Anecdotally, I've observed that Android has a relatively high share of the system administrator market. So this doesn't surprise me at all.
yeah. I know three people who bought one the day it came out. What really surprised me is that my sister (who runs a property management company) got one.
Looks like the Apple fanbois got to the comments section pretty quickly. I think they are hearing for the first time that not everyone on Earth uses an iPhone, and that this shocks and frightens them. (Next someone will mention that Windows has a higher market share than OS X. How could that be!!)
And yet... it's highly likely that there's a bias to the data here. The people most likely to be interested in and seek out Android phones and Android apps are also precisely the people most likely to be in O'Reilly's target market. So while it may say something about Android adoption among geeks, it doesn't provide any useful data one way or another about adoption among the general population.
so, you are saying that amongst the tech-savvy people android may become the platform of choice. Good enough for me ;)
This could be a 1980's Mac vs PC redux. Closed vs open platform. We know how that turned out. Android software/hardware is closing in fast. Who cares if Apple has 1000x more apps if the ones you actually spend 99% of the time using are on both platforms. At the moment background processes on the Android are really advantageous, although I imagine that will change before long. A locked down operating system is fighting against history. People will put up with that shit on their music player but not on a mobile os. Apple is either going to have to open up or they will be in for a slow burn.
Not opening up has served Apple pretty well in the desktop world. They lost the market share war clearly but won the profitability war. Which would you rather be right now, Dell selling at razor thin margins or Apple who sells a lot less but makes much more per sale.