Android Won. Windows Lost | Hacker News Reader

Android Won. Windows Lost

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96 pointscramforce113 comments

The big problem I have with this kind of analysis is that it's all extrapolation based on existing conditions, with the assumption that nothing disruptive will happen from here on out. You could have done the same analysis at various points in time and concluded that Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry and iOS were all going to dominate the future. The very nature of technology is disruptive and we simply cannot predict what's going to happen next.

Having said that, if this vision does come to fruition, I think it is a wonderful thing for humanity. The fact that the OS that comes to dominate the planet is free, open source and available on (nearly)equal terms to everyone from the most powerful and rich on the planet to the most poor and deprived is a truly amazing and awesome feat. A few years ago I looked at the growth of iOS and truly feared that humanity was headed for a very different future - one where the poor were separated and disenfranchised by their inability to afford access to the dominant mobile platform and the rich were slavishly bound to the constraints of a locked down and tightly controlled ecosystem where all decisions made would be in the interest of the largest company on earth. This latter future did not come to pass, and I am very glad for that (even as I admire and love using Apple products).

Yeah, when he gets into Android forecasts for 2014 with one in every four people or whatever - a bit much.

But like you I think its pretty amazing that I can put the same OS on my Raspberry Pi, any crappy tablet, my phone and whatever else at the same rate as the rest of the world for practically nothing.

"Today latest Q3 data and 20 months after Nokia CEO annoucned the premature death of Symbian, in Q3 Symbian sales has collapsed from the 29% market share it had when Elop announced it, to 2% now."

So tired of this total misuse of a statistic. Yes, Symbian had ~29% of the market when they switch to backing WP7. However, that's leaving out the fact that 29% is down from 47% in 2009, and that the rate at which people were abandoning Symbian for Android continued to increase. Furthermore, that market share was almost entirely cheap dumbphones. The reality is that Symbian was never a popular smartphone platform and was not ready for a global shift from dumbphones to smartphones, and that Apple and Android disrupted that market and split it among themselves. That whole section was littered with ranty inaccuracies. OP goes on to talk about "Windows Phone 6" as a confused combination of WinMo 6.5 and WP7.

Nokia had the N900. They had MeeGo (back before it was a joke). They had a good shot at being part of the smartphone market.

What other "ranty innacuracies" would you like to point out?

Windows Phone 6 was a (mild) typo for Windows Mobile 6. (Not WP7)

By the time the N900 came out Nokia had already lost to iPhones and Androids. It's predecessor devices were neat but they weren't phones, the N800 was a weird little pocket-sized tablet. Usability of the whole series was underwhelming.

"Lost" to iPhones? Sure. Lost to Android? A lot harder call. Certainly Apple partisans of the time were still in full Android-dismissal mode. That was 2009; what if they'd stuck with it and kept improving it? No guarantees, but they at least would have had a seat at the table. Nokia spent some of the most formative years in this market not even sitting at the table while they waited for their Windows phone to come out.

Plus given the Linux base at the core of both Android and Maemo, had there been more resources put into it, it seems like there's a reasonable chance they could have been in a position to come to some sort of accommodation with Android, perhaps being able to run some apps, or at least making it easy to target both.

I agree. My N9 is a pleasure to use and it feels like MeeGo could've been an actual competitor had it not been mired in the internal battle with Symbian.

I belong to one of the non-US markets where Nokia smartphones and dumbphones had a majority share. To be honest, abandoning Symbian was quite a shock here because, despite being slow, it was a very familiar user interface for vast majority of the population.

Rather than throw the baby with the bathwater, Nokia could retained a very loyal customer base by offering a smoother migration path. They could have even made an entirely rewritten touch based OS with a familiar Nokia UI (or as a fallback mode). It would have been a killer product in such markets. Instead Elop chose to write-off all the good work Nokia has done thus far by calling it a "burning platform".

Whichever numbers you look at today, the sheer stupidity of that decision is painfully evident.

Windows will not have lost until Microsoft goes bankrupt.

Mobile platforms are really just a fad. The future will be essentially a distributed OS, where devices throughout the home interact with a larger system to provide a much more immersive and practical experience. Few will give a fuck about iOS and Android in 10 years

Apple is going to be focusing on novel user input with their new T.V. They've already provided Airplay, etc. but other than music, streaming video, and other information provided by screens and tablets, what are they providing?

