Apple is About to Reduce Google's Revenues

To be fair, this is just some random writer at Forbes who doesn't really know what he's talking about to write a totally informed 'article' and is basing his 'article' on some quotes he found and his view of joining the dots. The dots being pretty obvious as least to the Hacker News crowd.

So yes, agreed, his connecting of dots come across poorly but it didn't stop him from gathering 38k views.

I remember there was a lot of misunderstanding about Google's revenues from Android when everyone started writing articles about it a few months ago. Most of their "facts" came from 2010, when Google still had like 4% of the US market, and Apple had like 20-23%. And somehow they extrapolated that to mean that Google also makes 4x less from Android right now. But Google has grown much faster than Apple since then, and by now Google has caught up even with the total amount of iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad), and they both have around 350 million devices on the market. So it's very unlikely that Google is still making much less from Android than they do from iOS.

There's another similar kind of misunderstanding whenever Apple releases the "money they have paid to developers". First they forget that Apple only ever mentions the total amount they have paid since the App Store was created in 2008.

They also forget that again, Apple had a huge headstart in both number of apps and in number of units in the market until late 2010 or so, and that only more recently they've had about the same amount of apps and number of units in the market as Apple.

So when you compare the "total amount" Apple has paid to devs to Google's "total amount" that they paid to devs, obviously Apple will come out on top because of their huge headstart in the first 2-3 years. But if you compare the last quarter or last year for both, which is a lot more relevant for devs, because they'd want to know how much they can make right now, Apple might still come out on top, but the difference should be a lot smaller, and definitely not something like $3 billion vs $100 million.

Hopefully the "Apple media" will remember this before they start slamming Google when Apple will release their new numbers, without really understanding the context of those numbers.

"Market share" is a very vague term.

Nonetheless, iOS beats out Android in web browser usage which is why Google derives much more ad dollars from iOS compared to Android. That is the important metric.

"Market share" doesn't mean anything if it doesn't translate to something else that is valued in smart phone terms such as browser usage, paid app installs, app usage, advertising dollars generated.

Google does care. Which is why they brought up their Google Maps announcements early last week.

> I thought Android was still the major platform

An iOS device has been sold for every 20 people currently on planet earth... Obviously the distribution is a little skewed ;-) But still, it's a staggering number.

The Android numbers where Android has sold a gabazillion more units than Apple always seem a bit fishy to me, based on what I see around me. Luckily, we can see what people are actually using, actually for real:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201105-20120...

Android may have a bigger install base but they also seem to have a much bigger group of "low power users". These are the people such as my step-dad and some of their friends who bought a cheap Android phone as it was the same price as a old style candy bar or flip Nokia but it had a much bigger screen with adjustable text size (superb for their aging eyes) but they do nothing on the phone that would be considered "smart". They call and they text. That is it. Whereas I don't know anybody who would buy an iPhone and then not use all the smart phone features. Hell I know at least 6 people (not conclusive but interesting IMHO) who own Android phones but don't even have a Google account so have never download an app or even opened the web browser or maps built in apps.

With the death of the old mobile phones and the rise of the smart phone someone had to pick up the place of the LCD, with the much lower entry level of Android on dirt cheap hardware it is clear that Android has picked up the crowd of "I just want a phone that makes calls" crowd which I can't see Google making any money out of.

Google advertises in Maps.

So even though it is free they are still making money.

It's a dangerous line of thought (there's a saying, "people who forget history are doomed to repeat it"): it is this awesomeness that allowed Google back in 2000 to overthrow the market incumbents at that time, Altavista, Hotbot and so on. Don't underestimate the power of "awesomeness", in search at least a significant number of users are ready to jump ship whenever something better and with less junk appears.

> google is starting to lose people's trust

What indications tell you that Google is loosing people's trust, besides your own ?