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>There are a lot of people who would have picked up the attractive, well built, well engineered Nokia devices if they had the platform of Android.

Yeah maybe. There is no guarantee that the outcome would have been more favorable than being bought out by Microsoft.

>Apple obviously is very much in a battle with Android ...

Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market. There is zero chance of that changing anytime soon. Apple's saving grace is that they can cut themselves a nice little niche, and make some good margins based on the strength of their brand much like they do with Macs. This will be doubly true if HTML pushes out native apps and and makes the platform largely superfluous again. The war is over however.

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> Apple already lost to Android.

That's not true. Apple's mobile devices are more profitable than any single line of Android devices. Also, sales of the iPad vs any other line of Android tablets, ie. Samsung's are not even close.

Your comparison is no different than comparing Windows Server vs Linux servers. Yes, it might have hurt the market for WinServer a little bit (and Apple's iOS devices), but it's not like anyone is making a killing off of all those Linux/Android powered devices out there.

When comparing what Android itself as a free platform (mostly free, there are contracts for Google's services that most sign onto)- iOS is far more profitable for Apple than Android is for Google.

What you're repeating is common man nonsense.

Secondly, FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Mobile will be cheaper devices and likely only cut into Android's marketshare. Add in Tizen, which is being specifically created to STOP paying fees to Google for Android, and you will see your 'zero chance' of Android's 80% marketshare changing. And sooner than you believe.

Android has the most precarious position as a 'free' choice. There are many more entrants on the way for the cheap market.

The war is just getting started, and I'd rather be in Apple's shoes than Google's (but you act as if Google cares about Android, they don't- it's just a delivery mechanism for their services).

Signed by someone who uses a GS3.

>Your comparison is no different than comparing Windows Server vs Linux servers.

I think a better comparison is Mac vs. Windows. Windows won, but Macs are still thriving, and Apple is making nice margins. This is how I see iOS vs. Android playing out.

Perhaps, but the difference here is that Macs are still better machines in most respects. Macs endure as a niche product because they're higher quality products.

Premium Android phones, on the other hand, provide a user experience that a lot of people consider superior.

Some people prefer Windows to Mac OS, too, so I really don't see your point.

Not really sure how I can make this point more simply. In order to survive as a niche product you have to offer a significantly better or at least different experience. I'm sitting here right now in a coworking space in Vietnam full of developers. Ratio of MacBooks to PCs is about 15:1, which is pretty typical for any group of technical people I've been around.

> In order to survive as a niche product you have to offer a significantly better or at least different experience

Like Gentoo

I always saw Apple products as a niche for people who like Apple's aesthetic. This turf war was tiring when Apple had an almost credible claim to technical superiority and I had to listen to Apple PC users rant and rave. Nowadays it's a lot more fun with Google, Microsoft, and their partners making Apple and its supporters wince.

I develop on google's CR-48, by using ssh and remoting into linux servers. (trick: use ctrl+alt+o to save buffer in nano in ssh, because ctrl+o launches chrome open file dialog)

The CR-48 has 8-9 hours of battery life.

Also, if someone steals my laptop, I can replace it with this ( https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=chromebook_... ) and lose nothing, since the passwords/ip addresses/etc are not stored on the machines, and no code is stored on the machine.

Actually, it's very similar to the laptop market. A lot of people prefer Windows or Linux on Lenovo laptops, because they have some features that Macs don't have.

Likewise, if you compare the hardware (build quality etc) I think most people would agree that Apple still is has the best devices compared to Samsung, which still uses the same plastic frame even on high end phones.

I'm not sure that "plastic" is as bad as popular opinion thinks it is in the case of something the size of a phone.

If we say "polymer" does it sound any better? I mean there's plastic.. and then there's plastic.

I agree. I don't see any good reason for this worship of metal. I have a phone with a colored polycarbonate body: so if it scratches, its still the same color. And it looks much better and feels better than the Iphone

The only iPhone that really show scratches is the black iPhone 5. That said, I agree that hard polycarbonate plastic also has a good quality feel. Unfortunately, most phones made with plastic don't use hard polycarbonate, but soft plastic with sqeaking, bending battery covers etc.

Of course, it's not necessarily bad, and there's different types of plastic. Some kinds are very rugged.

However, most plastic phones are made of plastic because it's a cheap material that doesn't require much in the way of precision to fit together, and it just doesn't have the same kind of quality (or even quality feel) as a phone made with a different material.

I was thinking that 'metal is better' myself.. as I enjoyed the heft and solid feel of my Motorola Droid.

Then I got a Galaxy Nexus and revised my opinion on plastic phones entirely, it feels good in hand and has ruggedly endured all kinds of accidental abuse at my hands.

That argument is stupid. Please give a source for "a lot of people" considering it superior. A lot of people I know consider the iPhone/Apple ecosystem superior. And no, you can't use market share to back this up, as much as you might want to. Because that doesn't measure user experiences being considered superior. There's a lot more factors that go into market share; that's just one of them.

It's not stupid. He just said what he knows anectodically, and I can confirm from many discussions I had.

As a data point just take the number of people who chose Samsung Galaxy S4 or HTC One over iPhone, even though they cost more less the same.

As I said, market share is not an appropriate measure of a user experience people consider superior. People's choices of a Galaxy S4/HTC One over an iPhone could be caused by liking the Android UX more, but there's also many other reasons for it (friends like it more, already in Google ecosystem, upgrading from previous phone, etc). There's many possible reasons for one person choosing one phone over the other, and, while UX could be one of them, it's not the only one.

