It's Apple vs. Google in the New Phone Fight | Hacker News Reader

It's Apple vs. Google in the New Phone Fight

newsweek.com

9 pointsniekmaas18 comments

I have two problems with analysis like this.

First it ignores how early we are in the game. To use the PC Operating System comparison we’re still in the period where people thought OS/2 and DesqView were viable competitors. Yes Apple and Google are currently the frontrunners but you have some big, successful companies like Microsoft and Nokia who will literally do anything to get a foothold in this market.

My second issue here is this analysis ignores the vast number difference between PC shipments and Cellular Phones. Windows really cemented control of the market with Windows ’95 but the year after that only saw about 80 million in total PC shipments. Compare that to the Cellular Phone market which is projected to hit 5 billion this year. It’s much harder to dominate a market of 5 billion and I really don’t see any company controlling 90% of that.

In the end I suspect there will be a lot of competition out there with certain platforms becoming more popular in various countries (I suspect the U.S. will stay Apple vs. Google for example).

I agree. I see two other big differences between now and the PC OS battle of old. First, compatibility problems were a much bigger deal 20 years ago than they are today. If you and the person you wanted to share information with weren't both running the same program on the same OS with the same data storage hardware, you couldn't collaborate at all. Today, we have the internet, which has created a lowest common denominator for communication. Everyone can understand HTML. We have Google Docs, email, Twitter. Different OS's can have different client applications but can easily talk to the same services as other devices.

This leads to my second, related, difference. Microsoft aggressively sold Windows to businesses first, everyone else second. Many many people had Windows machines at work, so when it came time to get one for their home, they picked the same OS for familiarity and compatibility reasons. I don't see that as being a large factor in the handset market. The phone isn't as important to getting work done as the PC was and is, so people have more latitude in picking what phone they want to use.

So, again, I agree. There is room for more mobile OS's in this space than the two we got in the PC space. I hope more device manufactures realize this and try hard to make something compelling. We'll see.

The game is not early, it's almost over. Why? Because the O/S is just a hardware abstraction layer now.

Android comes right out and says it. Linux is the HAL. Apple is a little more coy about it ("oh, it's OSX underneath"), but then again what's with the renaming the of O/S to iOS4? What does that fortell?

All said, it doesn't matter anymore. Android could be ported to OSX tomorrow, and iPhone can run on Linux if it wanted. It's the application layer that matters now. Microsoft and Nokia are scrambling to catch up, but there's either nothing there (Nokia/Meego), or something that's not compelling enough (Windows Phone) for developers to care about.

Never discount Microsoft, if only for the sole reason that they'll just throw infinite amounts of money just to be relevant. For example: Xbox and Zune.

Having played with their new "Kin" line, I can confidently discount them (unless they make some serious changes in strategy). I was met with a device that made little sense, had no clear organization of tools and apps, and had a HORRID UI. I'm an iOS fan, but I would pick an Android phone over M$'s offering any day.

But as many have said Microsoft is not targeting Kin at the type of person who would visit HN. It's targeted at the teen market that bought sidekicks in droves and I'm sorry but if you look back at the sidekick it's UI was pretty horrid too (and it's technology was far inferior to boot)

The moment you treat teens as inferior customers, you've lost. They're more adept at this stuff than we are, and adopt winning technologies faster. They only adopted Sidekick because it was an easier phone for text messaging than the others.

Selling Kin to a generation that's now used to the iPhone and Android is throwing money down a hole.

I'm not sure it is treating them as inferior consumers as much as it's seeing what they value. Teenagers are generally self involved. They aren't information consumers except when that information involves their immediate surroundings (aka gossip, updates from friends, etc...)

The iPhone and Android are all about information consumption. Check your e-mail, superior web browsing, news, weather, stocks, etc... Most of which, I'd assume, is of little value to a teen (even if they're in to celebrity gossip the Flash-less iPhone isn't going to do much for them)

Again, I'm not a teen. I don't know if the Kin appeals to them. But I can see how they'd have different values and how something that appeals to me (iPhone/Android) might not appeal to them.

iPhone and Android are consumption devices?

Phone calls, tweets/twitpics, facebook posts, camera and movie capture, movie editing, audio recording, skype, video chat, geolocation capture, and augmented video are all examples of things people are using right now on these devices. None of them are consumption apps. They generate content.

I don't disagree with your point in theory but I have to wonder about Microsoft. I mean, they did pour a bunch of money and time into Zune and it didn't work. Last Christmas NPD reported Zune taking 10% of the units sold and that's pathetic. That's at the "My grandparents bought me a Zune because they don't know what an iPod is" level of sales.

The most telling point regarding their phone platform is this: I'm a C# developer. I'm in love with Silverlight as a technology. Yet I have no interest in the new Windows phone platform. That says something big about their chances IMHO

I think Zune only had 10% market share for the first year or two. They dropped to 2% before Zune HD came out...so I'm betting they are at around 5% right now. Yeah it's not that good, but if they ever end up solidly at 10% market share again and stay there, I'll be impressed. I guess we're looking at it from different sides, but I see 10% as an okay done job. Also I think if they hit that, along with what they did with Xbox/360, the future doesn't look so bad for Windows Phone OS's prospects.

Sales of Macs are slowing…

No they're not; Apple's selling more Macs than ever before and pretty consistently more each quarter than the previous (YOY).

(Completely unrelated: Lyons looks like John Hodgman in that picture.)

That's debatable. Market share is flat: http://m.industry.bnet.com/technology/10008371/huh-no-iphone...

Are you talking about Mac sales of the past number of years or just the past year? I don't think they've really increased all that much in the past few quarters.

It is likely that they have saturated their market. Apple has 90% market share in PCs > $1000. http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/apple_...

In both of Apple's last two quarters, Mac sales were up 33% year over year; 17% the quarter before and 4% the quarter before that. I'm not sure what numbers were like going back past a year.

In the next 12-18 months we're going to see a flattening of features added to the phones. They've basically been adding feature subsets that mirror the evolution of PCs, culminating with Internet integration, though this time with seamless syncing of information between extant devices. The OS platform is insignificant. Where people end up storing their data is all that matters.

This is why when people get into religious debates about Google Android being open and the iPhone not, they've completely missed the entire significance of the two platforms. They're both corporations, they're both responsible to their shareholders. I would be perfectly happy if they split the smartphone market in a stalemate.

Geeks can, and do, argue over the merits of these phones. But the fact that the two are close enough to be compared side by side is what should have Apple worried.

Geeks were arguing about the merits of the original iPhone compared side by side to its competitors, too, but Apple seems to have pulled through.

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