Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold | Hacker News Reader

Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold

extremetech.com

124 points11031a179 comments

Clay Christensen in the Innovators Solution lays out an explanation for what is happening here. Apple used vertical integration to make a giant leap forward with their iPhone that you couldn't have made in a non-integrated company. They ended up overshooting the typical consumer's needs though in the following iterations of the iPhone. And the technology that was at first difficult for competitors to reproduce became easier to replicate (thanks in part to Android). Samsung, HTC, and others were able then to provide good enough devices (and in certain ways, better devices) to consumers at a lower price point.

Apple's response has been to move up market towards tablets, and have been able to use their vertical integration to produce devices that no other Android manufacturer could match at first. Microsoft is building their own device to have similar quality, but they are doing it as a vertically integrated company. Amazon showed you could do a partial vertical integration (heavily customized Android and integration into their own media resources) to take away the low end of the tablet market from Apple. And slowly the Android tablet manufacturers are catching up to Apple.

So what this makes me ask is what will be next for Apple? They haven't been good at playing the high-volume, low-profit electronics game, so they'll need another "blockbuster", highly innovative device, and I am excited to see what that will be. It drives the industry forward, and creates exciting new technology we all get to benefit from eventually.

You are absolutely right in what you say regarding integration.

I disagree with your final analysis of where this leaves Apple. I think Apple will continue to hold a significant chunk of the "high-end" luxury market. iOS will maintain high price points and Apple will maintain its polish--and consumers with expendable income will keep their sales strong. I suspect their market share in Europe, USA, Japan, and wealthy Chinese won't drop too much (30% of market? 45%?). Android will claim the entire low-cost market--the rest of China, India, South America.

I think Apple will maintain its profits, but Android will secure the majority of the world market. Apple is trying to maximize percentage of industry profit rather than percentage of industry sales.

Sure, Apple is trying to maximize profit. But how does that help me?

We're developers right? We need to find the market with the most potential. If I'm developing for a platform where the platform holder is laser focused on maximizing their profit, but not their marketshare... it seems like I've made the wrong choice.

I see a lot of iPhone devs (not you specifically) try to justify Apple's shrinking marketshare by saying it's fine since Apple is still taking the total profit in the industry. Either they've heavily invested their earnings into AAPL, or they're trying to pull any stat they possibly can to justify their platform choice.

I agree, potentially less money in the consumer's pocket is less money they can spend on my product.

I wonder how the mix of average money spent on iphone vs android apps per consumer has changed?

Or at the very least, total dollars spent on apps on each platform?

But the cost-conscious consumer is typically less inclined to buy apps. This thread is relevant: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2929612

I think it's more nuanced than that. If Apple customers are more affluent than average, and/or more willing to spend money on apps, then it continues to be a great market even if the sheer volume is lower.

If you're making something that you give away for free and make money on the volume of participants somehow, then Android is probably a better bet at that point, but if that's your strategy you probably want to target everything.

Simple: people who have the kind of income to pay a premium for Apple devices will also be more willing and able to pay a premium for good apps. There lies your profit. (Not to mention your costs will be lower since iOS ha no fragmentation.)

> iOS has no fragmentation

I think the correct statement would be iOS has "less" fragmentation. They still have fragmentation though. Not only through the devices but also the version of iOS running on the device. It can get pretty hairy trying to maintain support for multiple iOS devices with versions of even just 4.3 and up.

If you think iOS is hairy supporting 4.3 and up, you probably have no experience supporting Android apps. The fragmentation extends beyond the Android version. The differences between handsets are so big that one pretty much has to ignore the users who own phones that are impossible to test with. You'll get some random complaint from a user running your app on a device from a manufacturer you've never even heard of.

Look at Google's own wallet app -- it only runs on only 6 android devices. If you want to run google wallet on your Nexus S, you'll have to run a 3rd party "hacked" version of Google Wallet.

Google wallet is a really poor example of fragmentation that a developer would run into since it has nothing to do with varying hardware and drivers, it's the carriers that are blocking it and (AFAIK) there's no reason that a developer would care whether or not the app itself is there. The hardware is accessible; Verizon and AT&T will use it for their own attempt at a payment system. That whole situation isn't really analogous to any other fragmentation you might encounter.

Android development and testing really isn't all that painful, and most of the new APIs you might miss are backported and available for the more prevalent Gingerbread and now ICS.

I've certainly had issues supporting iOS 4 vs 5/6. Most of the Android issues I run into have to do with WebViews behaving differently on different OEMs devices. Both forms of fragmentation can be a pain in the ass.

Probably games developers have it harder on Android, but for the average app it seems just about the same to me as a developer.

The key difference is if you cut out iOS 4 only users you're eliminating at most 2-3% of your market. If you were to try and do the same thing with Android and require ICS or higher you would be blocking off 50%+ of your market.

There is little expectation of iOS 4 support at this point, because users who purchased an iPhone in the last 4 years don't have to use it. The same is hardly true for Gingerbread. Most of the phones that shipped with that half-baked OS will have it until they're retired into a drawer somewhere.

it does have some fragmentation with the new screen size, but supporting iOS versions is a dream compared to android. 85% of my users are on iOS 6 already and 98.5% are on 5 or greater. You can easily drop support for 4.xx and below, and it wouldn't hurt too badly to drop support for 5. Try doing that on android.

Actually I think the correct statement is that iOS has such little fragmentation (in comparison to Android) that it is effectively zero.

Every developer can safely target iOS 5. With Android it is still 2.3.

Well that hasn't been our experience. We've dealt with many issues and we've had customers from 4.3 up to 6.0. Not to mention devices from 3GS and the original iPad up to the latest. I haven't done any Android applications yet but I can imagine it would be worse if you wanted to target a large base of users (I will be gaining that experience rather soon).

> iOS has no fragmentation

iOS is fragmentation. Android exists because 10 years ago, every mobile vendor was making his own incompatible operating system. So a developer had to make 300 different versions of his app to reach his audience. That was impossible, so there was no market for mobile apps.

Today, there are still 300 different devices, and maybe a 100 different operating systems. But because ~95 of these are based on Android, you can write a single cross-platform software that runs on all these systems. Android was build to defragment the market, and it was a huge success.

It might not work perfectly, but adapting your App to some strange behavior in some fancy Android device is still a lot less work than making a whole new app from scratch!

The only interesting OSes that you have to write everything from scratch for today are iOS and Windows Phone. These two systems are, unlike all the others, not compatible with each other and require a significant amount of extra work. And that is called fragmentation.

> We're developers right? We need to find the market with the most potential.

Are you optimizing for making money, or for making impact? There's no right or wrong platform (iOS or Android), it just depends on what your goals are.

> iOS will maintain high price points

What high price points? iOS devices (phones and tablets) are pretty much at the same price as the competition.

In the past, I'd agree with you. However, comparing Google's latest lineup with Apple's latest lineup tells a much different story (all 16GB):

Nexus 4: $349; iPhone 5: $699

Nexus 7: $199; iPad Mini: $329

Nexus 10: $399; iPad: $499

Of course, Apple and Google aren't in the same business, but they are very much competitors.

> Apple and Google aren't in the same business

And this makes a world of difference. Google is selling products at cost to drive their ad business. There's no way you can compare that to Apple's business model. The idea that Apple sells expensive products is a belief born out of the PC market, and if you want to compare apples to apples, you should be looking at the iPhone 5 vs the Samsung Galaxy S3.

> you should be looking at the iPhone 5 vs the Samsung Galaxy S3.

