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Standing Up For Android

shiftyjelly.wordpress.com

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Re: Standing Up For Android

#3

Post by Kylekramer »

I am 100% for holding a mirror up to the weird industry of Apple bloggers constantly patting each other on the back for being brave enough to support a giant company while throwing schoolyard insults at any one who dares compete with Apple (though I honestly just file them in the same department as sports writers now: rarely insightful, yet a highly amusing sideshow), but let's have some honesty here. The only reason Shift Jelly Android profits are beating iOS is that the fact that one of their main apps is a podcasting app. On iOS, while there is much room for improvement over Apple's offering, they are still competing with the company that essentially runs podcasting distribution and has their podcasting solution preinstalled. On Android, there is no preinstalled podcasting app/distribution market, so the demand is much higher. Not to mention that Google's own podcasting app is half baked and seemingly abandoned.

Re: Standing Up For Android

#4

Post by baddox »

I'm still curious about the details of his conversations with his users about why they choose Android. Are any of them choosing an Android phone because of the Android OS or app ecosystem? Aside from some hackers that might like the hackability and extensibility of the Android OS, or people that reject Apple because of their business practices or philosophies, I strongly suspect most users that buy Android phones "because they prefer it" are really preferring the hardware of their specific phone.

I don't think anyone denies that there are Android phones with amazing hardware specs (great screens, slim designs, fast CPUs, etc.). I just have trouble believing that people (other than the exceptions I mentioned earlier, which I highly doubt are a significant percentage of Android users) who have used both Android and iOS truly prefer the Android OS.

Re: Standing Up For Android

#5

Post by d_r »

baddox wrote: post #4

I'm still curious about the details of his conversations with his users about why they choose Android. Are any of them choosing an Android phone because of the Android OS or app ecosystem? Aside from some hackers that might like the hackability and extensibility of the Android OS, or people that reject Apple because of their business practices or philosophies, I strongly suspect most users that buy Android phones "be…

I'd say it's even less complex. My non-techie friends who have bought Android, did it for one of two reasons (I've actually asked many of them!):

* They wanted a smartphone, but they live on the east coast (NYC). For sometime, iPhone was only on AT&T, and AT&T had a reputation for bad reception there. I believe this has improved in the recent years, though, and well, Verizon and Sprint are also in the game now.

* They made an arbitrary choice based on a current promotion, TV ads, look of the phone, screen size, etc., without any deep knowledge of the app ecosystem or hackability. There were also a couple who have never owned an Apple product, but felt that Apple was too trendy, and wanted to get something "different."

IMO, Android and iOS are two very different beasts that look the same if you were to just compare the specs. Both have phones with touch screens. Both have apps. Both have cameras, etc, etc. This is how users compare. We know that these are not the useful criteria for comparison. But how would you reasonably explain this to a non-tech user?

Re: Standing Up For Android

#8

Post by metafour »

Kylekramer wrote: post #3

I am 100% for holding a mirror up to the weird industry of Apple bloggers constantly patting each other on the back for being brave enough to support a giant company while throwing schoolyard insults at any one who dares compete with Apple (though I honestly just file them in the same department as sports writers now: rarely insightful, yet a highly amusing sideshow), but let's have some honesty here. The only reason…

I can't comment on the market for podcast apps in the Android Market since I don't own an Android phone but I do know that there are a number of podcast apps available for the iPhone. I've personally purchased two within the past couple of months, SimpleCasts and Instacast. I'm not really in the market to buy a third one when I've got two already.

I don't know when ShiftyJelly released their podcast app initially but this might be another reason that their podcast app doesn't sell as well on iOS.

Re: Standing Up For Android

#9

Post by nl »

baddox wrote: post #4

I'm still curious about the details of his conversations with his users about why they choose Android. Are any of them choosing an Android phone because of the Android OS or app ecosystem? Aside from some hackers that might like the hackability and extensibility of the Android OS, or people that reject Apple because of their business practices or philosophies, I strongly suspect most users that buy Android phones "be…

You might be surprised at the number of people who thing Android looks better.

Things like live wallpaper make a great, great first impression. Many people have seen an iPhone, then the see the Samsung "beach" live wallpaper and say "wow".

Re: Standing Up For Android

#10

Post by jmjerlecki »

I work for a pretty successful app company for iOS/Android and I wouldn't call the free/paid busted by any means. We have ranked as high as 5 in our category on Android in paid and it is not a substantial amount of money. Our free product on the other hand that is ad supported is absolutely killing it.
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