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.

Comments

iPhone switchers

[Anonymous Coward]

"The 'Majority' Of New iPhone Switchers Came From Android"

With Android's huge marketshare, wouldn't you expect that to be the case?

Re:iPhone switchers

[bickerdyke]

And with a mostly two-players market I'd bet that most people who switch to Android came from iPhone.

Either it's your first phone, then you're not counted as switch, any subsequent phone upgrade from then on won't be a OS switch either or, if it IS a switch, it will be back and forth between Android and iOS.

So this is a non-fact.

Re: iPhone switchers

[allquixotic]

Yeah, and Ubuntu 15.04 *could* potentially kill or even cripple Windows on the desktop. /sarc

Really, though? Momentum and app availability form EXTREMELY powerful negative feedback loops for the losers and positive feedback loops for the winners. Microsoft was late to the party and missed the boat, so they're stuck in a negative feedback loop: no developers, no apps, no users; rinse and repeat, goto 1, while(true). Google and Apple are in a positive feedback loop: more and more devs, more and more apps, more and more users. While(true).

What does Windows offer that is so attractive that millions will jump ship, that neither Android nor iOS offers? A better Hotmail UI doesn't count.

Power users either want high-end hardware and complete control of their device, and buy Developer Edition Android phones and root them; or they're hooked so hard on Apple's koolaid that you couldn't pry them off with a crowbar.

Joe Average probably wants something that they can make calls on and occasionally look up restaurant hours in a web browser, or play a game when bored. If they have money and/or want something stylish, they'll get iPhone. If not, they'll get a current or previous-gen Android. Admittedly, these guys are the easiest to capture for Microsoft, but if they've already invested more than $10 in apps on the Play Store or App Store, you're probably not going to be able to recruit them. Unless you require app devs for Windows Store to offer free licenses to people who provably bought the same product on iOS or Android. Wake me up when MS does that.

People living below the poverty line, and/or in developing countries, are flocking to cheap (and I mean seriously cheap, $20 to $50 FULL RETAIL! and often discounted below even that) low-end Android phones with Mediatek SoCs. Many of them don't even meet the minimum system requirements for Windows Phone, but they run fine on Android. Either that, or they sack away 10 paychecks by living frugally and get sucked into the Apple reality distortion field when they buy an iPhone.

Microsoft is in the same bind that desktop GNU/Linux has been in since the release of Windows 95: the momentum is so powerful that it is literally irrelevant what they do; regardless of what moves they make, short of buying Google or Apple outright (which they can't afford to do), they are not going to be able to own a significant share of the smartphone market.

I would say it's poetic justice, but Microsoft still makes a fuckton of money on Windows and Office, so I don't feel bad for them at all.

Power users

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

That would be a possibility if there were a more power-user-friendly smartphone platform. However, Android is the platform for 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.

That is hardly surprising, since that is true for people in general.

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 iPhone is definately in the high-end segment of the market if we look at the retail price, it is hardly competetive to high-end Android phones functionally. They serve a different market. Hence, I don't think this is a big threat for Android's market share.

Re:Power users

[Anonymous Coward]

99.99% of either market is made of non-power users. For those of you who think you are? You're likely fooling yourself.
 
"Power user" is a buzzword to get people to feel important. The fact that you're relating that to a phone in the first place shows how much of a joke it is.

Re: Power users

[Guppy]

At this point, you pretty much have to be a power user to have a good Android experience, given how badly crapped-up most low - end carrier's phones are.

Most non power users have no idea how to deal with crapware, and no idea that all that junk isn't intended to be part of the Android experience.

Re:Power users

[dave420]

It's not really just a phone, though - Android phones are linux machines with great connectivity. If you are hell-bent on calling a 2.5GHz computer with 2GB+ of RAM, a built-in 1080p screen, wifi, lte, bluetooth, NFC, etc. etc. a "phone", then I guess you will always be confused at how people describe the users of it.

Of course the majority will be from Android

[GreenEnvy22]

When Android has the vast majority of the market, where do you think the majority of people "switching" to Apple are going to come from? The single digit % of users running Windows phone or Blackberry?

