Android crushes iPhone, makes Google $5 billion

Even if you're an Android fan you have to admit this is a pretty uneducated analysis.

First, he's guessing on the revenue (while conveniently not mentioning how much Apple makes per phone in revenue)

Second, saying "Apple is getting beaten by a license-the-software-to-everyone strategy" is a little ignorant. History is never finished and claiming Microsoft beat Apple in the PC wars ignores the last decade of evidence that things are swinging the other way. You could just as easily make the argument that licensing works at drawing in users but users get so frustrated with incompatibilities that they eventually go to a more integrated solution. Which brings me to...

Finally, surveys have shown the true question of whether Android will crush iOS is in the buyers next phone choice. Do they stay with Android or is their satisfaction level so low that they're driven into Apple's hands? That question won't be answered for years.

I don't mean to discount Android's accomplishments which are significant. But this article about those accomplishments is just silly

It's basing that number off of guessing how much ad revenue the phone generates for them? That seems strange. That's not money they're making from Android, it's money they're making from ads. The same money they get when someone sees an ad from iOS, Windows Phone, Blackberry, hell even Symbian.

It's an impressive number for sure and I think it's pretty great what Android is doing. Apple needs a nemesis I suppose.

This article is preposterous. It claims the $5B Android annual revenue from $20 (GOOG ARPU from another article of $27.30) * 255 million activations. However the $27.30 number is simply Google revenues / google unique users per year. Thus that number is completely unrelated to Android revenues. My guess is that 95%+ of Android users are already Google customers and the marginal revenue they see from Android search ads is a small fraction of that.

The numbers look good but I wish Google did something to make the life of Android Developers a little better....As it looks right now,the experience of developing for Android is similar to the experience of making enterprise software.

Android has higher market share, but iPhones are much more profitable. As of Q2 2011 iPhones took 66% of the profits in the smartphone market[1].

So it's not really fair to say that Android is "crushing" the iPhone-that's like saying Honda is crushing Lexus.

[1]: http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/29/apples-iphone-accounted-for-66...

I wonder how much Microsoft is making from their licensing schemes with the handest manufacturers? I've heard $500 million, maybe that is too low?

To put that $5 billion annually into context, Apple will probably make about ~$15 billion on the iPhone this quarter.

I think the only real metric that matters is: Which platform generates the most revenue for developers?