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Android Will Surpass Windows By 2016, Say Gartner Stats
An anonymous reader writes "Google's Android operating system will be used on more computing devices than Microsoft's Windows within four years, data from research firm Gartner showed on Wednesday, underlining the massive shift in the technology sector. At the end of 2016, there will be 2.3 billion computers, tablets and smartphones using Android software, compared with 2.28 billion Windows devices, Gartner data showed." The comparison would make less sense if Android was strictly for phones, and Windows was strictly for desktops-with-keyboards, but gets interesting as the devices on which each system runs overlap ever more.
Is this how they're getting their predictions?
FUCK YES
What are they smoking? Android devices will surpass the number of PCs the next year. Probably, it's already the most widely used OS.
If google provided with an official x86 port ( 64bit only ) we would already see pcs with android ( yes i know of http://www.android-x86.org/ )
2016: Year of the Linux desktop? Or something?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Wow, that's quite an achievement. Like we didn't learn enough from the first scatter-shot, patch-work, design-by-committee solution, we went and ran the flag up another one and called it progress.
We get what we deserve, I guess.
If you've run the Android VM that was knocking about a while back, you'll know that using a mouse to interact with an Android device is horrible.
The long press and gesture method works fine for fingers, but when you've got a mouse in your hand, certain things happen without the concious mind getting in the way.
TFA may be talking about mobile devices, but if any mobile OS is to take on the desktops, it needs to support traditional input methods.
Since Gartner is reporting anti-Windows news, count on it happening in 2 1/2 years!
Is this how they're getting their predictions?
Gartner would extrapolate that the whole world will be married by next Tuesday.
On a similar note, there are more bananas sold worldwide than iPhones.
Microsoft takes ~$10 for every HTC and Samsung mobile phone.
http://thedroidguy.com/2012/08/microsoft-grossed-800-million-from-android-royalties-in-q2-more-than-windows-phone-net-profits/
Does anyone know if Android, as it now stands, is ready for use on "real" computing devices (desktops and laptops)? In other words, is there any support built in for full multitasking, running apps in resizable and movable windows, a taskbar, and other essentials?
If so, then Android could be a serious contender, especially if ported to x86. If not, then Android still needs work before it's ready for prime time on devices other than phones and tablets.
I think Adobe may serve as a bellwether here. When/if a full version of Photoshop is ported to Android, we will know the platform has arrived. Photoshop used to run on PowerPC Macs, so there shouldn't be too many mandatory x86-isms scattered throughout the code.
There were recent rumors that Microsoft Office might be ported to iOS and Android, but those are apparently not true. Had Microsoft been broken up into an apps division and an OS division in the first antitrust case, as it should have been, I'll be they would have already taken that plunge.
Pen and paper is also going to surpass windows by 2016.
Windows 8 is such a fuckup microsoft is going to be lucky to exist by 2016.
2) No, Gartner is just comparing the number of apples with the number of oranges.
Move along...
Yeah 'cuz it's not like Microsoft is pushing tablet behavior on the desktop...oh wait....
First, this means that Gartner is admitting that people might like something other than Windows. Second, now it means that it won't actually happen.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
One more data point showing that microsoft, the devices and services company, is becoming irrelevant.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Windows is (or was) a PC operating system!
Android is a gadget / appliance operating system! It can by definition *never* replace a PC operating system, since it is deliberately designed to lack that way of thinking, the functionality needed, and the freedom required.
Not that Windows ever was any great at that, compared to Unix-likes ({OS X, Ubuntu, but also everything focusing on Gnome 3, and partially KDE 4} NOT included). But the whole farticle is utterly retarded.
Here is a video of the quoted statement being made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSKQ3ZNQ_O8
M$ should be worried. Along with Apple and anyone else trying to keep their proprietary little death-grip on their market share. Android is turning up everywhere. It's becoming ubiquitous. You can find it on everything from smartphones to Televisions[0] to Refrigerators[1]. Why do you think Apple is going 'thermo nuclear' on Android? It's not just due to 'Rounded corners and rectangular design' it's because Android can be made to run on just about any home appliance imaginable -- and guess who makes a lot of home appliances (TVs, fridges, washing machines, etc) as well as smartphones? Now guess who doesn't?
Apple and Microsoft PAY people extraordinary salaries to forecast market trends. They know where the industry is trending. And it ain't trending into Cupertino or Redmond at the moment -- at least not in the world outside of the US.
