Android gaining on Apple, says report | Hacker News Reader

Android gaining on Apple, says report

readwriteweb.com

26 pointscoderdude25 comments

Though this report mentions RIM numbers may be slightly low, looking at Gartner's data (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1372013), their numbers are excessively low.

Where AdMob has RIM below 2%, Gartner has RIM above iOS, and just below Symbian in numbers.

Anecdotal: Our company was using RIM as our corporate provider until last year's "complete outage" fiascos, at which point our CEO decided it was iPhone time. It seems like many other companies who aren't as agile would still be stuck with RIM at the corporate level, so these numbers seem pretty far off-base.

This is really a snapshot of Admobs ad-network traffic, which is really low on RIM devices that don't support a particularly robust app market.

Android is a "commodity" OS, if you will. That is, anyone can build a device and put Android on it. Given that Android isn't complete shit and that people ARE building devices and using it, this trend is rather expected.

It's the Windows OS effect, this time in the smartphone market. Except that Android is free, so it could potentially gain an even vaster userbase.

This is an interesting point, though what we have with Android is something slightly different in that there's a certain degree of individual vendor responsibility to provide updates for your device as needed. Thus vendors will compete on a few different fronts:

* Hardware. I.e. design, reliability, technical specifications * Commitment. E.g. providing firmware updates * Marketing. * Icing. By this I mean the vendor's "above and beyond" software offerings, such as a more polished UI, add on software packages, etc.

I have to admit that I find Android exciting as an economical experiment. I am not, however, an Android device user. For me Apple's relentless attention to detail has kept me captive (for now).

Sure anyone can build a device with Android... what this tells us is that people are buying them. And that's news.

Looking at the raw numbers from Apple and Google (not AdMob's!), Android's supremacy is looking increasingly inevitable.

At the Droid X launch, Google claimed 160,000 activations a day, which translates to a run rate of almost 60 million devices a year. More importantly, the Android growth rate looks like an exponential curve up at this point. Google's announcements show a 60% growth in Android over the past 3 months.

In the long run, Apple simply can't match those numbers. Their install base will give them the lead for another year, and their total unit sales will continue to grow, but the marketshare future looks like it belongs to Android.

If Microsoft deliver WinPhone 7 as planned, the market share it gains will most likely be taken from Android.

Not necessarily. Don't forget that BlackBerry and Symbian both have more marketshare than either iPhone or Android. In Symbian's case, much, much more. Not to mention that the smartphone market as a whole is still expanding, mostly at the expense of traditional "dumb" phones.

"but the marketshare future looks like it belongs to Android"

That's fine with Apple. They don't mind having a smaller market share than someone else, as long as they have a big share in that subset part of the market that actually makes money.

How much does Google make on each Android phone sold by someone else?

Google makes $0 on those sales directly. But I don't think they're losing sleep over that. They don't want to make money selling hardware. They think hardware should be a commodity.

I'm pretty sure that Apple would love to have profits and market share over profits alone.

I'm kind of tired of AdMob numbers being trotted out to show Android is gaining. As others have pointed out, AdMob is primarily an Android thing, so of course they'll see growth. I love to see Android growing and succeeding, but these numbers are basically useless as a comparison. Perhaps once iAds is out, comparing the iAds numbers and AdMob numbers could explain some stuff, but for now they can't paint a good picture of the numbers for Apple.

I am not sure if this data is right or wrong, but I think AdMob has a severe conflict of interest reporting on this issue.

Even if they were not acquired by google, the upcoming existence of the iAd system (and its restrictions) means that they have a strong incentive to downplay vendors like RIM and Apple.

Indeed. Title ought to be: "Android Gaining on Apple, Says Report From Google Acquisition"

I can't believe this isn't in the first bleeding sentence. Unprofessional, ReadWriteWeb!

AdMob report on market share will not be as representative from July 01 when iAds goes live. Since AdMobers are now Googlers, expect to hear from them monthly that 'Android is gaining market' when many iPhone developers are expected to move their ads to iAds and out of AdMob radar. To me its meaningless data even though its common sense that Android is gaining market share due to its commodity nature with multiple vendors, and a recent version that is finally competitive. Tech blogs should publish reports from independent source with better data.

Here's my question. This really feels like a platform wars flashback to Mac v. PC, and the coming numerical advantages to Android combined with the fact that it's arguably on or close to the same level of iPhone for performance, usability, etc (or is getting close) really do make it seem inevitable that it should swallow whole much of the smartphone market.

Question next. If Android : PC :: iPhone : Mac, where does that put Apple? I'm not convinced that that will be the case, since Apple's margins will shrink once it moves past exclusivity and, all things aside, smartphone prices remain quite high; I don't imagine that there will be a serious need to have the kind of per-unit pricing differentials seen on say, a PC laptop vs. a Macbook.

Apple is on target to become #3 and quite possibly #4 in the next couple of years, with Nokia #1, Android #2 and #3 unclear, but one of RIM, Microsoft or Apple.

Either way, the iPhone will soon be as marginal a phone as Macs are to personal computers.

I'm surprised by the domination of Western Europe by iOS, and that Symbian's share there is so low. Even Android's numbers are double that of Symbian. Compare East Europe, where Symbian is roughly half the market. Was I just naiive?

Also, one annoyance: why did they have to switch around the colors between graphs?

I would love to know break down by the actual phones . . . I bet there are radically different downloads per device eg that would be hugely useful for app devs to figure out where to target their efforts

Considering Google has only paid out approx $30 million to Apple's $1 billion in app sales, that's pretty sad considering how many android devices are out there. An app developer might make more money on BREW than on Android.

Do you have a source on that? I'm sure this is a "lmgtfy" kind of thing, but I'm not an app developer so I'm not sure the particular jargon to Google.

You must've missed out Larva Labs's article on it. They develop for both Android and iOS.

http://larvalabs.com/blog/android/android-market-payouts-tot...

Whither Research in Motion?

It seems to me like Blackberry Messenger is the only thing keeping that company alive from a consumer perspective. I hear all the time "I would buy an I phone, but I love BBM so much!"

look at the end of the original link http://metrics.admob.com/2010/06/may-2010-mobile-metrics-rep...

Generated by "Harsh S" AdMob Marketing this explains everything

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