They fly over the biggest details of all: The price.
For 100$ you can get the Moto E 2nd gen and I consider it a very high-end phone (nice screen, fast, latest version of android).
How Android gets to 100% market share
21–30 of 75 posts
Re: How Android gets to 100% market share
#22I believe the fragmentation issue is going to take a lot longer to solve than the author leads on. Android is rooted in its open nature, and it's what caused the proliferation of the OS in the first place. It's going to take much longer for OEMs to stop shipping bloatware on the devices, or Google will effectively fork the OS simply because the OEMs can't keep up. Look how long it's taken Microsoft to get their OEMs…
Fragmentation is an old beast. Android is no better than what we had with Symbian, J2ME or proprietary mobile OSes that came before current crop of mobile OSes. As long as OEM and networks have the last word on firmware, it will always exist´, in name of product differentiation.
It's way better than J2ME and lightyears ahead of proprietary OSes. If you think that's not the case, I don't think you remember those times very well. With J2ME it was basically close to impossible to create any app apart from the most basic ones without producer-specific APIs. Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, Motorola, etc. - they all had their own special extensions. Even if some game was released for more than one handset, each make had its own version.
(Although it was possible to write a translation layer - I wrote a nokia-to-siemens translating classes which worked in most cases)
Now you may have issues with versions of Android and which features you can support. You may also have issues with different resolutions. But it's nowhere as bad as in 2002.
Re: How Android gets to 100% market share
#23This author has a pretty cynical view that the only reason people use iPhone is because of vendor lock-in, like from iMessage.
This disregards the fact that many iPhone customers are still first time buyers with no lock in hanging over their head. And also Apple has an extremely high customer satisfaction rate keeping customers coming back. Customers buy iPhones because they like the experience and ecosystem, not solely due to some service lock-in.
Re: How Android gets to 100% market share
#24My grandfather was a Ford man. He would only ever buy a Ford, even during periods when other manufacturers were making vastly superior vehicles.
I used to think such loyalty was a silly generational thing. My generation was a fickle consumer. We would research and decide on a purchase based purely on merit. That's how I was with phones. When iPhone was the most compelling phone, I would buy an iPhone. When there was a more compelling Android phone, I would buy that.
However, as I get older I'm starting to understand loyalty, and it's not what I expected. It isn't a dogmatic belief in a brand. It's recognizing that sometimes it's easier to stick with what works and not worry about whether there's something better out there.
Now that we've been living with smartphones for a while, and they mostly just work, I don't expect people find as much value in switching between Android and iOS. As long as both exist, neither will ever reach 100% market share.
Re: How Android gets to 100% market share
#25I haven't read the article, and I love my Android phone, but I sincerely hope Android never approaches 100%. Monoculture is never a good thing.
True, except that as a developer I'd prefer to target only one architecture. Now we're forced to write apps for iOS and Android and the web separately.
> True, except that as a developer I'd prefer to target only one architecture. Now we're forced to write apps for iOS and Android and the web separately.
How is it a bad thing ? more work == more money for you as a developer.
Re: How Android gets to 100% market share
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fragmentation is an old beast. Android is no better than what we had with Symbian, J2ME or proprietary mobile OSes that came before current crop of mobile OSes. As long as OEM and networks have the last word on firmware, it will always exist´, in name of product differentiation.
It's way better than J2ME and lightyears ahead of proprietary OSes. If you think that's not the case, I don't think you remember those times very well. With J2ME it was basically close to impossible to create any app apart from the most basic ones without producer-specific APIs. Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, Motorola, etc. - they all had their own special extensions. Even if some game was released for more than one handse…
I did develop for J2ME.
> With J2ME it was basically close to impossible to create any app apart from the most basic ones without producer-specific APIs. Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, Motorola, etc. - they all had their own special extensions. Even if some game was released for more than one handset, each make had its own version.
How is this different from the firmware issues that plague Android?
Have you ever tried to make the support library work properly across Samsung devices, or even worse cheap chinese brands?
Or track down native crashes or memory leaks across Android firmware?
Whoever believes that Android is better than J2ME, never had to make their apps work on cheap or network specific Android devices.
Re: How Android gets to 100% market share
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, except that as a developer I'd prefer to target only one architecture. Now we're forced to write apps for iOS and Android and the web separately.
> True, except that as a developer I'd prefer to target only one architecture. Now we're forced to write apps for iOS and Android and the web separately. How is it a bad thing ? more work == more money for you as a developer.
Some people like to do interesting work instead of doing basically the same thing over and over again.
Re: How Android gets to 100% market share
#28My grandfather was a Ford man. He would only ever buy a Ford, even during periods when other manufacturers were making vastly superior vehicles. I used to think such loyalty was a silly generational thing. My generation was a fickle consumer. We would research and decide on a purchase based purely on merit. That's how I was with phones. When iPhone was the most compelling phone, I would buy an iPhone. When there was…
I find a lot of those brand loyalist tend to be foolish in many ways. They make decisions based on emotion, rather than analytical thought.
I worked in retail for a good part of a decade, and I was dumbfounded by the number of people who would never buy another product from X manufacture based on a single poor experience with one product. It's simply an emotional response to their unpleasant experience which results in the person making a decision without statistical data to validate their idea. Which seems like nothing more than just plain ignorance.
Re: How Android gets to 100% market share
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's way better than J2ME and lightyears ahead of proprietary OSes. If you think that's not the case, I don't think you remember those times very well. With J2ME it was basically close to impossible to create any app apart from the most basic ones without producer-specific APIs. Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, Motorola, etc. - they all had their own special extensions. Even if some game was released for more than one handse…
I did develop for J2ME. > With J2ME it was basically close to impossible to create any app apart from the most basic ones without producer-specific APIs. Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, Motorola, etc. - they all had their own special extensions. Even if some game was released for more than one handset, each make had its own version. How is this different from the firmware issues that plague Android? Have you ever tried to m…
> How is this different from the firmware issues that plague Android?
What "firmware issues plague Android?
> Whoever believes that Android is better than J2ME, never had to make their apps work on cheap or network specific Android devices.
This must be a joke
Re: How Android gets to 100% market share
#30This author has a pretty cynical view that the only reason people use iPhone is because of vendor lock-in, like from iMessage. This disregards the fact that many iPhone customers are still first time buyers with no lock in hanging over their head. And also Apple has an extremely high customer satisfaction rate keeping customers coming back. Customers buy iPhones because they like the experience and ecosystem, not sol…
I don't think there are any more first-time buyers of phones left in the world. Really. Its not a thing any more. Also no first-time shoe buyers, or food buyers. Except maybe the very young trickling into the market.