[0] - http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/android-powered-pocket-tv-turns-any-television-into-a-smart-tv/
[1] - http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425210/do-we-really-need-an-android-powered-fridge/
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I was running GB on my gTablet, mouse worked just fine. I agree that they have to SOME support for traditional input methods, but it SEEMS that creating their own input methods & standardizing them could work just as fine. I feel your pain, but more in the area of physical keyboards. Swype is fun to use and everything, but as slashdotters have previously noted, it's not touch typing.
No trees were killed to send this message, but a great number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
Didn't they also say laptops/notebooks would kill the desktop? Then tablets?
For years we've been talking about "The Year for Linux on the Desktop". As veteran game developer, it's always boggled me how Linux, despite it's power, is so shortsighted when it comes to 3rd party support and distribution. 3rd part support and easy distribution along with backwards and forwards compatibility is what made Windows so dominate over the past 20 years. The typical solution bandied about by Linux users is "you can always distribute the source and recompile". Yes, that's what the average computer wants to do; fiddle around recompiling source code on their personal micro-flavor of Linux out of a sea of 100s of distros only to have it break again with the next 0.0.0.1 release of the underlying OS.
What's telling to me is that now when you ask "What's the most popular Linux distro", you can arguably say "Android" and the reason Android has become so popular is because it easily supports 3rd party apps like a reasonable OS is expected. No fuss no muss. Just like Windows.
Congratulations, Google, for finally taking Linux in the right direction.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
This is why 8 is so absurdly tablet-centric. If people are buying tablets instead of PCs, well, you can retain them as customers by shoehorning your PC OS into the new paradigm.
What this strategy misses is the fact that people are not replacing their PCs with tablets. They still use PCs, but they don't upgrade them very often. So Windows doesn't have any special advantage as a tablet OS, and is unlikely to rival Android or iOS.
...when Netcraft confirms it.
I pulled a muscle I laughed so hard at this... Thank you for making my day...
Considering most phones last less than 2 years. How about comparing working devices?
Gartner's data shows that?!?! Can I please borrow your time machine? I need some data from the future too!!!
"It's a fucking projection, damnit"
I doubt it, at least at a practical level. So what if there are 10x more phones than desktops? The real 'work' is still being done on windows and microsoft is still making tons of cash.
Same goes for ARM, there may be more ARM chips out there but the desktop still may be owned by x86.
Now id like to see both Microsoft and Intel go away and i bet in time this will happen, but im trying to be realistic too. 2016 is right around the corner, and i dont see that drastic of a change that fast.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Using the landscape of current mobile/desktop devices to predict anything more than 6 months away is ridiculous. Remember, around four years ago Android was released, (Sept 08 i think) and I would bet that not one analyst then made a remotely accurate prediction of today's mobile landscape.
Don't base numbers on a tendencies based on the last two years. In 2016, Android will be long gone and replaced 3 times.
Or what?
The post is suggestive in that it sounds that android will replace windows.
It reminds me of these old settings where you see hundreds of secratery's behind a type writer.
This is what I think off with microsoft with it's solid setting in the businessplace, where you need to be productive, but they are not appealing to consuming part of the os. This is where various parties have jumped in like steam, spotify, pandora, youtube, etc however microsoft seems to be unable to capatilize in this market, like zune.
So what will happen faster? Windows gaining back the consumption part or android the business part. And you see both parties making attempts, with surface tables versus chromebooks. Microsoft can fight for a long time and I don't want to give up on them yet, however the rate of evolution with handheld devices regarding hardware and software seems to be at a much larger rate the microsoft is able to operate at.
And that is going to work out just about as well.
They do realize Microsoft is making a big push into phone and tablet markets?
Why do people consider Gartner a reliable source for stats? Its like: "Me sa say dat Windows no sella, me sa say Android sella more, me sa thinks no bombad changes for 4 years".
Yes, I think the people of Gartner are retarded Gungans.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Seriously, guys. These 2 operating systems are not for the same purpose. One is for mobile media consumption devices and the other one is for producing more so than it is for consuming. It is a stupid comparison. Yes, there are more consumers than producers.
Forget desktops; even for single-user mobile devices, what you're describing sounds like an excellent idea anyway. "Excellent" maybe even understates it; I'd say something like this is necessary for phones to ever stop sucking.
It'd useful not just so that different users could use different VMs, but also to optionally hide one user's applications from one another. Something refuses to install unless I give it access to my address book? Ok, here, have .. um.. an address book.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Over 500 million Symbian devices were sold by Nokia. This, they traded for a few million WP 7.5 devices. Talk about a massive shift. Still, no OS has ever been deployed as widely as Nokia's S40, which has shipped in over 1,5 billion devices..
