Slashdot Mirror
Android Passes BlackBerry In US Market Share
An anonymous reader writes "69.5 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in February 2011, up 13 percent from the preceding three-month period. For the first time, more Americans are using phones running Google's Android operating system than Research In Motion's BlackBerry, according to comScore. Having passed the iPhone in the preceding three-month period, this now means that Android has been crowned king in the US."
Android is an operating system available on devices from numerous manufacturers. It was only a matter of time, given the level of control that both RIM and Apple maintain over the hardware that their operating system is available on.
I'm a Droid user and a huge fan, but it is almost an unfair comparison. You're comparing an (relatively) open operating system with proprietary devices running proprietary software.
Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
This is all just a rehash of the PC industry during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Back then, Apple had their proprietary hardware and software stack, and it did achieve a relatively high level of popularity, at least initially. There were other smaller players, like Amiga, Commodore and Tandy back then, and RIM and Nokia today, who offered their own platforms.
Android is best compared to MS-DOS, oddly enough. It was about being a flexible OS that ran on a wide range of hardware from a wide range of vendors, and in many ways it maximized the freedom of developers and users alike. It did very little to dictate how programs could be implemented, who may use them, and how they may be distributed.
We all know what happened. The most open of the platforms prevailed, and the rest were basically crushed into obscurity. Most went completely out of business. Apple, by far the strongest of them, only barely managed to survive the rest of the 1980s and early 1990s.
I suspect that the same thing might be happening today. Although not the first, Apple took a commanding lead within the market. But facing competition from more open hardware and software, they don't have a hope in hell of surviving in the long run. It remains to be seen what will happen with Jobs in the near future, but if he departs from Apple for whatever reason, it's likely that they'll face yet another dark period like that between 1987 and 1999.