Re:Of course the majority will be from Android

[cdrudge]

I would imagine that the opposite is true to, that the majority of users switching to Android are coming from iPhones. And by switching, I'm presuming they mean going from one smart phone to another.

Re:Of course the majority will be from Android

[ckatko]

The article reads like an Android hit piece.* The ONLY thing Android has to do is wait for Apple to slip up. ONE bad PR move and people flock to the competitor. One story of an Apple contractor selling user secrets to China and poof.

Remember Intel's Itanium failure? AMD swept in with x64 and their Athlon 64 and owned the market place for the first time in their competitive history. Unfortunately, AMD then had a huge failure of their own (somewhere around Bulldozer) and Intel went right back to washing the floor with them.
Remember when Apple gave away a free U2 album and their users were furious? They were furious because it was hidden from them and done without consent--not that they were getting something free. Something as small as that drove people away from Apple because of what it represented: It showed that upper management at Apple didn't understand your privacy or will at all.

*(ALL HAIL CORPORATE SLASHDOT. THINK FOR US. TELL US WHAT TO BELIEVE.)

Re:Of course the majority will be from Android

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Switching??

[ElBeano]

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?

WTF

Re:Switching??

[fermion]

Here is how i interpret this. A users buys a cheap android device, it does not integrate well with Google services, or becomes obsolete when the OS is not upgraded, so the user buys an iOS device. Here is how Google fixes this. Provide services to the end user. This is in fact how Google became the powerful ad company it is. Way back when, most ad companies did not provide a service, and were quite obnoxious. This meant that many people tried to avoid them. End users turned off cookies and blocked them outright. To counteract this, instead of provided services, the had name like 2o7 that less sophisticated users had trouble deciphering. Google was innovative in that it provided an increasing range of services in exchange for the end user not blocking ad service. What has happened now is that Google is not provided a high level of services. One of their products, Google docs, which cannot be that expensive to service compared to profits, has not been developed. We all know of other products that have been retired. For instance, MS has Skype and Office 365 for only $100 a year that integrates across all products? What is google offering now? Google, like Apple and MS has to develop a more compelling stack, and convince some users that it is worth money. However, as Google is an ad company, and people expect things for free with ads, this is the source of it's profit. Also, Google tends to not be able to hit a price point. This means that actual interesting products, like the glasses and the original google made phone tend to be far beyond the ability of the average user to purchase.

Re:Switching??

[axl917]

"Power user" seems to be defined in this case as "I play flappy bird a lot".

Re:Switching??

[itsenrique]

acute sense of need

Nailed it.

Android to iDevice

[Raxxon]

How many of those people bought a cheap (crap) Android device and then instead of spending money for a "superphone" decided to go the the "cult of iDevices"? I've had a number of android based devices and given the broad range of hardware out there it's easy to get suckered into buying something that's absolute crap and then wind up blaming the part you can see. I've had a few friends that made this kind of switch and when I pull out my current Android device (OnePlus) most of them kinda kick themselves.

There's statistics, and then there's useless bullshit. I'm thinking this is more the latter.

Re:Android to iDevice

[Noryungi]

I'll second that one. My first Android phone was really bad. It was slow, buggy, full of crapware, and a pain to use.

I "switched" to a Samsung Galaxy Note, and never looked back. The user experience was simply great, almost as good as an iPhone, but much cheaper and with none of the iTunes crap.

I am now using a Nexus 5 and a Nexus 7, and I absolutely love them both. My next smartphone will be either the next generation of Nexus, or the next Samsung.

Re:Android to iDevice

[trout007]

Hence the walled garden and "ecosystem" approach by apple. There are many people that don't want to figure out which phone/tablet/laptop is good and bad. They know if they buy an Apple product it will be good. They don't sell junk. Sure it's overpriced if you compare specs to Android phone/tablet or Windows laptop but you also don't need to do hours of research to see if the product you are looking to get sucks. This is the same reason people buy Honda's and Toyota's. You can get cars with more performance and accessories much cheaper. But if you buy a Honda or Toyota you pretty much know you can drive it for 200,000 miles and just pay for regular maintenance.

Re:Android to iDevice

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Apple user: "I love my phone."

Android user: "I hate your phone!"

Re:Android to iDevice

[Raxxon]

Samsung has been threatening that for a while. As far as I know they only have a failed watch to show for it.