Microsoft has a head start with kinect, so if they invested in related research, touch screens, and other novel input devices like the LEAP, they might be able to compete in the future. By placing kinect-like devices around the home with some mics and speakers, you could talk to your computer like in the original Star Trek ("Computer, how hot will it be today?") or make a gesture in the air to turn on and off lights or lock doors. That would be something people would buy.

This is a good point.

I believe, that in the end, the browser will win. The Mozilla OS on phone will go somewhere, and many many apps will move into the browser, both on the low-end phone hardware, and on high-end laptop hardware.

while android may become the hardware layer king, I think it will be overshadowed by html/js for GUI.

It turns out its easier to "sell" lots of copies of something for free. Microsoft actually sold those > 1 billion copies of windows. Google still makes almost nothing on android. This article was absurdly over the top IMO.

Microsoft makes money on the one off sale and then essentially zero from then on. Google makes zero on the sale, but then makes money from then on. Asymco has the numbers from 6 months ago:

http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/14/the-android-income-statemen...

Also note that the more recent the version of Android, the higher they monetize:

http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2012/10/24/androids-jelly-be...

Which may be why windows 8 bundles an appstore and infrastructure for ads.

You refute my statement that they make almost nothing with an ARPU of $1.63 and a 500 mil profit? seriously? Microsoft made over 20 billion net profit in 2011 and Apple has an ARPU around $600.

Revenues and profits are a trailing indicator not a leading indicator. They reflect what the company has done in the past, not what is happening in the future. My point is that measurements have changed from one offs to lifetime value. (That is not to dismiss Microsoft's two decades of impressive financial performance.)

Note that Apple's ARPU number includes COGS for the hardware which Google doesn't incur (Samsung et al do).

Sure, but $1.63 is a tiny ARPU in any case, and I think that even the most confident estimates don't have that number going to the moon. Sure they can make some money this way, but Apple's profit per device is in the $250-$300 range.

Is there any argument to be made that Google can somehow go from making $1.63 to $300? Not to mention that Apple and Microsoft are also making that tiny ~$1 per user from their stores and search as well.

All of this also doesn't count the fact that running the store isn't free. That revenue isn't 100% profit. My argument is that while they can grow this ARPU, I don't see any possible way that it becomes a big enough number to matter compared to their search profits. What is that path? That is the interesting question. (Note this could partly be answered by the fact that they bought Motorola and do now in fact sell some phones themselves.)

The stores are a wash for both Google and Apple (again see asymco). If you look at Android's income statement you can see that search and advertising is where the big profits come from - something Apple doesn't really have (yet), and Microsoft don't have a sufficiently large installed based for (yet). The $1.63 ARPU is monthly not lifetime and the data is more relevant in showing that the revenue from Android users is increasing at a rapid clip.

Apple is grabbing a large chunk of profit once from the most profitable consumers. Google is grabbing smaller amounts of profit but from a far larger number of regular users on a monthly basis.

At some point the larger Android installed base will mean some number of users will match the profitability of an Apple user's biannual purchase. There is no requirement for a one to one match.

If Google had not done Android then Apple/Microsoft/RIM would have been able to exclude them from the mobile market, which is on its way to becoming the relevant market.

As for Motorola, I don't know. Google can't treat them specially otherwise they will alienate existing Android partners. There is already the Nexus program for providing the unadulterated Android experience, which presumably keeps prices low due to volume.

Other than patents, Motorola would only provide leverage if existing Android partners did not want to play ball on something but there hasn't been any evidence of that happening either.

> Microsoft actually sold those > 1 billion copies of windows.

No, it didn't. A very large portion of those 1 billion copies were pirated.

Well, since the install base from the article was > 1.5 billion, and you yourself cited a 1/3 pirate rate, that makes > 1 billion sold....

Sources for either side?

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/...

MS itself says here (from 2010) that about 1/3rd of all installs are pirated.

Google makes money anytime somebody browses the internet from their phone or buys an app from google play.

