be an important factor in prioritizing my platform targeting. (I actually am persuaded by this and other data that standards-based HTML5 mobile Web, is the better place to focus.)

Incidentally, the same data set tells me that Blackberry users pretty much stick to email and barely show up on the mobile Web. Windows Mobile is every bit as dead as everybody expected.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[owlstead]

I personally think the iPad is wondrously well engineered. Whoever choose the components was really doing a good job. But the screen is a LED backlit IPS screen, the screen is really brilliant, the touchpad is very sensitive and the battery tech is top notch. The performance is more than alright and the design is beautifully minimalistic.

Note that I'm not that big an Apple fan, and I do not own any Apple products.

Re:bad comparison

[Americano]

I like the iPhone, don't get me wrong - but you're off the mark here.

Arguing that you can't compare iPhones to Android by market share is simply a semantic quibble. Better stated, the study compares "All phones that run iOS" versus "All phones that run Android." It just so happens that "all phones that run iOS" are "iPhones," and so it's more convenient for the authors to say they're comparing "iPhones" to "Android".

The comparison stands: in the smartphone market, Android has taken a small, but very real lead over iOS. This is not necessarily a bad thing: competition makes both platforms better. I don't see a future where "every phone is Android," and I think it's entirely possible that Apple would be content with 20-25% share of a very profitable market while Android expands down into the less-expensive end (where margins are very thin, a space where Apple has historically avoided competing), and ends up with a much larger slice of the phone market than Apple's iOS devices.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Ronin Developer]

I am very aware of the ideas behind the original Mac. I am one of the individuals that founded the FIRST Macintosh Users Group in the country - the DUsers. I developed my first software on it using an Apple Lisa and cross compiling because no native tools yet existed.

The Mac was designed to be the computer for "the rest of us" - hence, an appliance. That was it's primary goal. To develop for it, you not only had to have the right tools, but also obtain copies of the any "Inside Macintosh" books that detailed the OS and ROM calls.

The Mac II opened things up and offered NUBus slots. I never owned one of those. But, I did up grade my original Mac 128 to it's capacity. Finally sold it at a flea market for $50.

Designed by Apple in California

[tepples]

For their first phone, they partnered with Motorola; and the result was that POS abortion, the ROKR. [...] they learned their lesson from that mistake and did the hardware for the iPhone in-house as well as the software.

iPhone hardware is produced by Foxconn in Shenzhen, China.

iPhone was "Designed by Apple in California", as it states on the chassis. ROKR was not; instead, it was designed by Motorola in who-knows-where. Where the hardware is assembled doesn't really matter; grandparent's point as I understand it is that Apple's design of the iPhone was more competent overall than Moto's design of the ROKR.

Price: non-phones vs. phones

[tepples]

It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.

Unlike with iOS, where iPod touch has the App Store, one has to buy a phone to get Android Market (without installing an apk of questionable legality), even if one has no intention of subscribing to a voice and data plan. An unactivated Android phone is far more expensive than an iPod touch.

Re:This isn't iOS vs. Android

[Totenglocke]

You mean that the App Store, having almost a two year lead, has more apps? Wow, who'd have thought? Of course you fail to acknowledge the fact that only recently has there been a serious marketing effort for Android. It still doesn't change the fact that when it comes to buying phones, Android is massacring the iPhone. The Android tablets actually running an OS haven't even come out yet, nor are there really any Android iPod competitors (because Android doesn't NEED any), so when the Honeycomb tablets come out and we see Android tablet sales slaughter iPad sales, what excuse will you make then?

I actually don't want there to be only one OS for phones - I want at least 2-3 so that there's competition and motivation for them to keep improving their OS. However, I AM eager for the 100% undeniable proof that Android has bitchslapped iOS just to 1) shut up fanboys who constantly whine and troll and 2) get businesses who refuse to make apps for any OS but iOS to make apps for the phone with a larger marketshare.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[angus77]

Whether it's well-engineered or not is besides the point. Someone was bragging how it was the #1 tablet device right now. I was pointing out that that's not hard when you literally have no competition. Would you brag if you won a race against yourself?

Re:one to many

[SudoGhost]

Apple: Think Different. How different? It also comes in white!

My next computer...

[Chordonblue]

...will be an iPhone 5...

Re:My next computer...

[pbjones]

you are right. I would guess that a lot of people are buying smartphones instead of laptops.

Re:iphone success

[JSBiff]

It kind of makes me wonder, though, just how much Apple is losing because you can't get an iPhone from other carriers. I'm sure it was a good deal for Apple in the beginning, but I really think at this point in the game, AT&T Exclusivity means that Apple has about reached the maximum market share they can with just one carrier. If Verizon, Sprint, T-Mo, Cricket, etc. could sell iPhones to their customers, Apple would probably be selling 3X as many phones.

Re:hahahahah

[TheoGB]

Great thread branch. Would read again.

Smart phone categories

[Macka]

Personally I think it's pushing it to classify RIM's BlackBerry as a smart phone. I have both an iPhone 4 and a company Blackberry given to me for work. The Blackberry is a clunky unwieldy toy compared to the iPhone with a fraction of the capability. I use it as little as I can possibly get away with.

Re:Stupid article--iOS is #1 in US market share

[Laurence0]

I would have expected Blackberries to get pushed out into the business niche as well, but I know a huge number of teenage girls (and a few older people) with them, largely because they're the cheapest smartphone available - I think you can pick one up on PAYG for about £100, which is under half the price of the cheaper Android phones. So, I think RIM are going to continue to do pretty well at the bottom end of the market - at least until very cheap Android phones start to appear.

Re:This all seems kind of wonky

[shellbeach]

This is comparing apples to oranges. The iPhone is a single device from a single manufacturer. "Android market share" consists of many different devices from several different manufacturers. Why are they comparing two unlike things? If you wanted to compare Android to anything, it should include all iOS devices, such as the iPod Touch and iPad as well as the iPhone.

Well, obviously this was comparing sales of phones running either iOS or Android. From TFA:

For the first time, more Americans are using phones running Google's Android operating system than Apple's iPhone

I agree that if you wanted to compare total market share you'd want to look at ipod touch/tablet offerings from both platforms. That'd probably put iOS ahead again.

I'm not sure whether Apple would take much consolation from that, though: there's an awful lot of Android tablets released in the last quarter, with a lot more on the way in this quarter. Most of the decent offerings are sitting around two-thirds the price of an ipad, plus they're significantly lighter and have more a lot more connectivity options. I'd be surprised if tablet sales didn't switch from iOS to Android too before too long.

Take that Mactards

[robertzaccour]

Take that Mactards

Shows Gartners abilities...

[nikkipolya]

I loved the last part that said "...but it happened significantly earlier than Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012". They are off by 2 yrs. Our company has hired them to do some "predictions" for them. Of course, for a ridiculously hefty price.