I've largely gotten fed up with Samsung in general as things go on. The increased bloat/shitware and device instability would be a reason to move to any other device. So far Apple has not given me incentive to completely abandon the android pool yet.

"low end"

[michaelmalak]

If "high end" means non-replaceable batteries, I'll stick with " low end".

Re:"low end"

[Mr. Droopy Drawers]

This.

Waited for the Samsung Galaxy S6 to arrive before I upgraded my S3. Seriously disappointed about that the non-replaceable battery. Also, without expandable memory, this made me pick the S5 rather than the better S6.

I'm willing to purchase a decent Android phone. I'm not willing to forgo a replaceable battery. That's a deal-breaker.

I really like the S5 so far. Will the S5 be my last Samsung phone? I guess we'll see when then S7 arrives...

Re:"low end"

[Mr. Droopy Drawers]

actually, no, I'm not. Resorting to insults doesn't really prove your point. I do, indeed, know how to charge a LiOn battery.

Here's the steps outlined by iFixit:
"... eject the SIM tray, heat up the battery door, draw off the battery door with a suction cup, then separate the door with a case-opening tool, then undo 13 screws, heat up the LCD assembly, pry open the charging chip flex ribbons, pull off the front-facing camera connector, battery connector, ear speaker connector, remove the entire motherboard, then pry off the battery with a spudger tool."

That doesn't sound like "pop out the battery and drop in the replacement" to me. The S3 and the S5 -- which I have personally replace the battery on -- are truly replaceable. Indeed, I owned the S3 for 3 years and replaced the battery once. I don't consider that LiOn abuse, frankly.

Re:"low end"

[swb]

No, I don't see it as in issue for anybody.

Every iPhone I buy has been used *hard* for two years by two busy professionals working as consultants, and then used continuously as a home telephone (we kept our landline number and ported it to a cell number because it was actually cheaper than the monthly taxfest that is a landline) and then used pretty hard by a 10 year old boy after that.

I may buy a new iPhone every year, but every one of those iPhones gets used for four years and by then it's not even a question of battery that's an issue, but of software and processor obsolescence for any kind of a serious tasks, and I don't think that's really all that different for Android users, either. The only hardware issue I've ever had was a volume up button on a 4S that crapped out six months in, and it was swapped out in store for a replacement phone in 10 minutes.

I really don't understand guys like you that are so angry about people who do buy a phone every year. Admittedly the biggest "feature" add on year on year is mostly CPU/RAM, although the screen size bump with the iPhone 6 Plus has been the main thing this year. It's a fucking tax writeoff for us and even if we bought 2-3 phones individually we'd be looking at upgrades every 18 months or so anyway, so one every 12-14 months doesn't seem outrageous.

I sometimes think the hostility is because you're too broke, too cheap or just flat-out jealous.

Phone Switching

[Jason Levine]

a survey found that 16 percent of people who bought the latest iPhones previously owned Android devices

So 16% of iPhone purchases were made by people who previously owned Android phones. (I'm going to assume here that "owned Android devices" doesn't mean you owned a Nexus tablet and now are buying an iPhone.) This statistic is useless, though, unless you also find out how many people buying Android phones previously owned iPhones. If there's an equivalent amount of people getting Android phones to replace their iPhones, then the "16%" isn't really a loss for Android. It's just normal churn. Presenting the 16% figure on its own is misleading as it makes it seem like people are fleeing Android and nobody ever leaves Apple.

Re:Phone Switching

[ArcadeMan]

Presenting the 16% figure on its own is misleading as it makes it seem like people are fleeing Android and nobody ever leaves Apple.

It's misleading statistics like these that will leave Apple with a 291% market share in a few years.

Farhad Manjoo has always been an Apple fanboi

[gun26]

,.. so this is just more of the same from him. One of the most overrated people in the tech journalism echo chamber. While these blowhards are all busy singing off the same page, no one is pointing out the obvious fact that we've ended up in another huge tech bubble and we're overdue for a correction as severe as the one that took place in 2000.

It's not about platform...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google doesn't care about the platform, they want screens in front of faces.
Putting 100 android screens in front of 100 faces 1% of the time is making them money.
Putting 50 iOS screens in front of 50 faces 2% of the time, is making them money.

