Android is now the most popular OS for people aquiring a new smartphone
blog.nielsen.com
blog.nielsen.com
It is interesting though: a year ago Android was doomed by, well, people like you for being too crazy with too many choices and confusion versus the simple perfection of the iPhone model. Now that is some burden that Apple heroically bears.
It's an example of Apple putting its products first, and by extension their customers. Breaking the innovation-killing death grip the carriers had exerted over the mobile phone industry until 2007 was one of the most important breakthroughs of the iPhone.
Contrast with Android. From pre-installed bloatware to sacrificing long-held core values on net neutrality, Google is very cynically putting market share first, and by extension the carriers. It's breathtaking how quickly and willingly Google has thrown away the very hard fought gains Apple made against the carriers.
Apple replaced one evil (carrier control) with another evil (maker control). I suppose it's insulting that some Verizon phones come with a Nascar app, and yet another replaces Google with Bing, but remarkably as a consumer I have a tremendous amount of choice in the matter. The vanilla TMobile G2 looks quite nice, for instance. Actually personally I currently ride with the unencumbered, unsubsidized Nexus One.
Consumer choice and empowerment is mighty nice.
Apple's only liberation was liberating their own control and domination. How anyone sees that as a positive is baffling, but that's what brainwashing will do to you, I suppose.
Do you think it's evil that Sony controls the Playstation? Or that Tivo controls the Tivo box?
"Consumer choice and empowerment is mighty nice."
Does consumer choice have to be limited to choosing from within the Android ecosystem? Are you saying the very existence of the iPhone somehow inhibits consumer choice?
As for the rest (except the personal attacks), sure. I think competition is great. I definitely do not want Apple to have monopoly control over the market. I don't want Google or Microsoft to have that control, either. And above all else I want the carriers to have as little control as possible. I would vastly prefer Comcast-style dump pipes for my wireless Internet access.
Everything doesn't have to be black versus white, us versus them. You may hate Apple, or the iPhone, or Steve Jobs, or whatever, but that doesn't mean Google does everything right, or that they never sacrifice consumer interests for their own.
What a weird perspective. Do you think I hate Apple, or Steve Jobs, or the iPhone. Alternately do you think I love Google?
I think you're the one who sees it in black and white. However, let's go back-
>Do you think it's evil that Sony controls the Playstation? Or that Tivo controls the Tivo box?
Interesting that you mention that, because the post that I countered supposed that Android was undoing the good that Apple was doing -- essentially that Android is an evil competitor to the all-good Apple that was poised to bring us Utopia.
The iPhone is a great phone. It, nor any single corporation, should not dominate, however. We played that monopoly game before, through a little company named Microsoft, and we should have learned our lessons. I hope that Windows Mobile and RIM's latest launch a serious assault, now that Android essentially opened the opportunity for them (in the same way that Firefox opened the opportunity for Safari and Chrome and various other browsers).
I would hesitate to use the word "evil" in this context, however I think it's critical to differentiate between gaming and entertainment devices on the one hand and communication devices on the other. One company having utter control over the means many people use to communicate privately and publicly vs. one company having utter control over the means many people use for some forms of recreation leads to hugely different consequences.
You say that as if it's a bad thing. The goal of a company is to make money - so long as Apple can make a lot of money selling a good product, I suspect they don't much care if Android outsells the iPhone.
Not everyone has to rule the world.
And in an ideal world Windows Mobile, the Blackberry OS, QNX, Meebo, iOS, Android, and others play along in a friendly manner, where developers find efficiencies and cross-platform designs, and no one corporation controls everything.
Because I think that the Android growth is simply people upgrading their dumbphones because they'd be silly not to upgrade at the "free phone w/ new 2 year contract". Not that it's a bad thing, but "market share percentage" of smartphones doesn't really show how smartphones are growing over dumbphones.
Good for Android, but as Windows v. Mac has proven: it's not the market share, but what you do with it. ;)
When your OS is only available on one product and one carrier, it's not an apples to apples comparison and analysts should try a little harder to prove if the trends really indicate popularity or just availability.