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The Tricky Road Ahead For Android Gets Even Trickier
HughPickens.com writes: Farhad Manjoo writes in the NYT that with over one billion devices sold in 2014 Android is the most popular operating system in the world by far, but that doesn't mean it's a financial success for Google. Apple vacuumed up nearly 90 percent of the profits in the smartphone business which prompts a troubling question for Android and for Google: How will the search company — or anyone else, for that matter — ever make much money from Android. First the good news: The fact that Google does not charge for Android, and that few phone manufacturers are extracting much of a profit from Android devices, means that much of the globe now enjoys decent smartphones and online services for low prices. But while Google makes most of its revenue from advertising, Android has so far been an ad dud compared with Apple's iOS, whose users tend to have more money and spend a lot more time on their phones (and are, thus, more valuable to advertisers). Because Google pays billions to Apple to make its search engine the default search provider for iOS devices, the company collects much more from ads placed on Apple devices than from ads on Android devices.
The final threat for Google's Android may be the most pernicious: What if a significant number of the people who adopted Android as their first smartphone move on to something else as they become power users? In Apple's last two earnings calls, Tim Cook reported that the "majority" of those who switched to iPhone had owned a smartphone running Android. Apple has not specified the rate of switching, but a survey found that 16 percent of people who bought the latest iPhones previously owned Android devices; in China, that rate was 29 percent. For Google, this may not be terrible news in the short run. If Google already makes more from ads on iOS than Android, growth in iOS might actually be good for Google's bottom line. Still, in the long run, the rise of Android switching sets up a terrible path for Google — losing the high-end of the smartphone market to the iPhone, while the low end is under greater threat from noncooperative Android players like Cyanogen which has a chance to snag as many as 1 billion handsets. Android has always been a tricky strategy concludes Manjoo; now, after finding huge success, it seems only to be getting even trickier.
The final threat for Google's Android may be the most pernicious: What if a significant number of the people who adopted Android as their first smartphone move on to something else as they become power users? In Apple's last two earnings calls, Tim Cook reported that the "majority" of those who switched to iPhone had owned a smartphone running Android. Apple has not specified the rate of switching, but a survey found that 16 percent of people who bought the latest iPhones previously owned Android devices; in China, that rate was 29 percent. For Google, this may not be terrible news in the short run. If Google already makes more from ads on iOS than Android, growth in iOS might actually be good for Google's bottom line. Still, in the long run, the rise of Android switching sets up a terrible path for Google — losing the high-end of the smartphone market to the iPhone, while the low end is under greater threat from noncooperative Android players like Cyanogen which has a chance to snag as many as 1 billion handsets. Android has always been a tricky strategy concludes Manjoo; now, after finding huge success, it seems only to be getting even trickier.
You need to learn more about the "Settings" area of iOS configuration app security. Don't let hate blind you to OS configuration.
And there isn't in the iOS ecosystem? Just because the tracking is hidden and locked away doesn't mean it is gone.
Come the next jailbreak (hopefully), install Firewall IP from Cydia. You will then see how many apps phone home to many, MANY different behavioral tracking sites, ad sites, link bounce sites, and so on. Your IMEI and other info gets slurped up and propagated to God knows where.
One app which was one that judged some part of the person in a photo, when you watched the traffic go by, it actually uploaded the photo to a website (via http, not even https), and the website did the processing. I validated this by using different size photos, and using tcpdump on my router to see what shot across the link.
Yes, Android apps do that stuff too... but I can buy an Android phone, unlock the bootloader, get root, install XPrivacy or DonkeyGuard, and ensure that apps that want to grab every serial number will get one... but it will be a number that changes every time. On iOS, as of now, there are no jailbreaks, so there is no way to protect one's privacy on the device outside of not using it.
I value privacy... thus I'm using Android. It doesn't take much work to get root, or even install a custom ROM present on most devices. The worst are Samsung because of Knox's eFuses, but that is easy to fix... don't buy from them.
The interesting thing on trying to find the number going the other way... I came across conversion numbers from previous years for Android to iOS. They have been slowly decreasing year after year. 2012 the rate was 25% (http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/11/more-iphone-buyers-switching-from-android-this-year-than-in-2012). 2013 the rate was 20% (http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/08/19/study-finds-20-of-apple-iphone-users-switched-from-android-in-past-year). This article says 16% in 2014. Judging from the derth of articles touting the rate the other way... would seem to indicate the rate from iOS is less than the rate to iOS... but that's far from proof.