But the S3 is so far ahead of the iPhone that it also is not a fair comparison.

What's this rubbish?

iPhone 5: thinner, lighter, higher quality construction, better battery life, better cpu, better gpu, superior display quality (full sRGB, IPS, higher ppi), better ecosystem, better apps, will be regularly updated for years, better customer service, etc.

GS 3: bigger screen diagonal, more RAM, NFC, better front camera

Go back to Engadget kid.

You pop up in so many threads to defend Apple that I recognize your username by now. Do you work for Apple's PR department or something? If so, I sure hope they're paying you overtime for being here on a Friday night. Well, here we go...

> thinner

Yeah, by 1.2 mm. If you're wearing skinny hipster jeans like your average Apple fanboi, it makes a difference, but for the rest of us, that's insignificant.

> lighter

Again, 21 g. Not a big deal.

> higher quality construction

Right, that's why so many people are reporting chips and scratches on the aluminum back the day that they get the phone. It looks like Apple didn't learn anything from the glass back disaster with the iPhone 4/4S.

> better battery life

Both phones can easily last a full day of intense usage. The iPhone's slightly longer battery life is a result of its puny screen.

And don't forget that the Galaxy S3's battery is user-removable and replaceable. You can carry an additional battery with you and swap it in as needed, or you can get an extended battery - for just $30 on Amazon, you can get an extended battery with 4200 mAh, double the standard 2100 mAh battery and nearly three times the iPhone 5's 1440 mAh battery.

> better cpu

Uhh, no. Just no. The iPhone 5 has a 1.3 GHz dual-core processor, whereas the Galaxy S3 has a 1.4 GHz quad-core processor. Next time, please try to extricate yourself from the reality distortion field before making statements related to Apple or its products.

> superior display quality

Ignoring the fact that display quality is inherently subjective, that the iPhone has a better display is far from a foregone conclusion: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57524291-37/color-me-prett...

> better ecosystem, better apps

Are you kidding me? Let me know when there are functional Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Voice apps for the iPhone, and when I can use the default mapping software (which can't be replaced) without ending up in the middle of a river. And let's not even get started on the inability to install 3rd party browsers on the iPhone or use apps like Locale and Tasker without jailbreaking.

> will be regularly updated for years

I'd rather not have updates than have them break core functionality, like mapping.

> better customer service

This is probably the only thing Apple does better. That said, I've never actually needed customer service on my Android phones, unlike my friends with iPhones, who've taken their phones in to have the broken glass backs replaced with alarming frequency.

Go back to Daring Fireball kid.

"If you're wearing skinny hipster jeans like your average Apple fanboi,"

Christ, what an asshole.

"but for the rest of us, that's insignificant."

Mentioned in almost every professional review but whatever, I'm clearly on Apple's payroll here.

"Again, 21 g. Not a big deal"

Mentioned in almost every professional review but whatever, I'm clearly on Apple's payroll here.

"so many people reporting chips"

That sounds scientific. Maybe every time an apple product is released and 4-10 million people get their hands on them in the same weekend perfectly normal quality issues are magnified by the size of the release pop and tech blogs who want click traffic.

Almost every professional review says higher build quality but whatever, I'm clearly on Apple's payroll here.

"iPhone's slightly longer battery life"

+60% > web browsing. Almost every professional review says the same thing but whatever, I'm clearly on Apple's payroll here.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/13

"is a result of its puny screen."

+14% hotspot battery life with the screen off. Same link.

"<replaceable btty>

http://www.mophie.com/

"1.3 GHz dual-core processor, whereas the Galaxy S3 has a 1.4 GHz "

Newsflash: different ARM processors have different Dmips/Mhz making this an Apple's to Oranges comparison. Samsung's cortex A15's at 2 Ghz are twice as fast as the A9 chips at 1.5 Ghz.

North American GS3's don't even have the quad core 1.4 Ghz chip tho, they run a dual core Snapdragon.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/10

GS3 not shown in all charts on the page but:

Anand: it's clear the iPhone 5 ... tends to outperform the latest ARM based Android smartphones.

FWIW I'll say the international GS3 is very close and ahead in some benchmarks but this is paid for by even worse battery comparisons and heavily mitigated by the gpu difference.

"that the iPhone has a better display is far from a foregone conclusion"

From your article:

"Another study done by DisplayMate, which conducts testing for manufacturers, found that the iPhone 5's display was "state-of-the-art accurate," and only fell short to the new iPad in terms of accuracy and contrast.

DisplayMate president Raymond Soneira blasted the study, arguing that the color gamut test IHS conducted was based off of an old standard that has led to incorrect conclusions.

Jakhanwah declined to comment on the new standard or Soneira's comments.

So lols and all the superior quality of Apple's display is mentioned in almost every professional review but whatever, I'm clearly on Apple's payroll here.

"<re: apps/ecosystem> Are you kidding me?"

No. Almost every professional review says the same thing but whatever, I'm clearly on Apple's payroll here.

"Let me know when there are functional Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Voice apps for the iPhone"

Besides the fact that asking for first party titles on another platform is total bullshit there actually are substitutes for all of those and have been for awhile. There's actually a Gmail app as well, I haven't used it because there's better.

"<maps>"

Zing. Maps for Android is indeed better. Google Maps has never routed anyone off into a comical place. One of those statements is laughingly false.

"I'd rather not have updates"

Well I can see why you're so happy with Samsung.

"Go back to Daring Fireball kid."

Go back and look at the post I was responding to. Do you really want to encourage the sort of empty derp OS cheerleader comments like that?

Despite being wrong about everything (as cited) above you probably thought you were right. You probably still think you are. But I'll leave you with someone else who thought the iphone 5 wasn't that great until he used it as his phone and learned something on Daring Fireball which is a good blog that I have many criticisms of:

I’ve made a huge mistake. I’ve had the iPhone 5 for about a week and a half, and I’m still annoyed about the dock connector thing. But it’s a small problem, and in retrospect I was wrong to allow myself to become overwhelmed by dock-based frustration.

That’s because, in all other ways, the iPhone 5 is the best phone ever to grace the earth. It beats every single rival on just about every metric you can think of, including speed, battery life, and especially beauty and workmanship.

...

I could have remained silent about my reversal. It’s been weeks since the iPhone 5 went on sale, so there’s no real point in my writing a review—dozens of critics, and more importantly millions of actual customers, have had a chance to use the device, so the opinion of one more tech writer isn’t really a big deal. But I decided to speak up after reading John Gruber’s review of the phone...

Farhad Manjoo:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/10/...

You also have to see in USA, people will get the phone at subsidized amount. Like most phone on a two year plan cost between $99 to $199.

Macbook maybe luxury in the computer world, but iPhone, not really

So isn't that telling then that Android is outpacing the iPhone in sales?

Not when the market is flooded with cheap commodity handsets, no.

Of course just comparing on price ignores some big differences.

Nexus 4 has no LTE. Nexus 7 has terrible build quality. Nexus 10 has nearly half the battery life.

You're the first person I've ever heard say that the Nexus 7 has terrible build quality and the AnandTech figures show that the 10 has around 90% of the iPad battery life rather than "nearly half".

Maybe you should Google it because it is pretty common knowledge that Nexus 7 is very hit/miss in terms of build quality.

And I stupidly compared battery life against iPad Mini. So it is not half and not 90%. It's about 65% of the iPad according to Engadget.