I said "almost" nothing. about 500 mil last year. Compared to the 40 bil or so apple is making that is almost nothing. Microsoft made over 20 bil last year so I'll stand by the almost nothing.

What do you mean? Devices that run Android are not free.

Android is free. the devices aren't. Google gives Android away and the OEM's sell it. Samsung makes lots of money selling Android phones. Google makes almost nothing.

And they also are not sold by Google.

That depends entirely on the carrier.

Too much hyperbole, but I was struck by this, which I hadn't considered before:

"We often go to Amazon just to search something - to see what else Amazon recommends. We are quite literally accessing Amazon 'just to see ads'."

I haven't seen a clearer demonstration of the argument that ads, properly targeted and displayed at the right times, provide positive value to the user.

People don't like most advertising because it's lying to them, or at least covering up it's faults (turd rolled in glitter). I mean, what company is going to pay to tell everything about their product. There going to show it in the best light. When people buy something they want to be informed (doesn't a free market require this?). With sites like Amazon or Newegg you get more information about the product and similar products that is supposedly neutral. They don't care 'which' product you buy, as long as you buy it from them. The customer benefits by exposure to more choices, better products, and possibly better pricing.

This does not work as well for vendors, they do not care who you buy from, as long as you buy their product.

The lesson from that is that customers are more likely to trust ads that come from the marketplace, not the sellers. The original point is very good and can be extended a bit: Customers don't hate ads, they hate modern advertising.

Obviously, the marketplace does have some incentive to lie, because they want you to buy something rather than nothing, but they certainly seem less biased. Especially when it comes to relatively fungible goods, they don't care which DVD you buy so long as you buy one, they don't care if product X is way better than Y or about as good as Y, so long as you buy one of them. Unless it's their own product or a very unique product, most goods are relatively fungible from the marketplace's perspective.

Now lets hope the marketplace doesn't secretly sell ad space, disguised as their own "recommendations". It would probably be completely against their best interest to do so, but if a lot of cash were on the line, well, who knows. (They risk their reputation, but if the replacement was plausible, how would they get caught?)

This vision of the world feels like it was dreamed up by a science fiction author. I understand Android is growing. But, I can not help but think he is answering the wrong question. Honestly, I do not know what the right question is. It reads like a narrow view of the market, global economy, and fads. I look at my very young cousins. They are growing up with iPads and iPhones not Google products. (observations)

> I look at my very young cousins. They are growing up with iPads and iPhones not Google products. (observations)

This is true, but I think you are looking too short term. Here in every Christmas catalogue there are 3 pages of iPads and iPad accessories. But you know what is on the front page of most of the catalogues? a $99 Android tablet. The tablet probably sucks, but I think this is the turning point. Parents are not going to spend $300+ on tablets for their kids when the "same thing" is next to it for $99. These are going to flood into living rooms, then schools, and all other instutions. The iPad has a temporary monopoly in these places now but it's not going to last. In a year's time the components in the $99 tablets will be good enough that the experience will actually be good and then it's all over. Apple's fatal flaw is that their business model depends on those high margin. The often quoted statistic that Apple makes nearly all the profits in the mobile industry is as much a weakness as a strength. Apple needs those margins, their business model depends on it. They can't survive in a low-margin world but they also can't prevent it. They have to retreat and hide every time in the luxury / premium segment of the market where their business model works, but the vast majority of us do not dwell. To survive in the mass market, Apple needs to create revolutionary hit after revolutionary hit - and they've done amazingly well at that so far, but you have to ask how many times they can pull it off. Eventually they are going to falter and then their whole model crumbles.

Exactly. Apple's vertical integration gave them a big first mover advantage in this market but their obsession with control is going to kill them as the hardware is commoditized.

Bezos is 100% right about this - content is king in mobile in the long run.

My Nexus 4 is bigger and better than my iPhone 4s, in everything except absolute hardware quality, though it's not far behind.

Jellybean is fantastic, and provides a stable glitch-free experience, with significantly better performance in key apps such as Exchange integration that are a key part of my daily usage.

I think Apple is relatively content to not dominate the mass market, though. Look at their computers- they are a premium price, but they still make a lot of profit on them.

Now that they are crippling their OS, and trying to force everyone to use their App Store (which prevents powerful tools as a policy), who could they possibly be going after?

