Android users will surpass iPhone users by end of 2010 | Hacker News Reader

Android users will surpass iPhone users by end of 2010

venturebeat.com

What I'd want to know is what percentage of users faced with a choice of iPhone and Android (on the same carrier) would pick one or the other. As it is right now a lot of people are buying Android phones because the iPhone is not available to them without switching carriers. If that exclusivity expires it could plausibly adjust the trajectories of each of these platforms.

I imagine this could be seen by looking at adoption rates in other countries where there isn't exclusivity.

Another data point is how many people are held back by carrier quality. AT&T should be great quality wise for at least 80% of America - so if someone really wanted an iPhone, I feel that most would have switched already.

I'd like to see data supporting that 80%. We had AT&T phones through work at my last job, and we'd use our personal Verizon phones because of poor signal quality and dropped calls during service calls.

If you believe the rumors, Verizon will be selling the iPhone in January 2011.

Most people stopped believing the rumors after around the 5th time they were wrong.

That may be the case in the US, but in most other major markets, the iPhone is no longer exclusive to one carrier. The entire US population makes up at most 10% of the global market. Subtract AT&T itself, and you are left with about 6%. Hardly significant.

This works both ways,though. I'm stuck on at&t because of my wife's contract, so I bought a nexus one. I'd guess most people wouldn't buy unlocked, though. Not saying it's a 50/50 split, but it's something that should be considered.

They are basing their guess on stats from AdMob. Everyone, say it with me: Ad traffic does not equal web traffic. Web traffic does not equal market share. Market share does not equal revenue.

I agree with you but let's face it, the number of Android devices being sold is increasing each month at a huge rate. Just like Windows outsold Mac, the same will happen with Android. That doesn't mean iPhone will go away though.

There's no doubt android will be everywhere eventually -- in a laundry machine, toaster, microwave, etc. However, whether android becomes an actual competitor to iOS is still undecided. App developers on the iOS platform still make around 40x more than android, so companies jumping on that platform right now will most certainly lose money initially.

A few friends of mine run their own ISV producing around 5-10 apps for the iPhone a year and are able to make a decent living (around 100-200k a year). If they focused on android, they'd only be making around 3-5k a year, definitely not enough to be independent!

I think it's too easy to pirate and return apps on android, plus the App market not quite as globally available as iOS. Users on android are too accustomed to downloading free apps -- if it's not free, users don't download it. There are too many steps involved in buying an app, there needs to be far less steps involved so it can be an impulse buy. One also can't do fancier sales models like in-app purchases that the iOS is capable of doing.

I really wish well for android, but I feel like Google just doesn't know marketing & sales like Apple does.

I think it's too easy to pirate and return apps on android

Around 5% of my app's purchases are returned. Even if every one of those is a pirate, that's not too bad. Agreed with the rest of your points.

> I think it's too easy to pirate and return apps on android

It is indeed easy, and I think Google should be praised for choosing a business model that favors users over carriers (or themselves).

Here's a similar conclusion based on analysis of very different data: http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2010/05/27/deciphe...

Why do people insist on writing like this? The first sentence is the only piece of information in this article. The rest is filler, mindless regurgitation for people who just woke up from a 30-year coma combined with random predictions based on nothing.

Because the writers at these blogs are expected to produce tons and tons of content per day, and thoughtful, insightful content is not something that can be produced in 15 slapdash minutes.

I guess you're right. If you're writing about a topic that your audience is also well-informed about, odds are that you're wasting their time regurgitating such factoids as "iPhone only comes in one form factor" and "there are 50 different Android phones". I'm guessing anyone reading VentureBeat knows that, it's not exactly USA Today's audience. It's a plague on the internet, not just with paid bloggers but even people who are writing for their own sites who feel the need to tell you things you already know for paragraphs on end before getting to the point.

In fact, if your headline had included the phrase "AdMob chief says", all the information in the article would be contained in your headline.

I hope I'm wrong. Because the alternative suggests that our tech media is, by and large, as useless or even more useless than our traditional media (our, meaning the United States'. Apologies to the other 6.5BB people worldwide).

The people who are seen as the true 'luminaries' of tech journalism are simply the ones who've been able to make the most noise:

Steve Gillmor writes the most incoherent essays I've ever read.

Robert Scoble is simply excited about everything (but occasionally takes time to call me an idiot when I criticize his photography).

John Dvorak has admitted to and seems proud of being a professional troll.

MG Siegler...I don't even know where to start with him. Frankly, I would probably believe he was a cunning piece of software had I not met him at WWDC 2009.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Here's a much needed additional data set:

"The average Android user is spending just . . . $0.50 among all applications."

"iPhone users are spending an estimated . . . $5.00 among all applications."

Those data sets are measured monthly - http://fadellc.com/press_1.html

So does this mean that Android needs 10x traction to create the same opportunity for your general app maker?

Very few app creators make any significant money.

Google could help with discoverability, or more importantly, make it easy to have subscription models.

This means Google Checkout needs to be available in more countries.

One problem is that a few countries and phone makers havent jumped on and enabled paid apps in the market. I had to wait a few months with no paid apps before my mobile carrier allowed them. Even now, because I'm in Australia, I cant release an app that is not free.

I hope this is rectified soon, it will give me more incentive to become an android app developer. A little money , even a dollar, for an app would help me support and develop an app.

Or Android app makers should focus more on ad-revenues.

Why doesn't Google (or anyone for that matter) showcase developers who are making good money with Android apps? There are tons of iPhone cases of independent devs making some pretty serious money. I have only heard of one for Android that got any publicity and it was for an app to remind you where you parked in a lot (and it was only like $300/day while it was a featured app in the market).

You would think Google would have a vested interest in publishing success stories.

IMHO, one of the big things the Android Market is missing is Gift Cards. Gift Cards make it easy to spend money (after all, once you've received the card, what else can you with it?). They also make it much easier for teenagers to buy apps, a demographic who likes to spend money, but seldom has ready ability to charge to credit cards.

How about these much-needed additional data sets?

How many apps are being purchased per user? Are Android users spending an average of $.50 on one app, while iPhone users are spending an overage of $.50 per app on 10 apps?

What percentage of iPhone apps are free? Versus Android?

Without these additional data points, the average expenditure per user is meaningless.

They seem to be tying innovation and market share which makes no sense to me.

Further, the number of Windows users is significantly higher than Linux or Mac users, yet I'm still going to stick with Linux and the Mac regardless. As long as there are enough users to keep a platform viable and profitable for the vendors, I doubt users care about the percentages.

This seems fairly reasonable of a prediction. What I wanna know is when there will be more Android developers than iPhone developers?

That seems to already have happened.

http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2010/07/mobile-developer-ec...

I wonder if the rapid fragmentation of the Android OS might degrade the Android experience and its public perception. If so I suspect that Android might become commiditized and therefore vulnerable in a way that Apple's experience is not.

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