Nexus 10: 7.26 hours, iPad 4: 11.08 hours

You're really good at cherry picking, aren't you? Anandtech for the performance numbers, Engadget for battery life numbers. By Anandtech's numbers, the Nexus 10 gets 93% of the battery life of the iPad, even though the Nexus 10 uses a much smaller battery. Between the lighter battery and the grippy back, Google designed a device that can be safely held in one hand, a tradeoff I appreciate.

You're wasting your breath. There's three or four them that do this in every, single, last Android thread.

To be fair they have their equivalents in the Apple threads.

Build quality issues were rampant when the device was introduced. I had to swap out my Nexus 7 twice because of loose-screen / screen-flicker issues. I did order it the day it was released, so maybe there were some unresolved factory quality control issues at the time.

My current unit has a speck of dirt trapped under the screen, but I don't really care that much anymore given that the thing was $199. You'd be a lot less annoyed about a rattle in the dashboard on a new Corolla than you would if you bought a BMW.

Battery life during use is generally good, but the battery in mine dies completely after ~4 days of non-use. Stock install, nothing but my Google account signed in. I'm not sure if it's a hardware issue, but reinstalling the OS hasn't fixed it.

Ah, yes. The old game of taking a perceived flaw of a product that is competitive to a product you like, and blowing it way out of proportion. I'll play a round.

- The camera on the iPhone 5 has the 'purple haze' issue.

- The iPad mini has an embarrassingly low resolution display for (almost) 2013, despite also having a larger display than the Nexus 7.

- The iPad 4 doesn't run as hot as the iPad 3, and no longer makes me scrambled eggs for breakfast while I play Infinity Blade.

Seriously. All products have flaws, and therefore there is no perfect product. Pointing out flaws to prove that your favorite company is better than their competitors is counter-productive. I really wish people would stop this childish debate and just agree that both Google (with their hardware partners) and Apple make fantastic, competing products.

It's really just painful to watch you comment in these thread. It really just hurts.

The iPhone 5 is $649 unsubsidized, not $699. Other features aside (some of which it lacks compared to Nexus), it does have an LTE radio and works on, say, Verizon.

Source: Someone who just paid full boat for a 5 after my Droid Charge was destroyed. At least I still have my unlimited data and subsidy coming up next year.

There's a slide in here which shows apple has ten times the app download revenues that android has: http://www.businessinsider.com/state-of-internet-slides-2012...

This. From an app developer's perspective, there's no contest currently.

And mobile web usage isn't looking much better for Android: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-android-mobile-web-usag...

No doubt more and more phones in pockets will be running Android. But how many will really be used like smart phones?

Of course on Android it is easy to say 'show me the desktop version' of a site which uses a different UA which would show up as a desktop browser and not an Android phone.

> From an app developer's perspective, there's no contest currently.

To be more exact, this is the perspective of a developer looking to monetize their application by selling directly to users.

It's worth pointing out that very similar things were said about Apple computer c. 1990, as comparatively primitive[1] windows 3.0 boxes were being increasingly sold into the PC market at volumes dwarfing what Apple was seeing with their more polished and higher-margin macintosh line.

That didn't work out so well.

[1] And it really was. Comparing System 6 to Windows 3.0 was night and day to any observer, even people with very little market knowledge. Android is, relatively, much, much closer to iOS in polish (even granting that iOS is the "better" choice, which lots of smart people don't).

It's also worth pointing out, that Apple has kept huge market share and profits in the iPod market. Sales have only gone down recently because everyone already has 1(or 2 or 3).

I'd like to think Apple has learned a few things since 90, and I also think these markets are a bit different. The compatibility problem isn't as bad this time, as most devs are making apps for both platforms, Apple still has a (slight) advantage here in terms of quality, and a fairly big advantage in terms of profitability. As long as they stay on par for profitability for devs they will keep a decent market share (20-40).

Sure, but those aren't independent variables. Their advantage in profitability derives almost entirely from their perceived advantage in quality (both because consumers will pay more for the devices in sticker price and because they can command better deals with carrier partners who know that they'll sell more boxes). Over the long term, no one is going to pay more for iOS devices that don't have a clear quality advantage.

Clearly 22 years ago isn't a perfect comparison, and I don't claim to know the future either. I'm just cautioning against putting your faith in "polish" and "margins". Historically those have been poor indicators of success in the consumer market.

I think you misunderstood. I'm talking about the apps on the platforms. The devs are making slightly better apps, and they are making significantly more on iOS. As long as those continue to be true, it will compete with users as a phone and will compete with devs as a platform.

I don't think Apple are really in the "high-end" luxury market otherwise you'd see an iPhone as often as you see someone driving a Rolls-Royce Phantom or wearing an Audemars Piguet watch.

I think it would be fair to compare Apple products to consumer level fashion items from luxury brands. Whether it's Armani jeans, Calvin Klein boxers or Gucci handbags, people are willing to spend a little more because of perceived value or identity with the brand, even though they can get the same product for less at Banana Republic or GAP.

However unlike Apple, the likes of Louis Vuitton and Gucci do sell high-end luxury items at ridiculous prices, often unique bespoke pieces, which ordinary consumers would never be able to afford. Were Apple to be comparable, they would be selling boutique devices at $10k-$20k like a gold-plated iPhone with 5" screen, 8-core 64 bit ARM processor, 32GB ram, 512GB storage.

One nitpick is the tablet isn't "up market" but rather a new market. A device that sits between an PC and a mobile phone.

Nothing impressive with this. I know of a few companies that sold crappy devices with crappy OS's. RIM, Nokia, etc. and they dominated the market.

Android has become the new Nokia.

Big Market Share. Worthless user-base.

Yep, 75% of the market loves to buy crappy devices with crappy OSs. The fact that high end Android devices are popular and sell well (SGSIII? Samsung's profits being damn impressive next to Apple's?) is just a weird inconvenient fact.

75% of the market also like Britney Spears. people are idiots.

If we accept the framework that all people are idiots, which I certainly often find myself thinking, then it's probably great to be Android in that world. You know? Whether or not people are dumb (which is obviously a gross exaggeration of people's perception of Android... but let's be serious, you know that) does not change the numbers.

I'll take 25% of the smart, willing-to-pay-and-buy userbase, than 75% of the dumb, not-willing-to-pay-for-anything android users.

Why are you being so stubborn? Just, why? What do you stand to gain from this?

He is invested in the issue, if not with time and money, then with emotion. People can become very stubborn and blind when they are invested in an issue, probably because they are adverse to risk and some variation buyers remorse.

Google is the false messiah. They don't care about innovation or creating great products. They don't care about user experience. they don't care about you. All Google cares about is serving you crappy ads.

And all Apple wants to do is make a profit, wavy hands oh how terrible!

I don't know how you define innovative if you don't consider the amazing intelligence behind Google Now innovative, or don't find the new 4.2 features innovative, or at least innovative in a smartdevice OS. I hate to tell you because it seems you are vitriolic about the point, but it's always been about ads, they're a business. But obviously the experience has to be compelling enough to get you to buy into it .... so OF COURSE they're competing on experience. And anyone who's used an Android phone recently in good faith knows that.

What's this nonsense about them "not caring" anyway. Do you REALLY think that Irving "cares" more about the design of iOS than Duarte cares about Android? And does it really make a difference, especially given that Android has managed to avoid the 2005 era plastic skeumorphism and created something awesome in its own right with Holo?

Again, this isn't 2009 anymore.

Can you make your mind what you are talking about? Unless 75% of the market is taken by those high-end devices (which are two models really: SGSIII and Nexus). If you want inconvenient facts: many of those Android phones are really just dumb phones (or used as such) with Android. Some with very old versions of Android.