Que? How is providing the ability to have only programs compiled and signed by developers that have paid money "crippling their OS"?

Here's a fun fact, I haven't even changed the settings for that downwards on the very laptop I'm on.

I can still compile stuff fine, run Emacs.app. Install Google Chrome and Firefox. Nothing of substance has changed.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. You do realize the default of "Mac App Store and identified developers" doesn't mean what you think it does right?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5290 for more info on Gatekeeper. I think you've a few misconceptions.

I have no misconceptions.

Signed apps are great for the user; the question is who is the CA and how do you get a certificate? The security options are App Store, signed, or everything; I and many others suspect they will change the default to App Store only in the future.

I also do not approve of almost everything else added in Lion. It's like they are pushing hard to attract people that don't know how to use computers, but at the expense of those that do.

For the record, I didn't like how you wrote in a manner that was condescending and overly familiar, either.

I think a number of people are worried about Apple shooting themselves in the foot, or screwing their customers. Apple's handling of software development in the '80s almost killed them. Microsoft's 'steal it, pirate it, just develop for it' mantra got us to where we are today.

Apples default of signed programs is probably best for consumer safety, but many times the best ideas don't win the market.

Perhaps, but to be honest until Apple does something entirely crazy I think the worry is premature. Microsoft had more than the "do what you want with it" mantra, their lockin to any pc hardware was more valuable. Additionally 80's Apple isn't much of a parallel to today, the company is not at all the same.

The signed binary stuff has been in OSX since around 10.4, so to think this is a recent action by Apple is somewhat wrong.

Actually you are the one with the narrow view of the market. Look beyond your young cousins.

The rest of the world are using Android devices not Apple.

Android phones has 80+% market share in a number of countries in Europe. Worldwide, Android tablets are slowly gaining market share from the IPad.

In Africa, Android phones cost less than $100. In a few years, it might be under $50. A lot of poor people will not be able to afford a PC but a cheap phone is probably the only computer they'll ever have.

It's important to keep in mind that Android is completely subsidized by advertising revenue. Making money on mobile advertising is still troublesome enough in any market, but selling advertising targeted toward "a lot of poor people not able to afford a PC" is even less profitable. As someone who develops for the web and mobile web, I'm glad to see good browsers in the hands of more users, but it's important to keep in mind what makes that possible in the first place. If Android dominates in markets where no one can afford paid apps and no advertisers spend significant money, while Apple continues to hold a lock on the more lucrative demographics, Android could actually be in trouble overall.

> Android is completely subsidized by advertising revenue

This is why being open source is such a beautiful thing. Yes, Google could falter and stop developing Android, but the code they have put in Github lives forever. They could also turn completely evil and start misusing Android in exploitative or evil ways - but they can only do that to a certain extent before someone will pick up the baton, fork Android and replace them. The loss of the Google parts of the ecosystem would be huge, but you can see from the products that are on the market that are unblessed by Google that even without any Google involvement, Android is completely functional and useful OS.

In 3rd world countries like the Philippines, carriers are making gigantic profits off the backs of poor people.

But it's all about the money eh?

I see it more as a life-changing device. SMS was made a lot of difference in the lives of poor people. What more if your phone has a web browser?

Going back to your argument though. It doesn't matter if majority of Android users are poor people. As long as Google has enough eyeballs that would make ads worth it (e.g. in developed countries), it would be enough to support the costs of developing Android.

Google is a public company, with fiduciary duty to its shareholders. It is at least somewhat about the money. If Google can't make Android a profit center, there's nothing stopping Android from being relegated to FeedBurner status or going the way of Wave and Etherpad. I'm in no way whatsoever trying to pass judgement on the wrong or rightness of that, but I don't think it's arguable that Google must find a way to make Android a profitable endeavor for it to see continued active development and promotion.

The Android vs. iOS US/UK growth numbers lately have not been kind to Android and Android's greater number of devices still represent a lower amount of web traffic in North America (and on the decline lately). It's a very premature assumption to claim that Android will be lucrative enough in developed demographics to fund overall development. As long as Google is actually losing money on every Android device sold (due to the patent licensing), simply focusing on the number of devices sold is a very poor metric for the platform's long term success.

