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How Android gets to 100% market share

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Re: How Android gets to 100% market share

#51
post #24

My 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 agree there will always be Android and iOS, but for different reasons. Brand loyalty taps into the same part of the brain that team loyalty does. Being a die hard Apple fan is the same as being a die hard Red Socks fan, as far as our brain is concerned. So to create that brand loyalty, there has to be two separate teams to compete against, a rivalry. Mac vs Windows. Android vs iOS. Mets vs Phillies.

Having two separate and competing ecosystems actually makes Apple more money than if they had a monopoly. You're not just buying a mobile phone, you're on our team now. You're one of us. And we all have Apple laptops too.

Re: How Android gets to 100% market share

#52
post #26

Earlier 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…

I am sorry, how can J2ME even remotely compare to Android?

With J2ME you couldn't write the simplest application before you ran into the platform specific minefield (example: how to read the D-pad on different phones?). On Android, running into problems is the exception not the rule.

Re: How Android gets to 100% market share

#53
post #45
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> What "firmware issues plague Android? Apparently you lack reading comprehension as I listed two of them. > This must be a joke So here are a some more jokes specially just for you: https://github.com/google/iosched/issues/79 http://www.androidheadlines.com/2014/11/samsung-devices-migh... http://verybadalloc.com/android/2015/12/19/special-place-for... https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?can=1&q=firmwa...

I looked into your first link, the linked google issues says:

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: android.support.v7.internal.view.menu.MenuBuilder at android.support.v7.widget.ActionMenuView.getMenu(SourceFile:620) at android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar.ensureMenu(SourceFile:823) ...

Is this really a "firmware issue"? I thought the inclusion of support libraries was the responsibility of the developers? Am I misreading this?

Re: How Android gets to 100% market share

#54
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OS slow and crash frequently?

Didn't you know? Windows on circa 2009 Atom netbook is also slow and crashes frequently, therefore Windows is a bad, slow, crashy OS. (Tongue in cheek, obviously).

incidentally, I know a best selling author who wrote his two first books on a 2009 atom netbook.

(conclusion: stop blaming the tools and get back to work)

Re: How Android gets to 100% market share

#55
post #47

This 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 never thought of iMessage as vendor lock-in before, but the blue vs green texts is the #1 reason I hear from my peers why they disparage Android users

For a while there was actually an issue with iMessage where even after you switched to an Android, iMessage would continue to direct your friends' iPhones to contact you via iMessage instead of SMS. So if you left the iPhone platform, all of your iPhone-owning friends would be unable to text you.

Google Hangouts seemed to be a step in this direction as well, with SMS integration, it pushes users to use their proprietary protocol instead where possible. But it looks like Google has backed off of it since then.

Re: How Android gets to 100% market share

#56
post #53
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What "firmware issues plague Android? Apparently you lack reading comprehension as I listed two of them. > This must be a joke So here are a some more jokes specially just for you: https://github.com/google/iosched/issues/79 http://www.androidheadlines.com/2014/11/samsung-devices-migh... http://verybadalloc.com/android/2015/12/19/special-place-for... https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?can=1&q=firmwa...

I looked into your first link, the linked google issues says: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: android.support.v7.internal.view.menu.MenuBuilder at android.support.v7.widget.ActionMenuView.getMenu(SourceFile:620) at android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar.ensureMenu(SourceFile:823) ... Is this really a "firmware issue"? I thought the inclusion of support libraries was the responsibility of the developers? Am I misreading th…

Samsung includes their own modified support library on the classpath, on some of their handsets, before the classes loaded from the APK.

So on those devices you need to load a customised versions to be able to workaround class loading priorities and load the right classes.

Re: How Android gets to 100% market share

#57
post #52
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am sorry, how can J2ME even remotely compare to Android? With J2ME you couldn't write the simplest application before you ran into the platform specific minefield (example: how to read the D-pad on different phones?). On Android, running into problems is the exception not the rule.

The fact is that there are fragmentation issues due to firmware bugs.

And it isn't that exceptional, if you look at the bug database, specially in low spec handsets.

Re: How Android gets to 100% market share

#58
post #21

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).

The author mentions that—and that the fact that carrier contracts are dying means that US consumers will become more price conscious. However, Apple's high margins mean that iPhones are more expensive because Apple wants them to be (and people will pay it). I don't expect iPhone prices to ever be as low as Android prices, but if Apple needs to, they can drop their prices and still make money on their phones. They just don't want to (because they like making money), and it's yet not clear that they have to.

Re: How Android gets to 100% market share

#59
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never thought of iMessage as vendor lock-in before, but the blue vs green texts is the #1 reason I hear from my peers why they disparage Android users

For a while there was actually an issue with iMessage where even after you switched to an Android, iMessage would continue to direct your friends' iPhones to contact you via iMessage instead of SMS. So if you left the iPhone platform, all of your iPhone-owning friends would be unable to text you. Google Hangouts seemed to be a step in this direction as well, with SMS integration, it pushes users to use their propriet…

This is still an issue, as far as I know. If you switch from iOS to another mobile OS, you have to deregister your phone number from iMessage here: https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage

Re: How Android gets to 100% market share

#60
post #24

My 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…

It's not like "Ford or Chevy?"

It's more like "Toyota or Mercedes-Benz?"

Even that doesn't quite capture it. Apple will defend a position at the high end of the market, even though they might give some ground in profit margins. They will do that by controlling the hardware and software, by vertical integration in CPU design, and by getting the best, newest technologies in the supply chain by locking up exclusivity. Samsung will try to chip away at this at the high end, but Samsung doesn't get how Apple attracts and keeps customers.

On the other hand, both the current dominance and the future potential for Android is understated by the article. Android is already above 75% share in handsets alone. Android N previews desktop features like resizeable windows. Android will be the basis of the vast majority of embedded screen-based UIs. Google's IoT OS is essentially a headless Android. And if Google can get tablets right, Android will become the dominant desktop productivity OS, too. Android will be in a class by itself, the way Windows used to for about 25 years, and the dominance will probably be as long-lasting.

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