Why should they be high end devices? Do you define what devices people should use, what qualifies as high end and how people should use them?

Sorry, but I just don't get the argument - if people want a smart phone, any Android phone is a smart phone. If they didn't they would be still buying Nokia true dumb phones. If people want a lower cost smartphone - like those in 3rd world - why would you have a problem with that? Also why aren't people buying cheap RIM phones or cheap Windows Phones if cheap is all they are into?

Older versions? Why would that have anything to do with SmartPhone sales numbers? It is just asinine to look at this from a negative or Apple Salesman attitude.

Fact is simple - people are continuing to buy Androids for many reasons - choice, preference, cost whatever. If Android is enabling the poorer sect of the world to get connected/enabled/smart at a cost they can afford - that's a good thing.

no, but 40-50% are buying crappy devices with crappy OSs. The high end devices running 4+ are not 75% of the market. they are <30% of the market. only 28.5% of android is on 4+ [1]

[1] http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

"Yep, 75% of the market loves to buy crappy devices with crappy OSs"

No, 70% of the market doesn't care and merely what the blingest device for the lowest cost with the highest amount of minutes and texts, data is barely an afterthought. Samsung offering sales commissions doesn't hurt either, or is that 'just a weird inconvenient fact'?

> Big Market Share. Worthless user-base.

You sound exactly like these people standing in line for iPhones in the Samsung commercial.

you're right. I will never buy copycat devices from Samsung.

If you look at sales the ratio of Android devices in poor countries is significantly higher than the US. But, for the vast majority of US developers it's pointless to count those people.

If you look at actual US sales, both iOS and Android are on the rise mostly by eating BlackBerry's lunch. Android is still almost 2x the size of iOS but again there far more popular on the cheap handset market and are harder to target due to the fragmented market.

http://www.asymco.com/2012/03/07/the-unrelenting-trends-in-t...

And of course, looking toward the market saturation point, every survey I've seen shows that the Android-> iOS switch rate is significantly higher than the iOS -> Android switch rate. If that changes, Apple should watch out.

Another interesting statistic, from Opera, was their report that iPad produced more ad revenue than all of Android.

Maybe because a far superior mobile browser, Chrome, is available on Android devices?

I use Chrome on my iPad.

Chrome on iOS isn't quite superior though. It's got a nicer interface but it feels much slower.

that commercial is a terrible piece of advertising. I would have gotten a samsung for testing because its the best android phone (as far as i can tell as an iphone user) but i won't anymore. Telling your potential customers that they are idiots isn't a good strategy. I'll buy a nexus, htc, or motorola instead.

Funny, that is exactly why I don't use Apple products.

Apple was accused of calling their own customers idiots with their 'Genius' ads (which they quickly discontinued). I'm assuming you will also be boycotting Apple?

> Telling your potential customers that they are idiots

Their potential customers are not people standing in line for hours to buy an iPhone, so the ad is spot on.

I agree that most of Android phones are crappy. Mostly because of Android customizations, old versions of Android and boring-looking hardware. But Nexus 4 is on par with iPhone 5 (while being 2 times cheaper).

> But Nexus 4 is on par with iPhone 5 (while being 2 times cheaper).

Assuming you consider no LTE and a plastic body to be "on par".

I meant on par in overall user experience, not that they are equivalent in every feature. iPhone has shitty maps, no NFC, worse CPU/GPU (I think), no expandable notifications, etc.

iPhone has much, much better CPU/GPU than Nexus 4. Nearly twice as fast in most cases.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6426/ipad-4-gpu-performance-an...

It's about twice better in OpenGL tests but I would be very surprised if it had faster CPU. N4 has quad-core CPU with higher frequency.

I don't know how two devices, one of which can connect to a data network 5-10x faster than the other, can be considered "on par in overall user experience".

And as Taligent noted, as always the PowerVR GPU in the iPhone absolutely without question smokes every crappy Mali GPU in every Android phone ever.

Because on average, LTE does not improve UX that much. For example for me, the UX improvement would be zero (I don't have LTE coverage). It also uses more battery. And for me, 3G is fast enough (about 2Mbit/s where I live).

I don't think that 2x faster GPU improves UX a lot for the average user. Accurate maps are more important IMHO.

> I don't think that 2x faster GPU improves UX a lot for the average user.

I think that statement says more about Android fans than it does about "the average users". Who needs a fluid UI and responsiveness that can't be beat? That hardly affects the U-->X<-- which stands for experience let's not forget.

The way iOS works benefits heavily from an overpowered GPU because it was designed with hardware acceleration as a core consideration from the ground up. Android device manufacturers tend to spend that component funding where it counts in Android, bumping up the RAM to reduce slowdowns instead.

> And for me, 3G is fast enough (about 2Mbit/s where I live).

It's true, 640k of memory ought to be enough for anybody.

> Accurate maps are more important IMHO.

Good thing I have accurate maps then. Possibly the most overblown issue in history, the Apple Maps are actually fine. Weaker in most areas but stronger than I expected at launch, and good enough that I don't miss Google Maps.

If you think they're "inaccurate" then you're doing more tech-news reading than actual investigating. They're plenty accurate. Considering you have the world to work with, obviously this doesn't apply everywhere. However, neither does the conventional wisdom that Google maps is better. In certain areas that Google has neglected, Apple maps is already better right out of the gate.

According to the reviews, N4's interface is completely smooth, stutter-free. That's why 2x faster GPU wouldn't improve the UX much.

Ok, LTE improves UX, but it's not that big deal as you make it sound.

Apple Maps may be ok where you live, but overall the consensus is (even among Apple fanboys and Apple CEO) that Google Maps are better.

It's pretty clearly from reviews so far that Nexus 4 is just another mid range Android phone.

No LTE, poor build quality, slow CPU/GPU, average camera.

What reviews are you reading? Every review I've read has been praising the build quality, the CPU/GPU performance and the camera.

Engadget and Anandtech.

Engadget complained that the glass back easily cracked and that the camera was average. And we know from Anandtech benchmarks that the CPU/GPU is about half that of the iPhone 5.

So you'll agree that the iPhone 4 & 4S are also poorly built? Lots of people cracked the back screen on those phones.

Nice cherry-picking on the benchmarks. So the second fastest phone in the world is "slow". Gotcha.

>Engadget complained that the glass back easily cracked and that the camera was average

Did they actually crack one or were they inferior based on the iPhone and ignoring all of the work they did to make it more damage resistant?

Mid-range phone? Quite the opposite. At least according to most of the reviews. E.g. Gizmodo:

"As of right now, it is officially my favorite phone by a healthy margin. It’s just so fast, so smooth, and the software is great."

NFC, 2 times bigger RAM, gerat build quality, quad-core processor.

Even if you think that iP5 is superior, you have to admit that N4's value / price is way higher.

Why are you being so defensive and dismissive to the point of making a number of really inaccurate generalizations?

I'd bet that Apple is taking Glass very seriously. Or at least the wearable, always on, always connected computer.

The first NYT article on Glass reported that Apple was also doing a lot of research on wearables. Predictably when they come out with whatever they do everyone will say they are "reacting to Google" but I'm sure many companies have been hard at work on this for years. If I had to bet I would bet on a startup that just takes bluetooth accessories to the next level and leverages the phone in your pocket for the connection/cpu/gpu. Bluetooth headset with a camera and custom voice control app. It's not near what Project Glass promises but you could build it today and sell millions for $99/$149.