"As long as Google is actually losing money on every Android device sold (due to the patent licensing)"

Seriously, where the hell are you getting your "facts"?

Google is not losing money on Android.

http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/14/the-android-income-statemen...

I'm getting more and more convinced now that you're trolling this thread.

You realize that Asymco post is just speculation and the chart is based on that speculation, right? Those individual bars aren't based on any directly related facts or financials. He's very clear about that.

By the same token:

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507961/android-takes-of...

Back to my overall point, here's another example of Android devices simply not making a very good showing when it comes to actual usage: http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/11/27/apples-ipad-drivin...

Considering Android's larger user base, measured usage numbers like those have almost all been abysmal. iOS even accounts for ~10% more web traffic than Android in North America and that gap has been widening lately. That's a serious problem that you shouldn't hand-wave away if you truly care about the future of Android.

Personally, I don't have a horse in this race. I think iOS, Android, and WP8 all have strengths. You seem to be angry at me for pointing out the flaws in focusing on raw Android activation numbers (many of which don't even have a data plan!). I don't understand why. It's not my fault that back-loading the profit is not viable for large swaths of the global mobile market, but I don't think that's a very controversial statement.

I've never seen an ad on my phone except when using the browser.

That's not great news for Android's sustainability, no?

No? How could that be a logical conclusion given current data? Also, did you honestly think that Android just randomly shows ads or something?

There's no need to be like that. I own multiple Android devices myself.

Just the fact that so many Android devices have been sold isn't very convincing. Lots of MySpace accounts were opened and lots of RIM devices were sold in years past too.

Android is free. If it doesn't drive revenue to Google through over avenues, it's not sustainable, and the only revenue stream Google excels at is advertising. Sure, there's Play, but a) Apple has stated that their 30% is just barely above break even; so even taking a cut of paid apps is probably not enough to sustain an entire platform and b) Android users overall are well known not to be very spendy when it comes to apps. If Android isn't a successful advertising vector for Google in the long run, I think you have to seriously question how secure its future will be.

How much money do you think Google should make to be profitable with Android?

Let's say it costs them $50m a year. Google could make that money of the 10% of the Android user base.

Looking at your comments, it smacks of elitism. (i.e. lots of Android users are poor while iOS users have money...)

I'm not sure how it's elitism to point out that the specific demographic you mentioned is not one that lends itself to Google's central business. Like I very specifically said, I personally think it's great as a developer who benefits from more WebKit browsers in the world. I also understand that Google isn't in this market to be philanthropic either.

Well, it's inaccurate to start with. The hair brained notion that people are only forced into Android, they don't choose it.

Also, you'd do well to read about why they were so passionate about Android, about putting money into it and having it be open source.

I literally don't know how to respond to this: If Android isn't a successful advertising vector for Google in the long run, I think you have to seriously question how secure its future will be.

Most because I just don't know where to even start. You seem to think that because Google is good at advertising, they have to put ads on Android or something for it to be a worthwhile cause to them?

A product activating a million units a day is going to shut down? Hell, they could lose money on Android and they'd fund it just to fight Apple.

I don't understand where you're getting that I said people are only forced into Android? Frankly, I don't understand why you seem so hostile in general, throwing out things like:

> Also, did you honestly think that Android just randomly shows ads or something?

> The hair brained notion that people are only forced into Android, they don't choose it.

To be clear, I develop primarily for the web so I'm not very invested in any of these platforms. You seem to think I'm anti-Android or pro-iOS (or whatever). Given the choice between Android or nothing, I wish people would buy Android devices and then actually use them to browse the web so that more of my users would be using WebKit! That doesn't seem to actually be happening though. The latest StatCounter numbers show Android's actual usage in North America at ~10% less and falling away from iOS slightly, even though there are so many Android devices.

The Wave team was passionate about Wave too. That's great, but passion (alone) doesn't pay the bills. I hate to be overly cynical, but Google's own track record speaks for itself quite clearly when it comes to products that don't contribute enough to the bottom line. Just off the top of my head, I can think of two popular Google services that I use daily which have stagnated due to lack of active development when Google decided they weren't worth focusing on.