There is nothing tricky about this for google... They want to grow, they biggest source of income is ads, ads are all about getting people to look at things.
They have two options, they can try to compete for a bigger slice of the same sized pie, push all the other ad companies out of business...
OR they can get us to spend more time with our screens in front of our faces, the pie gets bigger and even if every one keeps the same percentage of the pie, Google makes more money than the rest of them.

Why is google working on self driving cars? They want you to use your commute time to browse the web.
Why is google working on glass? They want to be in front of your face every waking hour of the day.
Why is google running internet lines and looking into connectivity by high altitude balloons? Every hour they can one additional person connected to the internet is making them money, connectivity to places that don't have it expands their portion of the pie.

Google provides Jquery libraries, graphing software, mapping software, and DNS servers to make the internet faster and more reliable because the more people looking at more pages makes them more money...

Screens in front of faces, that is what google wants... They don't care about the platform, they gave andriod away to get cheap devices out there to put screens in front of faces.

Android IS a huge financial success. . .

[Idou]

Google pays billions to Apple to make its search engine the default search provider for iOS device

Think of how much MORE Google would have to pay if Android was not the dominate OS. . . HINT: Companies usually Open Source technologies to reduce costs, not to DIRECTLY increase revenues.

Re:Android IS a huge financial success. . .

[anon.adderlan]

Android was never about making direct profit, it was always about ensuring Google was able to profile users to generate more effective ads.

FTFM

The problem is unlike Apple, Google does not make their money on device sales, and so has no incentive to enforce quality until its lack starts to impinge on their ad revenue. Google makes their money on ads and analytics, and everything they do prioritizes it. Don't believe me? Just look at the Google services which have been discontinued.

Outside of English speaking countries and Japan it's in the minority everywhere.

Better tell China, as they didn't get the memo.

Re:Android switcher to iPhone

[jazzis]

You need to learn more about the "Settings" area of iOS configuration app security. Don't let hate blind you to OS configuration.

Power User?

[DjDanny]

Why would a 'Power User' move from Android to iOS? They won't be able to do any of their 'power things' any more.

This article makes no sense at all.

Re:Power User?

[drinkypoo]

Not true, a jailbroken iOS device is essentially a small BSD box.

Oh? So you have the source code? Snicker snort.

A jailbroken Android device, on the other hand, really is a small Linux box. You can trivially install a more complete userland on most interesting phones. You can install an X server. You can get the sources to everything but the Google Play stuff, and you can use the phone without that stuff. In theory you should even be able to throw away the GUI and all the apps from Android and switch to Wayland someday, at least on relatively modern phones whose graphics drivers will be usable by Wayland.

Now, tell us again how much your iOS phone is like a computer, please. We're fascinated.

The actual battle is not Android vs iOS.

[wvmarle]

I don't think there is really a fight between iOS and Android. iOS is Apple, Android is the rest. OK, there's Windows Phone and Blackberry but they don't really count in this market. Windows Phone is almost exclusive to Nokia; Blackberry is just Blackberry.

The battle is between Apple, Samsung, LG, Huawei, etc. Not between the OSes. Samsung is targeting the high-end market about as much as Apple, though while Apple targets only the high end, Samsung targets also other segments of the market. The other manufacturers are targeting anything from rock bottom to the top.

We should really stop this "Android vs iOS" nonsense. I've never, ever heard someone choosing a phone based on it having iOS or Android. Instead they want an Apple iPhone (which happens to come with iOS). Or they want the latest Samsung (which happens to come with Android - Samsung's Android, a version of Android bastardised to an extent that it is hardly recognisable as the same OS that runs many other phones, from manufacturers that use something close to stock Android).

Now it may very well be that Apple users are the ones that are more susceptible to advertising (which in turn could explain why they chose Apple's offering; after all Apple's marketing is second to none), and hence more valuable to advertisers. But it's not just that "Apple/iOS has the high-end market". Samsung's top end is at least as high end as Apple's iPhones and they seem to compete quite strongly, taking a good share of that market.

