As Android hits 75% market share, can anyone tell me why this is not Mac vs PC?
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
iPhone users (and "high end" Android users), on the other hand, probably know exactly what they're buying into. These are the users that will determine developer targeting. Two ways I see for Android to decisively win this: either these "low-end" users start to participate in the eco-system, or the rise of low income countries (much of Asia, Africa etc) makes the weight of numbers so far in Android's favour that even with a much lower engagement rate, the money's there. Apple could counter this with "iPhone Nano", I guess, but it would require them to sacrifice a lot of margin.
Outside tip: Samsung are becoming the Apple of Android smartphones, selling the preponderance of the high end handsets. Within 18 months, I suspect we'll see them fork Android to differentiate themselves from the "sell at near cost, make it up on ecosystem" strategy that Google's pursuing now with the Nexus (that reduce Samsung to basically a hardware supplier on razor-thin margins). Either that, or they'll use carrier relationships to ensure these cheap, high-end handsets don't ever really get in front of non-geeky consumers.
Samsung is neither low end or high end. They are selling whats suitable strategy for each country and its working damn well.
I am curious how much of an advantage Android has by allowing pirated apps. In price sensitive markets the cost of apps has to be a key factor. If it is a big factor could be ominous signs for Nokia in particular.
Microsoft, Apple and Google have this in their DNA. Phone manufacturers, like Nokia and Samsung don't. If they could have build their own Android / their own Google Play, they would have done so already.
Also, companies can mutate 'their DNA'; it is not frozen at birth. For example, the Tabulating Machines Company (nowadays called IBM) has reinvented itself several times, and Nintendo started as a manufacturer of playing cards, and DSM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM_(company)) started life as 'The State Mines' and mined coal, but now is, quoting their site "a global science-based company active in health, nutrition and materials".
For iPhones, the vast majority of people I know with them use then constantly and have a wide range of apps on there.
Of course, Android still has its power users, who are probably even more passionate about Android than the average iOS user is about iOS, but like you say, they are still in the minority at the moment.
As an example, my company has a mobile app out there for Android and iOS. Over two thirds of the downloads we've had so far have been on iOS, and they typically use the app far more frequently that the Android users.
To respond to this will require care. They can go with the razor-margins approach, and have their margins eaten away to virtually 0 (i.e. Dell etc). However, this only props up an ecosystem that benefits Google. They could, I suppose, find a way to out-build the entire rest of the market and get decent margins at the very low end of price (but I find that unlikely). Alternatively, they find a way to differentiate, which is most cheaply done at the software level.
Anyone picking path #1 is basically going to have to own the market to make any money in the long term, but will keep decent balance sheets in the short until commoditisation is completed. Anyone picking path #2 has more risk in the short term, but a lot more to gain in the long (e.g. as Apple has).
The majority of Samsung's customers are Samsung customers. They've bought into the brand. They're not about to jump ship to LG.
The 75% to 15% is only for the last quarter of sales, but if the sales can be sustained, and they probably can (they kept growing so far), then eventually the userbases will look like 5:1, too (for phones at least, considering iPhones are only about half of iOS sales).
And Samsung will not fork. They will lose all the apps, and considering they are nowhere near starting their own app store, it's impossible for them to do that within 18 months. I don't know why this idea comes up every now and then. I guess it's the tech press' love for the melodramatic, and from their point of view it would make for great intrigue if Samsung tried that, but when you look at things objectively, that outcome is nowhere near close to a possible reality right now.
Here's another way of looking at it: There is product competition, and Apple is losing.
Google spends more than twice what Apple does on research (that's after Apple bumped up their R&D budget too!). Apple is going to be playing catch-up in terms of features for the foreseeable future. Google has taken some steps to improve their polish, such as project butter, but that bright future is most unevenly distributed. Google's attempts at polish will likely be thwarted by the same thing that scares off game-writers: fragmentation.
In the near future, I think Android will take the lead and become the better OS, except for gaming. Google is putting too much effort into polish not to catch up quick (with their premier devices at least) while Apple isn't doing enough to close the feature-gap and is actually falling further behind (e.g. NFC, wireless charging, etc.). If Google ever manages to solve their fragmentation woes that'll basically be it for the iPhone.
Windows 8 phones are, of course, a bit of a dark horse. WM8 appears to be a nice mobile OS that is going to come on some very nice hardware. It might be WM7 all over again, or it might actually catch on. I'd love to see another front opened up in this war!
Especially since Android is expanding to so many other kinds of devices, it's fragmentation is it's biggest trait and I think it's a pretty hard trend to revert. That's like asking Internet Explorer to become the zeitgeist standards-compliant browser--they have taken too long, much as they try to revert (and they are) other browsers have already taken over it's share and will continue to (especially now that Microsoft guaranteed the non-longevity of it's desktop OS going forward).
To be clear, I don't mean they can't solve the fragmentation problem, only that they have left this breach open long enough for a competitor to become the new cool kid before they could hope to pivot their behemoth operation. That's my prediction at least.
Now clearly Android is a far more capable OS than the smart phones OS's of 2007, but in some ways it still lags iOS. One that matters to me for example is the lack of a good low latency audio API. Audio production apps are very popular on iOS and some of them are ground breaking. This matters far more to me than NFC or wireless charging.
In addition, although Google plans to add (or maybe already has) a better audio API, there will be a huge lag before there are enough devices with the new API available, so most developers won't bother porting.