Of course I don't think Android would be "shut down" overnight. What does that even mean? I do think that Android must remain important enough to Google that it's very actively developed and keeps pace with iOS and other mobile operating systems though. Otherwise, it would quickly fall by the wayside like Netscape, MySpace, or BlackBerry.

new smarthphone works works as a substitute of buying new car or moving to new house, so it's not like iOS users have more money

Good point. My comment was reactionary and not very well thought out. I was recently, in Mexico, and noticed a much higher use of Android versus iOS products. There are significantly cheaper alternatives to the iPhone.

Apple losing market share significantly in both India and China where pretty much Android has closer 90% marketshare.

In India at least, Apple/iOS never had anything resembling meaningful marketshare. Android has replaced Symbian and whatever's left of blackberry as the ubiquitous platform powering phones from INR 5000 ($95 ) to INR 35000 ($625) not "taken away marketshare from Apple" since they didn't have any begin with.

Good Point, by shear population, they dictate a lot. I will think about this some more. One global company becoming a leader, by a large margin, is something I dislike. Too much power in the hands of one piece of software.

Why do people point out these anecdotes as if they refute real numbers and trends?

India and China aren't the only places where Apple is losing (relative) mobile marketshare.

Never seen anyone use an android workstation as their main work system though. I have an android phone and a PC. I spend ~8-10 hours on the PC and probably < 1 hour on the phone.

Not saying it won't happen , but it seems a little premature to call "victory" just yet.

> Never seen anyone use an android workstation as their main work system though

Me neither, but if the hardware specs are right, it's a breeze to install a full Ubuntu userland and work from there. I don't think anyone will ever want to run a heavy IDE (such as Eclipse or Visual Studio) on any machine that was designed to be power efficient rather than fast, but I have no problem developing for Django, Flask or App Engine on my aging Atom (N270, IIRC) netbook. And, if I develop on a remote host (as I do, when I need serious computing power), all I need is bandwidth, a decent screen (all my phones have HDMI outputs), a keyboard and, maybe, a pointing device (easy, since all of my Android devices have Bluetooth).

The more people read their e-mail and manage their shared work documents through a browser, the less they need a desktop PC. Soon enough, the desktop PC will follow the path of the Unix workstation and be relegated to a niche where being able to locally process locally stored data is important. If I were Steve Ballmer, I'd retire right now and never, ever, worry about Microsoft again.

I don't get it, and I found it very hard to read meaning into all the superlatives.

Haven't there been more Linux devices than Windows devices for a long time now? For every PC that maps 1:1 to the owner's digital life, there are probably three toasters and a smart fridge running Linux. In the future, they will run Android. How does that help Google or hurt Microsoft? Apple could probably switch all their non-iOS iPods to run a modified Android and not a single thing would change.

So far, Android has only "won" the smartphone game by numbers. And in the process, Samsung has become an internal monopoly. I'm not convinced that this is the solid foundation on which mankind's digital future will be built.

The Linux devices out there were all lacking a good GUI layer. From the perspective of a consumer they were primitive, ugly and barely functional.

But will Android clothes have an awesome UI layer? Not to downplay Android's success, I find it very hard to follow the jump from smartphones to everything else. I don't see Android scaling up (to run on computers like Windows 8). And when it scales down, Google doesn't win anything.

The OP reminds me of business analysts in the last years. Some metric in the PRC increases XX% year over year, and a short back-of-the-envelope calculation later, Westerners shouldn't teach their kids anything but Mandarin anymore. And Android is not even as autonomous as the PRC. Suppose it runs on 99% of all devices (whatever that means at the time) - I can easily imagine a court forcibly separating Google's services from the OS.

The Platform of the Century will power cameras, credit cards, cellphones, computers, consoles, clocks

This is why I've decided to crosstrain from iOS to Android. I think Apple is going to continue to do well for many years but Android is going to be much bigger than just phones.

I expect solid Android experience to be very much in demand.

I do Android freelancing, and I'm starting to see requests for apps that look more like traditional embedded software than smartphone apps. Controllers for industrial equipment, personal medical devices, props in simulations. Real Technology stuff.

That's not exactly new, but my perception is that it's picked up a lot in the last few months. And I think it's just the tip of the iceberg. For anything you can imagine wanting to control with a touchscreen, putting a cheap Android display in a case and connecting up over USB or Bluetooth seems to be making a lot of sense to people.

