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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

What’s amazing is how little changed.

- Apple and Google are still the only two mobile operating systems that matter and they are still in relatively the same position. iOS still controls the high end where the money is and Android has the market share but the OEMs are not making any money.

- Facebook is more profitable and popular.

- Amazon is still the number one online retailer, the Kindle is still by far the most popular ereader but more importantly, the Kindle platform is still dominant.

- Google still hasn’t managed to diversify from its ad business and YouTube is still dominant for video.

- Netflix is still the dominant streaming platform.

- Microsoft is doing better than ever.

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I think Microsoft was the biggest surprise. In 2010 MacBooks were starting to become very popular, and it looked like Microsoft’s monopoly on consumer computing was coming to an end. It was common to think Microsoft was on a long decline in 2010.

It's interesting how none of the commenters envisioned Microsoft repositioning itself to adapt to technological and business trends. Everyone seems to have thought they would either fight them and lose, or contract to becoming an IBM-like consulting business.

Also, look how much things changed between 2000 and 2010 compared to 2010 to 2020.

Facebook didn’t exist.

Apple was “beleaguered”.

Google was in its infancy and Yahoo was still dominant (before the crash)

Microsoft was seen as unassailable.

Amazon was mostly just an interesting book seller. They were just getting into CDs and hadn’t even made the deal with Toys R Us yet.

Netflix was struggling against BlockBuster renting DVDs.

AOL was still dominant.

Sure, the large players stayed about the same in the last decade but we also found some new large players.

The entire app ecosystems was in the earliest infancy in 2010. AWS was in its infancy. Slack wasn’t released.

Slack isn’t a “large player” they are nowhere near being profitable and are nowhere in the same league as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google or Microsoft.

The app ecosystem was growing like crazy in 2010. It was a year and a half into “there is an app for that”. Facebook had already pivoted to being big in mobile.

The same can be said about Uber. Once the companies have a profitable and sustainable business model that doesn’t involve burning cash then they can be considered a major player.

Regardless of profitability I think people are spending a lot more money on the internet today as they were 10 years ago. Subscription services, gig economy, and online retail have exploded in the last 10 years in a way that I don't think many people predicted.

Everyone saw online retail exploding by 2010. Amazon was already big and growing, Barnes and Noble was already struggling against Amazon and Apple/iTunes was the number one music retailer as bricks and mortar music retailers had started to close.

By 2010, streaming services were big, Apple was selling movies and TV shows digitally and had already started removing DVD drives from its computers.

Also Kodak was still king of photography. On decline but still king in 2000. Who'd thought in just 5 to 10 years would've become a nobody?

And Nokia as well...

But nobody would quite imagine that Microsoft didn't control an iota of mobile computing operating system.

Even after buying Nokia's phone business.

Honestly it doesn’t matter. It came out in the Oracle trial that Google only made $23 billion in profit from Android from its inception to the start of the trial and t still has to pay Apple a reported $8 billion a year to be the default search engine for iOS.

Apple has made a lot more in mobile from Google than Google has made from Android.

For awhile, MS was making more in patent fees from Android OEMs than Google was making in licensing and advertising.

Losing mobile was the best thing that could happen to MS so it could focus on Azure and making Office ubiquitous- where the real money is.

> still has to pay Apple a reported $8 billion a year to be the default search engine for iOS.

That is not the way to think about it - Imagine if Android didn't exist or faltered like Symbian, RIM, Windows Mobile etc. Google would have been paying way more than 8 billion. Android is definitely worth more than the money accounted towards it.

Not really. The Android market is really not worth that much. Statistically it’s made up of consumers who aren’t willing to spend that much compared to iOS owners. The high end non Chinese Android market is minuscule. They just aren’t as attractive as iOS users to advertisers.

Only slightly related, but is it the same in EU? Unlike the USA, Android has a much higher market share here.

I can’t find data on the EU specifically.

https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/survey-iphone-owners-spe...

But the best I could find in Europe is.

https://sensortower.com/blog/europe-app-revenue-and-download...

Thanks, the 2nd link seems to show that iPhone owners spend way more compared to the amount of downloads here as well.

Personally, I have quite a few paid apps, but the majority I bought over the years and keep using them. The top grossing apps are all subscriptions and the only one that I have with one is OSMAnd (Open Street Maps app) which includes a donation to OSM/contributors.

> - Apple and Google are still the only two mobile operating systems that matter and they are still in relatively the same position. iOS still controls the high end where the money is and Android has the market share but the OEMs are not making any money.

You're badly misremembering or recontextualizing with hindsight bias. At the start of 2010, iOS had 32%, Android had 4.5%, and there were at least 5 other mobile OSs with >4% market share. Start of 2020 and we're looking at Android with 74%, iOS with 24%, and zero other OSs with >1% market share. These are very different situations!

Android was at 22.7% in 2010. It was growing like crazy.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2512940/android-smartp...

It was! It grew from ~4% at the beginning to ~22% at the end.

> - Apple and Google are still the only two mobile operating systems that matter and they are still in relatively the same position.

I don’t think this was a sure thing in 2009. Symbian still had half the market. BB had a larger share than either iOS or Android. WebOS was cool.

BlackBerry was already going downhill by 2010.

https://business.financialpost.com/technology/personal-tech/...

Hindsight is 2020... err that article is 2016.

> Netflix is still the dominant streaming platform.

Netflix didn't start streaming until 2011. So it wasn't a streaming platform at all in 2010.

I was streaming from Netflix in 2007.

they used to have discs for many platforms (e.g. PS3, Wii) where you could install Netflix and play online content before the app was released

The big announcement when the iPad was introduced in March 2010 was that Netflix would have an app for it. It had been streaming for at least three or four yesss by then.

Netflix was a streaming platform in 2007.

https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/01/8627/

By 2009, they had 12,000 movies up for streaming, and Netflix-compatible devices were advertised heavily in stores, with Best Buy including Netflix apps on their store-brand devices.

https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-compatible-video-devices-c...

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