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Comment by s3r3nity | Hacker News Reader

This is going to be interesting to watch over the next few years, given that Android had a huge setback in the Oracle v Google case [1]. The huge sell of Android over iOS, besides the customization features, was the Google AI superiority over Siri.

My hypothesis is that this move, if executed well, should help narrow the AI perception gap. I think customers know that Google will probably always be superior in AI, but if the gap on mobile is marginal, and combined with the added security that Apple is famous for building into their phones during a time when the Facebook scandal and other data breaches are causing users to be more sensitive to their data, could result in a very interesting market share shift over the next few years.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/android-p-is-for-poisoned-platf...

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My hypothesis is that most customers doesn't care about AI and that it wont affect phone sales numbers at all.

I'd agree with you, but almost every Youtube video I watch comparing iPhones vs. Pixels, or HomePod vs. Google Home, always tend to get to focusing on what Google queries can accomplish vs. Siri queries. It might not be called "AI" concretely, but the sentiment is probably there to some extent for some users.

Some users, sure. Maybe 10% of all people that look at Youtube videos about new phones will care enough to make it part of their decision. But they're a small minority of everyone that buys phones.

Homepod vs Google Home is a bit different though, since that's their only reason to exist.

AI kind of sucks now though. As it gets better and more people use it, it will be more of a selling feature. That's what they are betting on anyway.

The disconnect between median users and the reviewer bubble has been widening for quite a while. But: it's hard to know what median users actually care about, it's not hard at all to know what reviewers care about. Also, median users are not median buyers.

It reminds me of how cars suddenly started to sprout an absurd number of cupholders at the beginning of the century, probably because they are an easy thing for reviewers to write about.

> The huge sell of Android over iOS, besides the customization features, was the Google AI superiority over Siri.

I don't know if this is correct. I'd say it was the price point that was the huge sell, not some "AI superiority"...

The strength of Google’s AI is not because of its technical superiority (that helps) but because of the huge amount of ubiquitous data it has on users. AI is not magic, it needs data to perform well. Challenge for Apple is where will it get this data to provide customized AI facilities to its users, and this will inevitably lead Apple to the privacy issues Google is facing.

> Challenge for Apple is where will it get this data

iPhone, Safari, Maps, Photos, App Store, iTunes Store, Apple Pay, Apple TV...

They may never have as much data as Google, but they have a lot.

The latest hotness in AI research is self-training, which helps extract more goodness from data. So with some cleverness they may be able mitigate their data disadvantage somewhat. Of course Google works on this area too.

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