I fully expect Android skills to be profoundly in demand in a year or two. Study up now; it's not really a quick system to master.

You've hit the nail in the head regarding Android spilling over beyond just phones. Take a look at the ARM development boards, there is a new one coming out almost every week, and guess what almost all of them have in common? They all run some flavor of Android.

Let's say you are developing some expensive piece of industrial technology and would like to provide some sort of interface through a tablet. Sure there is the iPad and many opt to use that, but in the end is a closed garden, you can't change it significantly. Where are you going to go? Android of course, since it already has almost everything you need and it is customizable to your heart's desire. In the long run, iOS will keep on being one of the champions of the mobile market (and that is exactly where Apple wants it to be) but Android will evolve beyond that reaching many other sectors.

Exactly. I've got a couple of apps about to hit the app store so I'm gradually making my way up the curve. I agree it's not the easiest API to learn. The basics are actually pretty straightforward but the details you have to consider once you start doing real apps can be tricky.

I'm really hoping Kotlin takes off as an alternative Android development language though. Java's OK but a more modern and flexible language would certainly help.

Do you have any good pointers or references for Android dev in these kinds of environments?

Do you have any good pointers or references for Android dev in these kinds of environments?

No, not really. I haven't really done much of it myself, just seen a lot of chatter about it. The specs I see, compared to the average smartphone app, have a lot more in the way of very specific UI specs and binary protocols, and less in the way of reposting tagged pictures to Facebook. So it's a different part of the system to study.

I can recommend http://commonsware.com/ for coming up to speed on the system in general. One of the best references out there, and it stays up to speed with a rapidly-evolving ecosystem.

I do have the CommonsWare books and I agree they're good. I should probably go grab the updated set.

I thought Reto Meier's book was also pretty helpful.

I built a site to share tips for Android development. See http://android.steerway.com.

I'm behind on the content updates but I'll have them by the end of the year.

> a more modern and flexible language would certainly help.

I hope Clojure for Android gains popularity. It would make Android development a hell of a lot more tolerable.

I'm not so sure about that. Most of the pain points in Android development have to do with the complexity of the API and state management. Clojure would cost you the tight tooling integration and not do much to help. You don't often encounter the kind of gnarly concurrent algorithm stuff where Clojure shines in mobile dev.

Kotlin, on the other hand, modernizes Java, but should fit the Android toolkit like a glove thanks to Jetbrains backing. Presumably they're also designing it with Dalvik in mind, unlike Scala and Clojure.

I could be wrong though. If some of the memory/efficiency issues get ironed out I'll certainly try it.

Clojure on Android offers the possibility someday of live debugging on a customer's phone, very similar to the way pg talked about fixing customers' bugs while they are on the phone with tech support by attaching to the server with a REPL and fixing it live. I can imagine a popup on a phone saying "This app is having problems. Press here to connect to our tech team for live repair."

> You don't often encounter the kind of gnarly concurrent algorithm stuff where Clojure shines in mobile dev.

Perhaps this is an issue specific to me. I've been working on algorithm development for an Android app, and being tethered to Java has been driving me up the wall.

Sounds like a good problem to have. Most mobile apps are just shunting images and text between social services these days it seems.

Too much hyperbole. Things change quickly these days, and I hope we don't see java "embedded within humans" anytime in the future.

There is a pacemaker that uses java.

I wonder if this guy did the Googlezon video (that is the one where Google and Amazon merge and become a planet dominating company) people would start work at Google and then post it to the company wide 'misc' mailing list. It was almost like clockwork.

I think Android has had an impressive run. There is an interesting article about how it dominates Chinese smartphones but Google isn't getting any return on that investment (80% of Android phones in China ship with Baidu as the search provider). That is something that didn't happen with Windows.

> That is something that didn't happen with Windows.

Baidu dominates on the desktop in China as well. China is a unique situation, since the government actively encourages domestic copycats of foreign companies while preventing/making it difficult for those foreign companies trying to enter the Chinese market.

Yes, it dominates the desktop, but Microsoft doesn't depend on search revenue quite like Google does.

I guess most copies of Windows in China are pirate too.