Yes, I think the people of Gartner are retarded Gungans.
What are these Gungans that you speak of? There were no such monsters shitting all over a beloved franchise. You must have imagined them as being part of three movies that don't exist.
Required reading for internet skeptics
stating the obvious, I'd also guess that Apple will sell more hardware with MacOSX and derivatives (iOS) than there are MS Windows equipped devices, or UNIX(-like) systems will rule them all!
There was an unknown error in the submission.
So 2016 is the year of the.... the, the
oh never mind.
and with that I don't just refer to Android. In the datacenter, in the DSL modem, in automotive robotics, in computer vision and 1001 other places Linux is already either dominant or it is on a sharp rise. That is because it is rock-solid (unlike the Redmond Crapola)
Your arguments are from the 90s, actually. You can link everyting into a single executable, or you could provide packages for the major distros such as redhat, Ubuntu, SuSE. The core stuff (Posix API, X11 calls) are very stable, actually. There is no need to deeply integrate into Gnome, GTK or whatever. Don't do that.
I assume there simply is not that much money in Desktop Linux as there is in Windows, Android, OSX and iOS and that holds back applications.
Expect more Android-style Linux use cases to come. Expect all the kiddos to store their whole life into Linux-based facebook. Expect a FaceDroid to take over the world in a storm. Expect you car to be run by a realtime Linux variant. Expect Microsoft to eventually support Linux and then admit full defeat and build their own distro. Windows will be relegated to a window manager.
Just because the average office drone is still married to Windows means as much as that the average corporation was married to S/390 in the late 80s. Windows is expensive, buggy, insecure and inflexible. You are tied to a chair-thrower's whimsicals. That is why it will go away.
Worldwide there are 10 times as many phones and tablets than there are PCs. Prices are dropping daily. I expect more Android phones than Windows machines by end of 2013. Chinese and Korean manufacturing will make sure.
Just ride a train in a wealthy country. 90% of devices either run a dumbOS of the phone makers or they run the Linux kernel. And for each PC in rich countries' homes there is on average one Linux-based DSL modem. People do their googleing on Linux, without them knowing. Kids exhibit(ize) themselves on large farms of Linux computers at facebook.
Nukes are detoanted in virtual Linux worlds. Banksters have embraced it. Smelly, incompetent and Dilbertesque corporate IT means not much.
Get yourself a container full of $10 USB keyboards and litter them throughout your office building. You won't miss the heavy, hot and basically unportable Laptop Clunker.
" the OSS world is so fragmented over standards ways and "
I doubt you have ever seriously used Ubuntu, CentOS or the like. You can have LaTeX, Gimp, OpenOffice, Subversion, gcc, gdb, Scribus, Inkscape, vi, emacs, firefox on all of them. And on Windows. The differences are close to nil for these. Only the package manager will be different, but still many times easier than the 25 Update/Download managers you need for your typical Windoze machine.
If you really think that choice and diversity is bad, then you are simply a Redmond $hill. In their stalinist view, there must be a "single" system, and that must of course be Windows/Office.
You just have to identify the top 5 Linux distros (my guess is Ubuntu, Mint, CentOS, SuSE, Debian), put those into virtual machines. Then test your game in these VMs on a regular basis, after running the software update mechanism. Don't integrate into Gnome, KDE or any other window manager. Expect just X11, alsa and Posix as external APIs. Bring everything else with your game executable either statically linked or as shared objects (dlls in windows lingo) you provide. I bet the differences between Linux distros are minimal then.
I am a long-time Ubuntu user and I never felt it was really difficult, except when hardware makers (e.g. Samsung scanners) did not want to support it properly. I was never forced to compile anything; I did that out of curiosity and to tweak stuff, though.
Don't tell me Windows XP was the same in 2001 as it was in 2011. How many service packs did you have to check ??
I do own an Android tablet (Motorolla XOOM), but the hardware is much more capable than it seems with Android. Android is very inefficient in using the hardware (just look at the C#/mono based port of Android which is 40-80% faster).. Also with Windows 8 and Windows RT released today and MS trying to push developers into developing only for Windows Runtime (which runs on both) I'm certain Windows will stay afloat as people like to have one system for everything (the same OS for their desktop as their tablet/phone), so switching between them is fluently.. (I'm not for the Metro style on desktop though, but I do think it's great for tablets/phones)