On the other hand, it's easy for Apple to add wireless charging or NFC since they're mostly hardware.
To address the original post, I don't think this is like Mac vs Windows. Apple is making a large share of the industry profits, and unless Android developers start suddenly making considerably more money than iOS developers it still has greater developer mindshare. Also, the premium Apple is charging for it's devices is less than it was for the Mac vs PCs duing the 80s/90s, and most of it is swallowed by the carriers.
I think it's clear Apple isn't going dominate the sales numbers, but I don't see any signs of iOS dwindling to near obscurity like MacOS did during the 90s.
In any case, Google just needs to swap out AudioFlinger for PulseAudio and they'd have this taken care of. Collabora have even done most of the work for them already.
I doubt it:
- Owners of Android handsets on average have lower disposable income than owners of iOS devices. On top of that, a lot of Android phones are in developing countries.
- Most Android handsets run an old version of the OS and will never be updated, thus limiting the choice of APIs that developers can use.
- Many Android handsets are used as dumbphones, their owners will never download apps.
- There is not one main app marketplace for Android, and not all Android users can use the same marketplaces.
- Few Google Play accounts have credit cards linked to them. Amazon is in a much better position, but Apple still has more credit cards on file.
- Google makes developers pay for chargebacks.
Remember though, most of the developers who are doing work that actually matters on mobile aren't doing it because they want do, they're doing it because a corporate strategist thought it would be profitable use of their time.
An iOS app I'm working on right now has been a nightmare in comparison because we had to port our layouts to the i5 form factor but can't require iOS 6 just to get autologous. Apple really blew that transition.
Also, you can say that the API level differences don't matter because they are hidden by compatibility libraries like The Support Package, but the truth is that those are just the newer APIs re-implemented against the old interfaces. You pay for that extra abstraction with wasted cycles and bloat, and it's an ugly solution. Even still, those libraries aren't perfect: there have been subtle bugs or incompatibilities introduced by their use which are notoriously hard to find. Finally, even if the newer APIs are present on the device, The Support Library will still be used (last I checked, though I think they are working on this).
Less objectively, it's a matter of preference. Some people just prefer objective C to a JVM compilable language.
The emulator is atrociously slow and every manufacturer seems to have different implementations of UI controls meaning it is expensive and time consuming to test.
For this increasingly dominant app category reach is what counts.
I haven't seen any evidence of Apple's App Store revenues dropping markedly. Pretty sure the market would be VERY concerned if that were the case.
Every Apple phone sold = Money for Apple
Every Android phone != Money for Google
That's not to say that Apple shouldn't be worried, but unlike in the Mac vs. PC situation, their competition isn't a single company making profit off every unit sold. It's a mass of semi-co-operative, semi-competitive groups; many of which are helping themselves to the free Android software without giving anything back to the people who made it.
That's a big difference.
Shipping Google's applications (GMail, Maps, Google's store; maybe others) requires a license from Google. That probably is not free as in beer, either, but I find it hard to find definitive statements for that on the web. developer.android.com seems to only target software developers.
Also, some technologies used in Android are patented, and require payments to patent holders.
So, in practice, Android is not free for smartphone makers.
People who believe Android is 'free' do not understand what's in it for Google. If this was not the case, then lawsuits like Skyhook wouldn't exist: http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-la...
Its unified privacy policy is already under threat in the EU and it is facing multiple anti-trust investigations in the US and soon to be EU, SK et al. Not to mention all the competition issues with Google News and Google Search.
Combine all of that with the lack of online usage and engagement amongst Android users and everything isn't quite so rosy.
For me, the biggest difference between Mac vs PC, and iOS vs Android is that Mac and PC are mostly comparable. iOS and some Android phone/tablets are comparable but a large majority of cheap Android phones are not in the same market as iOS devices, and for me - not comparable.
The whole point of the article is that while there are more paying customers in the iOS world NOW, it's unlikely that the situation will continue to be true given the current trends.
i know it was an advertising campaign. i know there was competition between apple and pc manufacturers. but this article seems to assume that the phrase has some clear meaning/implication for the future (and that "it" is happening again). but what is "it"?
is it just saying - look, the market is dividing into two brands, one with wider appeal and lower prices, the other aimed more at discretionary spending?
if so, what is interesting about that? serious q - i feel i'm completely missing the point here. is the idea that this is dangerous for apple? if so, isn't the counterargument that, historically, apple has managed to adapt and innovate? i mean, it's hardly suffering right now.
Microsoft won that battle and Apple barely scraped through.
Will Android win this time round in a similar fashion?
Apple sells more iPods than Macs.
Mac was innovative, brilliant, early but too expensive & without enough applications.
Windows was late, copied & sucked but was cheaper (because of commodity hardware) had all the dos apps from the 80s and got gradually better. By 95 the network effects of the developer ecosystem had locked windows in to 20 years of dominance. It also helped that by 95 windows didn't really suck much.
The moral of the story is (supposedly) that OS Platforms have one winner. Developers develop for the largest user base and users buy the cheapest platform with the most apps.
Edit: got rid off an unnecessary comment.
I am worried about what will happen if a company that doesn't get the majority of its profits from hardware "wins," but on the other hand — the most recent turn of the real "mac vs PC" doesn't really seem that bad for Macs either.
Also, $199(or the $650 unlocked) is well within reach of a large number of customers nowadays, whereas $3000 in the later 80s was a huge amount(even more so than now because of inflation). In dollar terms, $3000 in 1989 would be $5,598.56 now.