That Apple makes a lot more profit on their phones than Samsung and other Android makers do... that's a whole different story. Maybe it simply is the case that Apple users are those that are swayed easiest by advertising, making them pay a massive premium for their phones. And people that already have shown to be happy to buy big in an advertising ploy should be valuable for other advertisers as well.

Understand how the companies make money!

[Aqualung812]

Google is an advertising company. They make money from getting the advertising targets (you) to use their services, and charge the advertisers for access to you.
They're not going to make money off Android directly, it is just a way to get people on their platform.
This is why Google still makes iOS and Windows Phone applications. They just care that you're using their platform, regardless of how.

Apple is a hardware company.They make money from selling phones, and increasingly off of their app stores, but obviously not enough to open their app store to Google.
This is why you DON'T see iTunes, Facetime, or iMessage for Android. Their goal is to sell devices.

Microsoft is a software company. They make money off selling software, so they will, like Google, try to make their software available on as many platforms as they can. They, also like Google, care less about the phone sales and more about getting you as a loyal user of their products.
Unlike Google, Microsoft users are their customers.

Whenever people compare these three companies, they need to look at the core of who these companies are.
I'm not claiming one is better than the other, and in fact I use all three daily.
They just have different motivations for playing on the same playground.

It is somewhat like 3 kids all playing baseball together, but one is playing to be a pro baseball player, another is playing to have fun, and another is playing to impress a girl.
You can't compare the 3 kids to each other and say one is doing better than another, because each is measuring their success a different way.

Re:Understand how the companies make money!

[anon.adderlan]

Indeed. Their priorities color everything, and I would carefully consider them before forming any contractual obligations.

Except for Microsoft, whose priorities I can no longer explain. They used to prioritize developers and user experience, and so our interests aligned, but something happened after Windows 7. Now they remove features and make breaking changes in their software platforms almost yearly, and run the most developer hostile app store I've ever encountered. They managed to make an excellent tablet UI, only to frack up the desktop with it, and now they're doing the same thing in reverse and fracking up the tablet UI with more desktop like features.

These days the only platforms which prioritize developers are multi-platform frameworks like Unity, which is why I stick with them. This also highlights just how unaligned vendor interests are with developers, as we wouldn't even need things like Unity if platform vendors were more open to porting, but they're only interested in the value developers can add to their platform.

The Carriers

[watermark]

My biggest issue is that I'm stuck on some ancient version of Android. OS updates are the responsibility of the carriers, yet they carry no liability when they don't offer the updates in a timely manner (or at all). I'm sure old iPhone hardware has a limit, but they are certainly guaranteed to get updates for a much larger time frame than a majority of android devices.

I can root my phone, and I have rooted some phones, but the same issue exists there as well. As soon as the phone hardware is sufficiently old you can no longer find well supported updates for the OS. These updates are also often offered by random, unknown individuals, which is obviously a big risk. The problem is even more difficult when phone manufacturers are actually successful at preventing rooting.

I'm fine with old hardware eventually not being able to run the latest OS, but I have no indication of when that will be. When I buy a new phone, I don't know if I will get updates for 5 years, or even less.

Why do I have to upgrade my entire OS just to get security updates? Why can't I have patches?

Imagine if BestBuy were tasked with making available Windows updates for that Dell you just bought from BestBuy. No, I'd much rather get my updates directly from Microsoft. I want the same thing for my phone, updates directly from the OS maintainer. If I have to buy an Apple product to get that, then they are the winners in my book.

(I own several Android devices and no Apple devices. I'm thinking of buying Apple in the future.)

Perspective?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This article seems(somewhat bizarrely) to be written from the perspective of Google, Inc. but purporting to be talking about "android" and its prospects.

There is certainly a place for analysis of "So, did this 'android' stuff pay off for Google? Was it roughly break-even? A strategic failure?"; but that's quite different than "How is Android doing? What are its prospects?". Conflating the two, though, is confused at best and outright nonsense at worst(especially when examining the 'running Android, possibly even developing it in some way; but not running "Android+Google Play Services"' slice of the market'.

