Slashdot Mirror
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?
What are they smoking? Android devices will surpass the number of PCs the next year. Probably, it's already the most widely used OS.
Of course that means further demise of the desktop.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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!
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...
Of course that means further demise of the desktop.
I'll stand on the sidewalk and wave as the desktop heads outta town, providing the apps I need work reasonably on tablets.
And what happens when they don't, and then tablets move in and start shitting on your kitchen counter and demanding you fork more money into them every year because last year's model isn't supported anymore, while your desktop chugged along happily for years on end?
That's an awfully big "provided" clause you've got there. But, provided Jesus comes back and everyone gets candy and happiness in solid, tangible form, all wars and conflicts end, and we all live in permanent euphoria forever and ever, I guess that'll be all right!
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.
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/
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
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.
I'll stand on the sidewalk and wave as the desktop heads outta town, providing the apps I need work reasonably on tablets.
Demise of the desktop does not mean demise of the monitor+keyboard+mouse interface.
If my next phone/tablet/whatever can drive three monitors and be a frontend for excel/visual studio running off some terminal server/cloud setup and still give me a seamless (albeit degraded) interface for the same programs when I take it on the train.... ...then I'm more than happy to get rid of the giant box under my desk. This is not a far-fetched futuristic idea. We already have the hardware and the infrastructure to do this; we just need clever software.
The first company that can make a seamless desktop modetablet mode UI will dominate. Microsoft isn't stupid; they've seen this coming for years. It's no surprise that they are betting the company on beating Google and Apple on this killer feature. If there is a tie, Microsoft wins, since the world already runs on MS Office. If Google or Apple beat them, then MS will get gutted like Lotus in the 90s. If RT/Surface fails, they'll probably get one more chance. After that, it will be too late. Someone will come up with the magic UI pixie dust soon enough.
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.
> That's an awfully big "provided" clause you've got there.
Yes, it is.
I've argued until I got sick of it over in the Adobe forums that a "lite" version of their apps for tablets is worse than useless. They seem to expect me to carry a laptop *and* a tablet. Not going to happen. I don't currently own a tablet, and won't until I can work in the field *without* my laptop. Until I can do that, tablets are dead to me. I don't buy into the alpha-geek thang where you lug along one of every kind of portable device just to have them.
On the other hand, tablets really do have a lot of potential. But without serious apps, they're just portable web browsers. Toys.
And don't even *talk* to me about using Photoshop on a Winders tablet. Tried it -- I own a tablet running "Windows 7 tablet edition", and the experience sucketh mightily. And it will suck just as much on Windows 8, because it's the app itself that needs to change.
And yes, I can add a keyboard and mouse to the tablet, but then it's just a rather underpowered netbook with a bunch of separate pieces.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I pulled a muscle I laughed so hard at this... Thank you for making my day...
It's not the Desktop paradigm that is important. Rather, it's the freedom to tinker with one's machine, something that Android not only allows but promotes (at least fundamentally, given its FOSS/open-source nature).
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"
Enh. If you have to attach a keyboard and mouse to a tablet in order to do real work, you've already lost. I would submit that this would *not* be the demise of the desktop. Rather, it's an admission that OS and app creators don't understand the touch paradigm.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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?
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.
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.
Given that there quite literally is no such thing as "Windows 7 Tablet Edition" and the last time anything similarly named existed, it was XP, I find your credibility rather questionable.
All editions of Win other than Home Basic and Starter are capable of handling both touch and stylus input if the hwardware supports it. With that said, most tablets (even if they support a stylus at all) aren't designed with the digitizer resolution needed for professional artwork. The stylus is instead used as a somewhat more precise alternative to a finger, useful for things like tapping on small links or doing handwriting recognition, but nowhere near the grade of hardware required for artwork. Their typical resolution is on the order of 512x512 across the entire display.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
> Given that there quite literally is no such thing as "Windows 7 Tablet Edition" and the last time anything similarly named existed, it was XP, I find your credibility rather questionable.
Verbal shorthand on my part. The thing came shipped with Home Basic, requiring an immediate upgrade to Pro in order to wake up the tablet features, such as they were.
As to why someone would ship a tablet with an OS that does not have tablet features, you'd have to ask the manufacturer.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
In addition; After being very frustrated with the device, I gave it to my daughter to play with. She was at first excited, because she likes to draw and it had a stylus. But she soon became frustrated with the device, and now it's shelfware. ...which is why I typically say "I don't own a tablet and won't until certain things work on it". That lump of plastic in the bookshelf between Shaeffer's Data Center Operations and Java In A Nutshell isn't technically mine (it belongs to my daughter) and I'm waiting for things to settle out before trying again.
In fairness, part of the problem was that she could not find a drawing program on Windows that could easily be operated on a touch interface, and that is arguably an application problem. But this was compounded by Windows 7 Pro not having reasonable touch analogs for the mouse events the software required.
And finally, I wouldn't be intellectually honest if I did not include: At the price point for Windows 8 Pro, it's worth it to upgrade the device and see if it becomes more useful. If it goes back to being shelfware, at least we aren't out a lot of money.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If that were true then why do I see all these monkeys with iPhones?
Oh...
It all makes sense now, thanks!
Required reading for internet skeptics
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
Not the apps I need. What about a virtual machine test environment on a shoestring budget? I don't want to have to boot up my old Inefficient PowerEdge up everytime I need a playground, nor do I wish to purchase compute time from The Cloud®. I just need my x86 PC to boot up some low-footprint x86 VMs. I can't really run those on a tablet (yet). I'm no luddite, either; I look forward to the day where my superpowered mobile device can dock into my desktop environment for some hardcore work. It must be said, however, that larger machines will always necessarily be able to provide greater complexity (and theoretically, compute power) than a mobile device, at least until either some physical barrier is reached, or a breakthrough that increases compute power without increasing IC complexity.
Enh. If you have to attach a keyboard and mouse to a tablet in order to do real work, you've already lost. I would submit that this would *not* be the demise of the desktop.
When you plug a mouse, KB and monitor into a tablet, the tablet has not destroyed the desktop PC, the tablet has become the desktop PC.
I'll put money on this happening, as components get smaller, more powerful machines will be created in smaller form factors. Hell, my Galaxy Nexus is as powerful as my 2002 gaming box (Pentium 3, Geforce 4), Within a year I expect phones to surpass my 2005 gaming box (Athlon 64, Geforce 6600) which would make them almost as powerful as a PS3.
Rather, it's an admission that OS and app creators don't understand the touch paradigm.
This is not true. You can have multiple forms of input without compromising the other. A physical keyboard is faster and more ergonomic than an on screen keyboard, but a physical keyboard is not that portable (carrying that around negates the ergonomic benefits). Designing an interface or input system for both peripherals and on screen controls does not mean that a developer does not understand one or the other.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I spend my days typing. Last I checked, many people do. You can pry my keyboard from my cold dead hands.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
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.
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)