Shameless but very relevant plug :)

My startup is doing what you describe: http://vergencelabs.com/

Asymco (highly recommended analysis site for the mobile industry) has an excellent article on this "over serving" issue http://www.asymco.com/2012/09/18/is-the-iphone-good-enough/

One thing he notes is that Apple sell the current (new) generation device at the same time as they sell the previous generation for less. By looking at sales they can tell if they are over serving - people will buy the previous generation because the new generation doesn't add sufficient value to their needs.

And yet, even with that strategy being implemented for the past few years, the iPhone is losing in global market share, and Android is 5x bigger now. So it's not very effective in this context.

Apple has never been interested in marketshare alone, unlike Google or Microsoft.

For Apple, it's all about profit, profit-share and units sold. All else matters little to them if they don't have those three.

What "market share" are you measuring? If it is number of devices sold then so what. Maybe narrowing down to number smartphones sold? A little more interesting.

How about instead we look at market share of revenues? Even better what about share of profits since that makes more business sense. Asymco has a post for that: http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/03/first-apples-rank-in-mobile...

I prefer Android myself, but claims of Apple "losing" need to be substantiated. It is certainly the case they are losing the least profitable customers but that is a very hard business to be in.

Sounds a lot like the PC market circa 1986. Except with Google playing the "good enough device" role.

I think it could be a better TV experience ("smart tvs"), or something related to wearable computing, such as watches.

This is seriously good news. What many people don't realize is how powerful Android is. Open Source doesn't mean shitty quality software, contrary to popular belief. Android can do so many things that other Operating systems still cannot provide. All Android needs is some time, and some iterations and no one can even dream of killing it (like many plan to). Because, if anything history has taught us, Open Source will eventually win the war.

I own a 42" Sony Bravia LCD TV. When I first purchased it, I got a hard copy of the GNU/GPL license. Wondering, I did a quick search and found out that my TV runs on Linux! Now, here's the sad part - Since I'm somewhat techie, I know my TV is powered by Open Source software. But the average end consumer doesn't know and doesn't care much, he just wants a good TV. So, the main area where open Source is weak at is marketing. And this too, is only a matter of time, till it catches up, I believe.

Imagine if the Linux foundation advertised on TV like Apple did, for their Mac vs PC commercials? Then the average consumer would probably care. If you have a good product, you should let people know about it. Sadly, even the Nexus 10 and Nexus 4 have poor marketing in this context (Michael Arrington wrote a wonderful article on this[1]).

One day, Android will reach 95%+, and I will live to watch it happen and I will tell my kids and my grandchildren without hesitation - "This is the future."

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/31/hey-google-your-nexus-7-mar...

Android is open source? Cool! Where's the source code?

http://source.android.com/

Actually Android is closer to shared source than open source.

A typical open source project has an open repository, allows third party contributors, open issue tracking etc. Last time I checked Android had none of these and only released source code after a release.

https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/q/status:open,n,z

No, Android is a open source project. Open Source does not require a community driven process. When Google releases a snapshot of Android under the Apache license, then this code is open source.

Downloading the Source Tree: https://source.android.com/source/downloading.html

android Git repositories: https://android.googlesource.com/

Submitting Patches: https://source.android.com/source/submit-patches.html

View Patches: https://android-review.googlesource.com/

View Issues: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/

  > only released source code after a release

Granted. They don't release before they release.

He is a well known troll. Don't feed him. But thanks for clarifying anyway.

It bears repeating that "what we call Android" is more then just what is available as open source. It's all that plus a lot of closed source: Maps, Play, Gmail, etc.

Maybe what _you_ call Android. I don't think most of us fall into that category.

What do you call the OS running on the Nook or Kindle?

Android fork? AOSP? Something besides "Android" because what consumers know as "Android" includes Gmail and Google Play.

Android is a technical term. I don't think it is important to this discussion what the press/ "average" consumer think the word Android means, because they are not part of this discussion. Consumers/press also have a very different meaning for the word "hacker" than most of us here have. Yet we can still use the original term here without getting confused.

Gmail and Google Play are not Android, they are pieces of an app suite from Google.

Samsung licensing Google Apps for their android-based operating system is not that different from Samsung licensing Adobe reader for their Android-based operating system. And Amazon is not making a fork. Amazon's software is fully compatible with Android 4.0.3.

Android is what you find at http://source.android.com/

> Android is a technical term.

So why do carriers sell those devices as Android smartphones then? Why does Bell run a campaign advertising "Android superphones" as gifts for the holidays?

Because it's not a technical term, it's what people call devices that run Android. "My Android" like "My Mac" or "My iPhone. I would love to hear you argue that "Mac" or "iPhone" is a technical term.

In that scenario, they instantly roll Google Play, Gmail, and the various other apps that ship on all Google-approved Android devices into the mix.

> I don't think it is important to this discussion what the press/ "average" consumer think the word Android means, because they are not part of this discussion.

Yes, they are. That was the point of the "most of us" comment.

> Yet we can still use the original term here without getting confused.

Maybe die-hard Android fans can. Everyone else associates Android with the Market, Gmail and various other apps just like they associate iOS with the App Store.

> Samsung licensing Google Apps for their android-based operating system is not that different from Samsung licensing Adobe reader for their Android-based operating system.

That could be the dumbest thing I have ever read. Why don't you go ask Microsoft about the differences between shipping applications with the OS you build and negotiating with 3rd party software vendors and get back to me.

> And Amazon is not making a fork. Amazon's software is fully compatible with Android 4.0.3.

Compatibility with applications has nothing to do with whether or not software is a fork or not. It simply implies a split development path.

> Android is what you find at http://source.android.com/

No, it isn't. It's a stripped down subset missing most things associated with Android as being good or useful, like the Market or Gmail. I personally call that AOSP, because that's what it is. Its own separate thing.

"I don't think most of us fall into that category."

I'm calling bullshit. People all the time refer to Maps as one of, if not the biggest advantage of Android. Same thing with the Gmail client. In this very thread you refer to a Chrome for Android (not Chromium afaik) feature as Android (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734771).

"What do you call the OS running on the Nook or Kindle?"

Properly it's AOSP. That fact that Google has, whether intentionally or unintentionally, created a lot of confusion between AOSP (which you can't even use the Android mark with) and "what most people call Android" (the one you can actually use the Android mark with) doesn't mean you get to have your cake ("we're open") and eat it too ("android is so great because of <list of closed source features>!").

http://marketingland.com/what-is-the-one-true-android-and-ho...

Call bullshit all you want, it doesn't make you any more correct. Android is an open source operating system, saying otherwise is ignorant.

If you want to talk about Google Play, Maps, Gmail, etc., it's pretty easy to install as a user on any non-locked down AOSP based version of the OS that doesn't rip out necessary APIs. In any case I call these 'apps' which are available on Android, the OS.

A propritary software that only runs on Android is for sure an advantage for Android. But that does not mean that it is Android.

One advantage of Microsoft Windows over Ubuntu is that Windows runs Photoshop nativly and Ubuntu does not. But that does not mean that Photoshop is Windows.

People don't say that it's an advantage that Maps "runs on" Android. The way it's commonly discussed implies that to people, Maps is Android.

>(the one you can actually use the Android mark with

source. A quick check of the brand guidelines page says nothing of the sort.

Also, you're intentionally blurring line between people who like the Android experience and people who like the idea of Android as a free OS that is literally taking the world by storm. There is nothing that you or taligent won't say to try to find something to back Android into a corner for the chance to say one bad thing about it.

