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Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

extremetech.com

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Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#91

Post by bdcravens »

panabee wrote: post #80

Apple has designed its business model to cede the mass market. It focuses on capturing the majority of industry profits, not sales. It should surprise no one that more phones ship with Android than iOS. As a platform company, this strategy exposes a vulnerable flank since historically the platform company with the most market share attracts the best software and the most end users. The greatest difference between mob…

This was more true 2 years ago. I think they are trying to capture back some of that "mass market" where people expect a cheap or free phone as opposed to the high end where we are used to paying $200-400:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare-iphones/

(4: free, 4S: $99)

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#92

Post by ZeroGravitas »

shinratdr wrote: post #60
neya wrote: post #50

This is seriously good news. What many people don't realize is how powerful Android is. Open Source doesn't mean shitty quality software, contrary to popular belief. Android can do so many things that other Operating systems still cannot provide. All Android needs is some time, and some iterations and no one can even dream of killing it (like many plan to). Because, if anything history has taught us, Open Source will…

> Because, if anything history has taught us, Open Source will eventually win the war. How does that work? Where is the open source OS that "won" the desktop war? Where is the open source codec that "won" the codec wars?

x264?

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#93

Post by myko »

ConstantineXVI wrote: post #79
neya wrote: post #50

This is seriously good news. What many people don't realize is how powerful Android is. Open Source doesn't mean shitty quality software, contrary to popular belief. Android can do so many things that other Operating systems still cannot provide. All Android needs is some time, and some iterations and no one can even dream of killing it (like many plan to). Because, if anything history has taught us, Open Source will…

The Android codebase may not be killable, but Android as a platform certainly is. Google is the only thing holding Android together; if they pull out or a major OEM or carrier grows balls, they'll fork and the ecosystem will shatter. Remember Android is mainly [edit: Apache] licensed so there's no requirement for forkers to stay open; I have serious doubts OEMs and carriers are interested in helping their competitors…

Actually it's Apache: http://source.android.com/source/licenses.html

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#94

Post by myko »

veemjeem wrote: post #67
akmiller wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iOS has no fragmentation I think the correct statement would be iOS has "less" fragmentation. They still have fragmentation though. Not only through the devices but also the version of iOS running on the device. It can get pretty hairy trying to maintain support for multiple iOS devices with versions of even just 4.3 and up.

If you think iOS is hairy supporting 4.3 and up, you probably have no experience supporting Android apps. The fragmentation extends beyond the Android version. The differences between handsets are so big that one pretty much has to ignore the users who own phones that are impossible to test with. You'll get some random complaint from a user running your app on a device from a manufacturer you've never even heard of.…

I've certainly had issues supporting iOS 4 vs 5/6. Most of the Android issues I run into have to do with WebViews behaving differently on different OEMs devices. Both forms of fragmentation can be a pain in the ass.

Probably games developers have it harder on Android, but for the average app it seems just about the same to me as a developer.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#95

Post by myko »

j-v wrote: post #63
technotony wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a slide in here which shows apple has ten times the app download revenues that android has: http://www.businessinsider.com/state-of-internet-slides-2012...

This. From an app developer's perspective, there's no contest currently. And mobile web usage isn't looking much better for Android: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-android-mobile-web-usag... No doubt more and more phones in pockets will be running Android. But how many will really be used like smart phones?

Of course on Android it is easy to say 'show me the desktop version' of a site which uses a different UA which would show up as a desktop browser and not an Android phone.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#96

Post by myko »

MaysonL wrote: post #53
Retric wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at sales the ratio of Android devices in poor countries is significantly higher than the US. But, for the vast majority of US developers it's pointless to count those people. If you look at actual US sales, both iOS and Android are on the rise mostly by eating BlackBerry's lunch. Android is still almost 2x the size of iOS but again there far more popular on the cheap handset market and are harder to targe…

And of course, looking toward the market saturation point, every survey I've seen shows that the Android-> iOS switch rate is significantly higher than the iOS -> Android switch rate. If that changes, Apple should watch out. Another interesting statistic, from Opera, was their report that iPad produced more ad revenue than all of Android.

Maybe because a far superior mobile browser, Chrome, is available on Android devices?

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#97

Post by diminish »

atirip wrote: post #21

So now that one company is Google, that one man is Andy Rubin and that one phone is Android. Thats the future we wanted. Thank God Google acted.

Andy Rubin as a startup founder of 10 years ago is to be congratulated, too. His vision of an open source, Linux-based mobile OS has wiped away the competition and is now the dominant player. Android has stolen most superlatives from competitors in just 4 years.

That said, I believe it is time for start-ups to get ready for a post-Android world where the forking, customization power of open source software, combined with the diversity and power of mobile chips, will come into play. New categories of devices, solutions based on powerful mobile chips may open up new horizons for aspiring startups.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#98

Post by Steko »

jusben1369 wrote: post #74

What Apple does well: Take a nascent but exploding market and create a fantastically superior experience via vertical integration. Get way out of in front of the competition and own the consumer mindshare: PC/iPod/iPhone (almost Newton) What Apple doesn't do well: Own the mass market. The one place they have - music players - has really collapsed as a stand alone market and merged in with smart phones. (ie no one in…

"Why Apple is in trouble: 47% of all revenue comes from the iPhone and it's clear that that market has moved past their sweet spot"

This is not clear at all. Selling tiny computers with mobile broadband is clearly going to be the biggest hardware business for the next 10+ years and 10 years from now the device that generates the bulk of Apple's revenues will probably still be called an iPhone. It may bear little similarity to the current slab/multitouch input phone of today but will serve all the same purposes. And Android based competitors may be 90% of the market then and Apple may still be the most profitable company in the world.

I have a hard time believing the story that 'Apple is in trouble' because they have the highest margins in one the biggest markets which is still rapidly growing.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#99

Post by ricw »

jusben1369 wrote: post #74

What Apple does well: Take a nascent but exploding market and create a fantastically superior experience via vertical integration. Get way out of in front of the competition and own the consumer mindshare: PC/iPod/iPhone (almost Newton) What Apple doesn't do well: Own the mass market. The one place they have - music players - has really collapsed as a stand alone market and merged in with smart phones. (ie no one in…

Couldn't agree more with this. What apple needs to do is not necessarily only innovate with features, but also with price. Otherwise they'll lose the market share (happening), devs won't prioritise iOS anymore, the iOS ecosystem advantage will become less relevant and well see the same pan out as we've seen when w95 hit the market.. In the end, it'll all boil down to marketshare.

Re: Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

#100

Post by taligent »

mey wrote: post #78
shinratdr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because, if anything history has taught us, Open Source will eventually win the war. How does that work? Where is the open source OS that "won" the desktop war? Where is the open source codec that "won" the codec wars?

Open source has won the enterprise. (Servers and platforms)

Server operating system definitely.

But Java and .Net are both effectively proprietary.

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