So, is Apple the one actually making money on smartphones? Hell yeah. Has Android been tepid in terms of actually making Google any money? At best; it may well be directly losing money and only appearing to pull its weight as a strategic play. Are the margins for most Android handset manufacturers pretty unexciting compared to Apple? Also hell yeah. However(much like the PC OEMs), that may not actually affect Android: None of the Android OEMs gets the option of joining Apple in making iPhones(except the ones that happen to also have divisions that manufacture components for Apple, like Samsung). Apple has zero interest in letting them do that. So, they can either ship Android handsets with Google, ship AOSP+their own or somebody else's stuff; ship Windows Phone, attempt to build their own OS entirely, or leave the market. Shipping Android handsets with Google isn't a terribly high-margin strategy; but it is so far unclear whether any of the other options are any higher margin.

It is very likely that Google isn't getting nearly as much of what they want from Android as they would like; and Android OEMs certainly aren't earning terribly exciting margins on their devices; but that's their problem. It only becomes Android's problem if Google decides to pull the plug, or if OEMs abandon it in favor of WP or one of the assorted linux-with-stuff-on-top-but-not-android options. So far, WP has gotten fairly good reviews; but struggled for marketshare, and the not-Android Linux derivatives are all writhing around near the noise floor. This isn't obviously a good thing, Android is a pile of mediocrity in quite a few respects, even if some of Google's applications and services for it are pretty good; but it is still the case: Since nobody gets to be an iOS vendor except Apple, and Nokia is MS' special buddy, with other OEMs allowed but sharing a very small pond; 'Android' is a fight over some pretty unexciting margins; but unless a company simply wishes to stop manufacturing smartphones and tablets, it's a fight they'll probably remain in for some time to come.

Sure, I'd love the second coming of WebOS to sweep away the unbelievers and deliver us; but that doesn't appear to be in the cards.

Profit is the goal, remember?

[kenh]

Google did not develop and release their free Android operating system to profit off the (free) OS, they wanted to lower costs to increase the user base and thereby increase their advertising market.

At over a billion devices in the market, they have expanded the user base.

If android users migrate to iOS (for whatever reason), evidence proves that iOS users are among the most profitable market segment in the mobile advertising market, so Google sees ad revenue (and profits) increase.

Android is the gateway is to the 'harder' OSes, like iOS, and that's where the real money is.

Google is getting exactly what it wants from it's free Android OS.

Personally, I think the biggest challenge Android devices have is that many users are drawn in by the exceptional bargain devices (like a $40 7" tablet) and soon learn that a) they really like the functionality of a tablet and b) you really can't make a 'good' tablet for $40. That initial exposure to lie-quality/lie-cost android devices ultimately could drive frustrated users to iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Re:Article is trole.

[Yomers]

Microsoft powered phones don't exist in the real world. I have yet to see one. They are apocryphal.

I've seen Nokia Lumia once. Still experience this nightmare from time to time - getting lost in a plain of bright colored squares, can not find my way out. Thinking about poor souls who use this thing for desktop make me shudder.

Make money? I thought tech didn't care about that

[damn_registrars]

We are constantly told that facebook is the greatest thing in the history of the universe, even though it doesn't actually make money. Why are we holding android to a different standard?

The swicthing rate is declining

[Immerial]

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.

You don't get it.

[danbob999]

Google doesn't care about making profit out of Android yet. They are buying market share. They want to position themselves as a dominant player in order to profit in the future, once the smartphone market will be a lot larger than what it is today. A good comparison is Microsoft with their Xbox. They lost money with the first Xbox, but they placed themselves as an important player in the gaming console market. And then they made money with the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. It's all about the long term.

Feature phones

[tepples]

Either it's your first phone, then you're not counted as switch

Is a switch from a "feature phone" to a smartphone counted as a switch or a first time?

Well that is refreshing

[tompaulco]

Well, what a refreshing change of pace. Instead of the commenters setting up strawmen and beating them down, the article takes care of that for us.

Re:Android switcher to iPhone

[PitaBred]

I'm pretty sure he was criticizing Android's security, not Apple's. iOS is just a pain in the ass to use and is very non-customizable. That's annoying to a lot of people, including me.

Re:Essentially yes, you do

[drinkypoo]

Its' really too bad you can't understand how much more powerful this is to actual hackers.

Hahahaha more powerful than having the source code, and being able to rip out any parts of it you don't want lurking in there to begin with? Tell me another one.