Yeah, I like Android because Google Maps, Google Now and Gmail are very, very compelling offers. I like Android because it's open source, I can do far more with it than I can with iOS and I can do it far more efficiently and increasingly even more intuitively (How far do you have to work and disrupt your flow to enable/disable Wifi in iOS vs Android for example). I like it because it has a powerful intent system, allows side-loading apps and more.

Do you see how those are two different things? Do you see how using Google Apps as a way to just try to blanket dismiss peoples' opinions might be bad.

"source. A quick check of the brand guidelines page says nothing of the sort."

I linked an article that backs up the citation. Here's wikipedia also:

Even though the software is open-source, device manufacturers cannot use Google's Android trademark unless Google certifies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_%28operating_system%29

Which, parsing anally, might make me look wrong because you could use ASOP and also pass Google's non-open compatibility test but the clear meaning was that ASOP does not get to use the Trademark openly. Ask Asus if you have any doubt about this.

I guess I just have two comments:

1. The brand page more or less straight up endorses using the mark, in so much as it describes how to do it properly with attribution of ownership of the mark to Google. Unless you think I'm misinterpreting the implication of this page? http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/promote/b... Full disclosure, I'm no trademark law expert or enthusiast.

2. That article above, while I missed the first time around is from a truly desperately atrocious source that missed the important facts surrounding the Alibaba case, but to be fair, so did reddit and HN. Everyone saw the shit show the first day as the "Android is Closed!!!11111" allegations flew, only to find out that Alibaba was ripping apps off the Android Market and putting them in a co-branded rip off app store...

> Because, if anything history has taught us, Open Source will eventually win the war.

How does that work? Where is the open source OS that "won" the desktop war? Where is the open source codec that "won" the codec wars?

I'm unsure I agree with it also. Android has Google's wallet to fall back on. That could be one reason why it's successful.

Mobile devices fill a different "comfort", I think. Desktop OS's out there try to fill a broad spectrum of wants (and needs). I think Linus has been quoted as saying something like, "Desktop is a hard problem to solve", and that the Linux world hasn't even come close to solving it (yet).

I know a lot of people who would otherwise be lost on a Windows machine be completely comfortable with iPhone or Android devices simply because it fills that niche. Computer illiterate people seem to gravitate to, not desktop, but mobile devices.

So maybe Android is the new "desktop" for those types of users. Power users are now left to fill their own comforts. Maybe Linux powered desktops will eventually be the winner in the future. We'll see.

Open source codec race is, as far as I'm concerned, not over yet. Opus shows a ton of potential for audio related streaming/recording. Webm is supported by most browsers (except for Safari and IE). It's not a bad container, too. Compared to mp4, it's not that great, but I really can't tell the difference when watching something online anymore.

So, the wars aren't over. Android with Google's backing will be, and is, a force to be reckoned with. However, I wouldn't cancel out the possibility of another open source and free alternative coming around the corner to change that. Perhaps Firefox OS, who knows?

Pretty much every open source project that has succeeded has been the result of fat wallet corporate backing. I'm sure someone will offer a counterexample, but for the most part, hackers have to eat, and I haven't seen the "donate" model really work out. However, this is cool: it shows that open source isn't anti-commercial, it's pro-freedom.

Open source has won the enterprise. (Servers and platforms)

Server operating system definitely.

But Java and .Net are both effectively proprietary.

I am guessing the original poster is referring to GNU/Linux beating Solaris to win the server market.

EDIT: Regarding the desktop, just saw this: "Ubuntu will account for roughly 9% of all global PC shipments by 2014" http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/ubuntu-pc-sales-skyrocket...

pro-tip: Every VP of sales for every company will tell you that their market share will increase in the next year. Half of them will be wrong.

x264?

I don't think "heavily used by pirates" really qualifies as winning anything, I would hand that claim to H.264.

And will HCJ (HTML5/CSS/JavaScript) ultimately win the mobile app platform war?

Right now, native apps do a better job than Web apps, so they tend to be Plan A. You do one if the market justifies it. Plan B is a Web app for market segments too small to write a native app for. But if Android takes enough total market share with its motley crew of incompatible devices, it could push iOS into being just another of the small fragments, and mobile development could become dominated by HCJ.

I would like to see Google use its leverage to actively, explicitly work toward making HCJ the Plan A for the great majority of mobile apps. If they reached the point where enough devices used HTML5/CSS as essentially the native UI, they could even make the Plan A for native apps be browserless HCJ on the client with an option to use compiled Go instead of JavaScript (behind the HTML/CSS UI) where it made sense. The Web app and the native app become nearly the same stack.

LAME, FLAC and x264 all won in a sense.

The Android codebase may not be killable, but Android as a platform certainly is. Google is the only thing holding Android together; if they pull out or a major OEM or carrier grows balls, they'll fork and the ecosystem will shatter. Remember Android is mainly [edit: Apache] licensed so there's no requirement for forkers to stay open; I have serious doubts OEMs and carriers are interested in helping their competitors.

Actually it's Apache: http://source.android.com/source/licenses.html

My fault. Noted.

>>Open Source will eventually win the war.

You're neglecting to mention one important fact. Open Source often relies on subsidies and handouts from companies/organizations(that use open-source software to compete with (and attack) software companies that created the original software product). Sun is a good example that comes to mind here

In case of Android, Google is an ad company and don't need to earn money by selling mobile OS software.

I have had Android phones since the G1 (and wrote a prototype Android app long before the first Android phone (G1) was in the market). However, that doesn't blind me to the fact that Google's business model (free software that obtains user information and monetizes users through ads) is very different from the business model of companies like Microsoft and Apple.

What Apple does well: Take a nascent but exploding market and create a fantastically superior experience via vertical integration. Get way out of in front of the competition and own the consumer mindshare: PC/iPod/iPhone (almost Newton)

What Apple doesn't do well: Own the mass market. The one place they have - music players - has really collapsed as a stand alone market and merged in with smart phones. (ie no one in the right mind today would launch a stand alone music/video player)

Why Apple is in trouble: 47% of all revenue comes from the iPhone and it's clear that that market has moved past their sweet spot.

What Apple needs to do: Understand that (to them) this market is mature. It's not about fighting Android. It's about finding the next PC/Music Player/Phone where the potential is huge and the vertical integration of hardware and software will blow away the competition for 3 - 5 years. What is that? I don't know or I'd be running the place! My fear is Steve would have known but Tim does not seem like he would.

"Why Apple is in trouble: 47% of all revenue comes from the iPhone and it's clear that that market has moved past their sweet spot"

This is not clear at all. Selling tiny computers with mobile broadband is clearly going to be the biggest hardware business for the next 10+ years and 10 years from now the device that generates the bulk of Apple's revenues will probably still be called an iPhone. It may bear little similarity to the current slab/multitouch input phone of today but will serve all the same purposes. And Android based competitors may be 90% of the market then and Apple may still be the most profitable company in the world.

I have a hard time believing the story that 'Apple is in trouble' because they have the highest margins in one the biggest markets which is still rapidly growing.

>Selling tiny computers with mobile broadband is clearly going to be the biggest hardware business for the next 10+ years and 10 years from now the device that generates the bulk of Apple's revenues will probably still be called an iPhone.

It is completely my opinion, but I also suspect the opinion of others that if that's Apple's strategy, they're in for a very rude awakening. They're taking an increasingly smaller portion of the pie and there is a lot of pie left to take.

This misses the point badly.

