Android is Google's Agent Smith
techvibes.com
techvibes.com
People just want a phone that's fun and easy to use. If they don't like the phone they have, they will buy a new one when the contract is up, which likely will have a new version (the number of which they won't know or care about) and will work better.
Fragmentation is a big pain for developers and so on, but users don't care and shouldn't need to care.
Every Android user I've talked to knows exactly what version their phone runs. Many are patiently waiting for upgrades. Every single phone review tells me exactly what OS version the HTC EVO, Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Droid run and I doubt anyone here wouldn't consider that piece of information extremely important in their purchasing decision.
I'm sure most of the people that read HN care about the details you listed, but I wouldn't assume your average mall-shopper that walks into a cell phone store not knowing the difference between any two phones knows or cares about version numbers or compatibility.
Most non-technical people I've talked to about it have been so confused about the marketing of a phone named "droid" that they think any reference to "android" means that phone.
The problem with this conversation is lumping together mobile phones and smartphones. There are very few Android phones marketed to "non-technical people". But they will come, they will be cheap, and nobody will care what OS they run. But the top of line phones, the expensive phones, and the profitable phones will be sold to semi-technical people who know what they're getting.
If it's true that only technical users are buying Android phones because it's still exclusive to the smart-phone market, what your saying makes sense.
I wouldn't be suprised if non-technical users with money to burn buy smart phones they don't understand just for the sake of vanity though.
Almost no users, including people buying smartphones, have any idea what a phone operating system is. Most users, including people buying smartphones, struggle to tell you what their computer operating system is.
Phones, including smartphones, are not sold like computers. Lots of people buy smartphones because they have the best cameras, or because they're the 'top end' phone, or because 'they want a blackberry' and can't tell a Nokia E61 from a BlackBerry device.
Also, at least in the UK, there's a lot of smartphones - including Android devices - being marketed at the general consumer market. There's not really any phones sold to 'technical' people - the distinction you want to make is 'consumer' versus 'business'. Windows Mobile and BlackBerry are 'business' (traditionally). The iPhone is 'consumer', albeit high-end.
Android phones tend to be consumer-focussed, competing against the iPhone. There's a few Android phones that are priced to the mid- and low-end of the market, and there's a lot of Nokia S60 smartphones in this range. (A lot more than Android or iOS, actually. Nokia are still the #1 smartphone manufacturer.) Most people buying these devices are 'non-technical' and if they understand the difference between 'Android 1.5' and 'Android 2.1', they just don't care.
I can't argue with your evidence -- the fact that Nokia still manages to sell smartphones at all proves nobody is looking too deeply.
Nokia screw up when they try to copy this style of device and forget that their strength is excellent telephony devices. Which, despite the trendiness of mobile browsing and 'apps', is what most people want from their mobile phone.
That's why Nokia still own the market, because their devices appeal to people who primarily want to make phone calls from their phone. iOS, Android, WebOS, and Windows Mobile will never crack that market.
Telephony isn't that difficult and all "american-style" smartphones do a perfectly adequate job. If you can make calls and answer calls, it's a phone. Most people don't need anything more than that. I don't see what more Nokia can offer on that point but they lots of room to screw everything else up.
I think you're confusing what 'people who read HN' want with 'what the majority want'. It happens really commonly in tech-literate circles.
I'll grant you that texting is important, but that revolution happened a decade ago with the Nokia 3310. You don't need a smartphone for that.
The calling experience on most smartphones is horrific. On my iPhone I need to find an icon and tap it before I can even start dialling. Once I do get through to someone, the signal reception is weak - and this is an iPhone 3G on a UK network.
Pick up a Nokia S60 smartphone. There's number buttons on the front of them (except their weak attempts at touchscreen phones). You push them. The signal quality is rock-solid. These are things that normal people don't even think about until they dismiss an iPhone or Android smartphone as 'too fiddly'.
I would go on a limb here and hazard to say, that just because certain people don't care about version numbers and esoteric features, doesn't mean they are not intelligent.
People discriminate in accordance to their passions. I can't make much of current shoe fashions and advanced textile materials, nor do I care, I hope that doesn't qualify me as an idiot.
The comments here are that version numbers are some insignificant detail that nobody cares about. I don't think the version of Android your phone runs is an esoteric detail -- it's pretty fundamental to the capability and enjoyment of the device. I'm not sure why people comparing Android phones to purchase wouldn't consider that a detail worth knowing about.
Now this is a recent development; it used to be that the latest phone in existence had the latest OS. You didn't have to think about it. But Google is pumping out Android versions very quickly and new phones can run anywhere from 1.6 to 2.2. So now it is a point of comparison where it might not have been for old Nokia phones.
There may not be an 'android phone' but there is 'the alternative to the IPhone' which isn't, outside of the business market, the blackberry.
Users use. And they do compare how well things work, and migrate. So in the larger sense, users should care about fragmentation. Eventually, its going to limit their choices.
Someone that physically breaks their Motorolla DroidX running 2.2 and buys a replacement Samsung Galaxy that runs 1.5 (now 1.6 I hear), and then realizes that the majority of the apps that they purchased aren't compatible with the lower version of the phone, and that the phone has a terrible UI (compared to the improved 2.2), is going to be mighty disappointed in both the carrier and the Android name.
The average user doesn't know how to root and upgrade the phone software to unofficial versions. The average user only knows that it is Android, and that Android now "sucks" in that situation.
Put another way, are you more likely to hear "My phone sucks" or "This lower version number of the OS I was previously happy with sucks"?
The market will drum out the bad apples who try to leave their Android phones stuck at ancient versions.
Ironically, now Linux support way more devices than Windows, and let you do things that no commercial vendor is going to let you do(e.g I have used an old scanner as spectrogram with very little money).
The reason why Google went with Android and didn't stick to Apple was because Apple didn't really share that interest. Apple wanted to sell iPhones and apps, so they were okay with reducing their market by charging a premium price. That wouldn't get as many people onto the web as a free/cheap, widely available and customizable OS that appeals to carriers and hardware manufacturers.
If you look at the Nexus One through this prism, it also kind of makes sense. The N1 was designed to push hardware specs to a point where multimedia on the Web could function at a satisfactory level, so then people would have more of a reason to buy a smartphone.
For things to really work for them, maybe there should be one kind of device, one OS version and one App store (sounds familiar?).
I'm not saying I agree, I was disappointed with the author's opinions.
However, the reason they don't have that toy (and the same reason another random startup won't) is because the process does carry some non-zero risk and complexity when viewed across the spectrum of all devices. It is my opinion that the risk is only going to get worse over time, given the animosity that hardware manufacturers feel toward the hacker community.
Jailbreakme.com is outstanding, but they only had to deal with a small microcosm of hardware/OS tuples (which, if I'm not mistaken, is actually the topic under discussion right now).
In order for Microsoft to actually get anything out of this, they're going to have to treat Android as a first-class platform, and beat the user experience of Google Maps, Search, Voice Search, Gmail, Goggles, and so on on Android.
Microsoft doesn't have those kind of engineering chops. They can barely even manage a decent UX on Windows Desktop. (We'll see about Windows Phone 7, but I will be very surprised if it's legitimately better than Android, even Android with Bing baked-in.)
No wonder this office is staring to feel kind of cramped.
And ultimately catering to users' particular individual needs is likely to be a better market strategy in the long term compared to the "one true device for everyone!" ideal of Apple.