Yup, by Ballmer's estimate (as of early 2011), 90% of the copies of Windows in China are pirated.

http://www.neowin.net/news/ballmer-9-out-of-10-copies-of-win...

Google doesn't just make money on Android via search; they have a pile of other services integrated with Android, and they also make money from app sales and ad-infested apps.

Can ads not be used responsibly? Must apps with embedded ads be referred to as "infested"?

As long as there are no true mobile flatrates at a reasonable price (1 Gigabyte with reasonable bandwidth a month? Today I downloaded an update for an android game that was > 1.5 Gigabyte) and as long as mobile networks are overburdened all the time, any ad on a mobile device that is not just text is irresponsible.

I have yet to see an app with ads that didn't also demand a pile of permissions it shouldn't otherwise have (location, phone information, network activity for an otherwise offline app, notifications, etc) just to make the ads more valuable.

Economic forces always push ad use towards "annoying."

Do they, really? Would that not result in less revenue as people move to your less-annoying competition?

The less-annoying competition pays less, and end users don't have a choice of ad "vendors"; only app authors have that choice. App authors will choose whatever maximizes revenue; if more annoying ads drive off a few users but bring it more revenue from the remainder, the app will use more annoying ads.

If it did everyone would use chrome/firefox with adblock. A huge portion of the population seems to put up with all the ads thrown at them.

I didn't say it would push things to infinitely annoying. But the needle gets stuck leaning that way.

> here is an interesting article about how it dominates Chinese smartphones but Google isn't getting any return on that investment (80% of Android phones in China ship with Baidu as the search provider).

They still maintain Google as the app-store though? So Google gets ~30% of every app/media-item sold?

I'm not sure that they do. AFAIK, they take open-source Android (that is, with no Google apps) and build on it.

Doesn't Google's App Store tend towards free apps moreso than others? I don't have an Android phone but I remember that was the case previously. Angry Birds was a paid app on both Apple's and Microsoft's store, but free on Android for some reason.

no, most androids don't even have Google app store in China. When we ship our apps we have a bot pushing to over 20 android markets.

The idea of doing ALL payments and transactions by mobile is a horrible future. It is the lack of privacy that cash gives us, and the complete dependence on mobile phones, corporations, and banks. What about people that don't want to have smart phones and refuse to pay via paperless? We have the ability to choose what technology to use - let's not get rid of cash shall we?

Who says we have to lose our privacy because we use digital payments? Just take a look at Bitcoin.

Bitcoin provides a number of great features, but anonymity is not one of them.

Please explain.

Bitcoins are inherently anonymous, it's just hard to convert between bitcoins and real-world goods/services/currency without identifying a wallet.

This is not a social problem (can't be solved with technology, even though lots of tech tries). This is a technical problem (advances in privacy services can make bitcoins more easy to use safely).

Bitcoins are certainly not "inherently" anonymous if it requires the use of external mixing services to sufficiently hide one's activities in the block chain.

By that token, neither is cash money - every bill has a unique serial number.

Each "bill" in bitcoin includes a full transaction history, which gets shared with every other bitcoin user. It's quite different knowing that a dollar bill got from A to B, vs a bitcoin which tells you exactly how it travelled from A to B.

Where I can see analogue of http://blockchain.info/new-transactions for cash?

If this future comes true, maybe the situation will reverse and there will be a 2.5% cash handling fee instead of the fee some companies currently charge for credit card transactions :)

I agree it's somewhat frightening but also inevitable. We geeks should do what we can to make the future as human-friendly as possible.

Bitcoin is a good alternative to cash in the future, for privacy purposes.

So far the vast majority of top-level comments on this thread slag the article for hyperbole.

But it is very likely true. Although the installed base of Android systems is small compared to what Windows has piled up over ten years of near total hegemony, Android's market share is growing at a rate that makes Tomi Ahonens's prediction a very good bet indeed.

Remember this prediction, and start acting on it now.

My prediction is that two years from now Hacker News will be full of posts about how nobody predicted how pervasive Android has become.

Maybe Microsoft will buy T-Mobile and let Skype loose on it.

3 seems to be a magic number. I think eventually Microsoft will have significant share of the mobile/tablet market.

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