If you and me owned a unicycle factory... let's say we're #1 in the world for sales and quality and let's say that China's leaders wake up tomorrow and decide to ban bicycles and push unicycles, turns out the new leader of China's nephew runs China Unicycle. Now the fact that we're rapidly losing global market share to China Unicycle is going to be far less relevant to us than the fact that our sales are going to be going through the roof.

I have no idea what that analogy is supposed to mean.

It's easier to sell the world's best unicycle to someone who actually rides unicycles then to someone who's used to buying bicycles.

The fact that a half a billion people who bought flip phones 2 years ago bought cheap smartphones this year isn't bad for Apple's business, it's good.

Steko ask yourself this question. What portion of the smartphone market did they have 3 years ago? What % is that today? What happens when the pie stops growing in 3 years? It's feeling pretty much like PC vs Mac again where they're at less than 10% permanently. Anyway, the point is they need to go find another space now. They shouldn't exit phones they just should acknowledge that the vertical integrated offerings strengths become it's weakness.

"What portion of the smartphone market did they have 3 years ago?"

Around 17%.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/11/apple-grabs-17-of-smart...

"What % is that today?"

Somewhere between 14% (most recent quarter, this thread's article) and 24% (last year's launch quarter).

http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=470976

"What happens when the pie stops growing in 3 years?"

The whole point is that Apple's pie has a lot more than 3 years of growth left. We are talking about this arbitrary thing called "the smartphone market" but Apple doesn't really compete in "the smartphone market". Apple competes in a tiny corner of "the smartphone market" called "the $450+ smartphone market".

I remember when Apple competed in a space called "the $300+ music player market". And how it "felt pretty much like PC vs Mac again" when cheap mp3 players were taking market share. And then Apple brought out a $250 music player and then a $200 music player and then a $100 music player etc. Now Apple found a bigger market to play in then music players but I'm saying that I doubt there's a bigger market to play in then pocket computers with wireless broadband [1]. And Apple can keep having amazing success in that market by doing both (1) what they did in 2007 (make a much better pocket computer with wireless internet than what was currently in stores), and (2) what they did in the portable music player market (by continually addressing a larger share of that pie).

What's called the iphone in 5-10 years may look radically different, maybe it's Siri on steroids, maybe it's brain control, maybe it's holograms and haptics, maybe it's Kinect, maybe it's aug reality ala Glass, maybe it's smellovision... But what's essential about that product is that it will replace the functions of the current smartphone.

If you're asking me if Apple can keep growing at it's current rate the answer is clearly that they can't long term (law of large numbers). I do think Apple will enter other markets -- luxury watches, tv/console gaming, search and cloud services are the obvious areas. I don't think they will make as much money in all of those put together as they will in the pocket computers with wireless broadband category though.

[1] There are bigger markets of course (cars, houses, health care, education, etc) and there will be bigger new markets (girl robots lol?) but none of them play to Apple's strengths.

Couldn't agree more with this. What apple needs to do is not necessarily only innovate with features, but also with price. Otherwise they'll lose the market share (happening), devs won't prioritise iOS anymore, the iOS ecosystem advantage will become less relevant and well see the same pan out as we've seen when w95 hit the market.. In the end, it'll all boil down to marketshare.

Apple has designed its business model to cede the mass market. It focuses on capturing the majority of industry profits, not sales. It should surprise no one that more phones ship with Android than iOS.

As a platform company, this strategy exposes a vulnerable flank since historically the platform company with the most market share attracts the best software and the most end users.

The greatest difference between mobile devices and PCs? There is no IBM, which essentially standardized a powerful alternative to the Apple PC within a year or two. Android is not a single alternative but more an umbrella term encompassing several alternatives. There is still too much fragmentation today in the Android ecosystem, and its structure fosters fragmentation -- not standardization. The device manufacturers saw how commoditization destroyed the PC manufacturers, and they are intent to avoid the same fate. Unless something changes, Android devices from one manufacturer will continue to vary from other Android devices in terms of size and functionality.

For developers, the right way to segment operating systems is not Android vs iOS vs Windows 8, but by code reach. In other words, how many devices can be reached with the same code base? My hunch is iOS will have an impressive lead in this metric, but I'm happy to be proven wrong if someone has contradicting data.

Apple is content to yield marginally profitable customers to "Android," provided Android remains as fragmented as it is today. If Android were to unite, or some other OS emerges, allowing devs to target 75% of the market with (fundamentally) the same code base, the threat to Apple becomes far more dangerous.

This was more true 2 years ago. I think they are trying to capture back some of that "mass market" where people expect a cheap or free phone as opposed to the high end where we are used to paying $200-400:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare-iphones/

(4: free, 4S: $99)

These are contract prices. The unlocked iphone 4 still sells for $450+ which is around what carriers pay.

What we talk about when we talk about the "mass market" is the half a billion plus smartphones sold this year that range anywhere from less then $100 to $350. Apple has thus far refused to compete in this part of the market.

Actually, it powers 75% of all smartphones sold in the third quarter: http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/11/01/android-grabs-75-0-m...

Yeah, and 75% of all smartphones being sold today. And tomorrow :)

This feels a bit cheerleadery?

This is actual PHONE MARKETSHARE being delivered (not necessarily sold, as many of them are subsidized to $0).

Additionally, looking at just phones is a myopic view of the mobile landscape, when tablets and mini tablets (aka, iPodTouches and sub 6" android tablets) are a huge source of gaming revenue.

On the gaming revenue side, it's interesting that iOS accounts for about 85% of money spent on mobile games, and their share of the whole app revenue pie is similarly sized.

This suggests a very different picture than what we get from the raw handset shipment numbers. For the sake of argument, let's redefine how we subdivide the the mobile phone market market in terms of how people use their devices rather than what their devices are capable of. Considered that way, perhaps the app revenues suggest that Apple still completely dominates the smartphone market, and Android's handset shipment numbers simply reflect that the dumbphone market has been flooded with a smartphone OS because nowadays even the free phones are running Android.

I'd be interested in a link to that stat. I remember reading something similar a year ago and I'm curious if the landscape has since changed.

All the basic apps that define a smartphone are free on Android (and on iOS, AFAIK), so your definition only makes sense if you redefine a smartphone as a tool that successfully forces you to spend money on software...

Yup. In fact, that's exactly how I was proposing we might redefine it.

It's a worthwhile way to look at it because simply having apps to do certain things isn't really what defines a smartphone - feature phones were letting users buy and install BREW or J2ME apps for a long time. This includes all the basic apps that people tend to expect on their phones nowadays, like Facebook.

So, apps being nothing new, the line's always been a bit blurry. Using what OS the phone runs as a distinguishing criterion works fine, of course, and it's probably the most sensible one overall. But distinguishing based on the way people interact with the device, regardless of what OS it runs is also illuminative.

In this case, for example, it would seem to explain why the market for 3rd-party software (the thing that's supposed to be the heart and soul of smartphones) is so tiny on Android despite it being far and away the biggest smartphone platform. Perhaps it's the case that, regardless of what they're capable of, a huge percentage of the Android devices out there are still being used as if they were feature phones.

>(not necessarily sold, as many of them are subsidized to $0).

Why does that matter? [Samsung, Moto, etc] get that money. The subsidy doesn't just make the phone magically free. Besides, either way, it's NOT an iOS sale, or an WP7 sale, and that matters just as much.

It implies a consumer preference that isn't necessarily there and appears to show android at a higher share of device use than is likely a real picture of actual user behavior.

Information that is wrong makes people make poor decisions. I would feel bad if someone overvalued this marketshare number when choosing to make apps, for instance.

Additionally the actual statistic gathered is "shipments" not "sales" which is a different definition. One KEY point there is TONS of iPhone 5's didn't ship in Q3, even though they were purchased then.

Lastly, quoting "shipments of smartphones" then talking about the iPad mini as if it's in these numbers makes the article itself dubious (it is not taken into account in these numbers).

I just want people to stop cheerleading and report facts. Android is leading in # of screens, I just want someone to quote accurate, non-bullshitty numbers about it, instead of fake sliced up numbers about it that give a false picture of the landscape because it ignores members of the ecosystem (Ignoring small tablets such as the galaxy S 5"/iPod Touches is like ignoring PCs that just don't happen to have a 802.11b card installed in them: A weird way to slice statistical data).

No it's 75% in the quarter when Apple's sales are always the lowest. Last year Apple sales went from 17 million the quarter before 4S launch to 37 million in the holiday/launch quarter. There's a week and change of iphone 5 launch in the prior quarter numbers for Apple but you'd still expect them to deliver 40-50 million phones in this quarter.

Don't get me wrong the % of Android sales today is high. But simple math tells you that it's not going to be as high as it was in August.

I think this is just low end Android phones becoming cheaper than feature phones.

Those are the current, just-released numbers (in an analysis from IDC). To argue that those don't represent "now" seems to be to be a silly semantic quibble -- there will never be sales numbers for "now" if these aren't them.

This whole article reads like Google is announcing it's dominance, as if it's some Christian crusader claiming a conquered land in the name of the Pope and Christianity.

Here's my interpretation of some of what I read:

"If Google decides that HTML5 web apps are the way forward, making them a first-class citizen in future versions of Android, then other mobile OSes will have no other option than to follow suit."

(We claim absolute power)

"Conversely, Google could decide to cease development of the stock Android browser — much like Microsoft did with IE4 — and push alternative technologies like Native Client or Dart, forcing other mobile OSes to embrace Google’s tech."

(You must all submit to our new power)

"And what about the other platforms? It seems like Apple is destined to occupy a tiny corner of the market — no doubt making fat profits, but losing control of the market and all-important mind share in the process."

(Your former leader has been dethroned and never had your interests in mind anyways)

"You may point to the fact that Android is open source, thus making such a monopoly rather toothless. This might be theoretically true, but in practice Google still holds all the keys."

(Don't question Google's power)

"Over the next few years, Google will develop unprecedented control of the fastest growing tech market in the world. Will Google use this power to gently steer and cajole the web and mobile computing markets towards green pastures, or will it cave like Microsoft and squeeze as much money as it can from Android?"

(Will Google be a benevolent leader or a ruthless dictator? You will find out.)

Apparently you're unaware that extremetech.com is not a part of Google (and unaffiliated with them, as far as I know). All of those quotations are from the article, which Google didn't write...so I fail to see how any of this is "Google announcing its dominance" (as opposed to ExtremeTech announcing their perception of Google's dominance, which is a VASTLY different thing).

So now that one company is Google, that one man is Andy Rubin and that one phone is Android. Thats the future we wanted. Thank God Google acted.

Android is not a phone.

If we standardize on one operating system, I definitely prefer a future where we have thousands of phones to choose from and not just five.

Thank you Google for saving us from an Apple monopoly.

Talk of an Apple monopoly is silly. Apple has shown no interest in building budget smartphones. That market, which is hundreds of millions of phones per year, was always going to go to whichever competitor which managed to both copy the iphone the best and kowtow to the carriers. WebOS only met the first criteria, Nokia only the second, Android checked both boxes.

Thank God for giving us a shitty alternative to iOS.

I think there is no chance in hell that an Apple monopoly would ever happened. Apple has never shown interest in that. Even with their tablets they do not.

Andy Rubin as a startup founder of 10 years ago is to be congratulated, too. His vision of an open source, Linux-based mobile OS has wiped away the competition and is now the dominant player. Android has stolen most superlatives from competitors in just 4 years.

That said, I believe it is time for start-ups to get ready for a post-Android world where the forking, customization power of open source software, combined with the diversity and power of mobile chips, will come into play. New categories of devices, solutions based on powerful mobile chips may open up new horizons for aspiring startups.

The title is misleading. It should read :

"Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold <b> in 3rd quarter of 2012 </b>"

I keep thinking this will be a bit antitrust concern in future years. I'm not even going to get into the FTC's recommendation to sue over patents:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ftc-staff-said-to-for...

1) To make use of many Android device features, you typically are required to have a Google account. (Ditto with the iPhone, but it's a bigger deal the more you control the market) 2) The pressure exerted on Aliyun 3) By default, Google search in the browser. How long before there's pressure for a "search engine ballot" screen?

Google already offers a ballot for desktop Chrome, I wouldn't be too surprised if they offer one for Android at some point.

So if Apple has 70% of the market share, how does Android make up 75%? It can only be less than 30%. Can anyone clarify?

I think that because the sentence includes "of all smartphones sold", the discrepency is describing a shift in market share. Apple could have 70% now, and 75% of all new devices sold now could be Android. They were in the game first, and aggregated a huge market share, but now it is shifting.

I don't think a monopoly made on top of an open-source platform makes any sense.

I don't see why they demonize this: "If Google decides that HTML5 web apps are the way forward, making them a first-class citizen in future versions of Android, then other mobile OSes will have no other option than to follow suit."

They don't demonize it, they are just showing how much power Google will have. Power that could be used for good or for bad from the world's perspective, but will always be used for Google's benefit.

This title feels a bit cheerleadery?

This is actual phone handset market being delivered (not necessarily sold, as many of them are subsidized to $0).

Additionally, looking at just phones is a myopic view of the mobile landscape, when tablets and mini tablets (aka, iPodTouches and sub 6" android tablets) are a huge source of gaming revenue as well as advertisement revenue.

I think the ecosystem is still a vibrant multiplayer arena.

I honestly don't see how you get cheerleadery out of "Android now powers 75% of all smartphones sold". That is about as factual as it gets.

Because it's not true?

Android is the OS loaded on 75% of the phones shipped in Q3. Not sold.

For instance: iPhone5 was not shipped for the vast majority of people who purchased it when released in Q3, even though they purchased it in Q3.

This is lying with stats. It's annoying as hell.

The title makes a clear statement, and the article itself questions whether a Google dominated smartphone landscape is a good thing.

I'm not seeing the "cheerleadery" side of this.

The title says sales, the data says shipped. The title says "smartphones" the actual software platforms (aka Android vs iOS vs whatever else) are mobile devices, not phones.

The first part alone really screws up the numbers, as tons of iPhone5s were sold, but not shipped, in Q3.

> This is actual phone handset market being delivered (not necessarily sold, as many of them are subsidized to $0).

Sold is sold, subsidies just change who is doing the buying.

Alternatively, subsidies don't change who is doing the buying, but rather obscure the buying behind a built in camouflaged payment plan.

The article assume smartphone makers will continue to battle on hardware for tiny margin and let Google handles the software.

That is possible, as we see with Amazon, that they focus on their software ecosystem and keep Google largely out of the picture. That is not as unlikely as it seems, the Nexus line and Amazon have broken the taboo against cheap quality hardware and that is like a red carpet for the cheap chinese makers. Hopefully the current manufacturers will want to avoid a second serving of the Windows OEM market, so they may decide to focus on their software ecosystem instead.

That is the best scenario, one where Microsoft and RIM both will have a chance to bring diversity. The market is too young to settle on a single OS.

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