And anecdotes shouldn't be purported as facts.

Samsung now rates higher than iPhone for user satisfaction:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2422525,00.asp

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241257/Samsung_smart...

Motorola and HTC too:

http://fr.slideshare.net/OnDevice/us-uk-device-satisfaction

Slides 6 (for US) and 9 for (UK)

A data point worth considering is: a larger percentage of Android users switch to iPhone than vice-versa.

> but it's not like anyone is making a killing off of all those Linux/Android powered devices out there.

Except the users. Users win big time when there's an effective open source option for them to choose.

Not really, users don't care about open source. Users care about apps and services. Most developers care about the platform with more users that are willing to spend money on apps and services. I'm not saying that there are no open source fans, just that this is not what brings the food on your plate at the end of the month.

I think grandparent meant that users win out because open source almost guarantees that software stack will survive any hardships that mother company might not survive, as well as extra competition from open source alternatives.

Who cares about that when it comes to phones, though?

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at. The users 'care' even if they don't realize it. Developers care because they can continue to target a platform that they are familiar with and which has been tested well.

Sure, that gives a platform a certain level of inertia, but I don't know how much it matters. Developers will go where the users are. It's not like in the PC space where Windows managed to really entrench itself based on compatibility with mission critical apps. Who cares if closed-source means you have to get a new Twitter client?

Um, no. See under Linux Desktop. Big fail, over all these years, even if it's more capable of Windows. It's more capable of Mac, too, and guess what most nerdy types with enough money buys?

Users don't give a damn about Open Source. They don't even know what Open Source is (just ask some average teen girl with Android phone what she thinks about Android openness). What they want is an acceptable shiny device that does things. Samsung provides that. Apple provides that.

Even if users don't care about Open Source, Linux being available for people to run cheap, secure, reliable servers have been a huge win for users as it has been a catalyst for the web.

Similarly, having the Android source code available has increased the amount of handset manufacturers who choose to use it and increasing competition, putting on downward price pressure.

Maybe he's right? I wonder how many Raspberry Pi's would've sold at $150.00/ea with WinCE included? /sarcasm

Samsung's line of Android devices became more profitable than Apple's iPhones at some point during, or just before this quarter (it's a bit vague because it's all based on estimates but it's basically happened already, we'll get the analyst estimates based on corporate announcements about a month after the end of the quarter).

Some would consider that "making a killing".

This was based on the Strategy Analytics report? That was a little dubious, as it was based on saying that (a) half of Apple's profits are from the iPhone and (b) Samsung makes no profit on its desktop, laptop or tablet divisions at all. There was also some confusion over net vs gross.

If you don't like that report you can check out two others that are provided by sources that most would describe as "rabidly pro-Apple". The trend is pretty clear and has been for a while so I'm not sure why everyone seems so suprised by this. Though given Apple's yearly cycle which has a slump in Q3 and a big spike in Q4 they may briefly reclaim the crown in Q4 if their next launch does well.

Strategy Analytics: http://bgr.com/2013/07/26/samsung-smartphone-profits-q2-2013...

Canaccord Genuity: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/31/apple-takes-53-of-...

Asymco: http://www.asymco.com/2013/08/21/amp-index-update/

They're all for the quarter that ended two months ago and say (Samsung-Apple) 53%-47%, 50-53% and 43%-57% respectively and they were all at more like 15-80% two years ago.

Not sure how you're getting that from the Asymco one... The Canaccord one does seem to note that Samsung's "handset" division incorporates tablets and PCs, and that their estimate for the iPhone's share of Apple's profits is fuzzy (we know Apple's revenue per division, but not profit; Strategy Analytics and Canaccord seem to have decided that profit per division is proportional to revenue, which is a bit of a leap...)

Everyone seems to have real difficulty reading the Asymco one, and to be fair his graphs are typically abysmal.

What seems to trip people up with this one is that the profit share "line" is an average over the last 4 quarters, which since the two number are moving quickly in opposite directions adds lag, the actual estimate for the quarter is a purple dot.

But even with that lag, the trend is fairly hard to miss (people do seem prepared to put that effort in though).

It depends on how you define "winning". I would say that Google won - their goal was to get as many devices as possible using Google as their default search engine and running the Google suite of apps.

A few years ago there was a real risk that Apple would start dropping Google services (ref Apple Maps). Fortunately for Google, iCloud is a mess and Apple is so far away from Google in the services-game that it's not even funny.

Then they have the added hedge of Android which they have full control over.

Basically, Google already has Apple by the balls. In a power struggle between the two, Google will come out on top. Android is certainly an important piece to this puzzle, but saying that Android is "winning/losing" is framing the problem incorrectly.

"Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market."

Everyone throws this out there, but phones running 2.3 that cost less than $100 are practically a different product than what Apple and Samsung are offering, which is where the true battle is. Over 1/3 of all Androids run 2.3:

http://www.ibtimes.com/android-vs-ios-adoption-rates-jelly-b...

A 2.3 Phone will run almost every existing Android app out there. In fact, most Android apps target 2.2 and up.

Which shows how backwards the platform is.

yeah, how dare they allow people to have a useful phone for several years at a time.

What? It's the very inverse: they DONT allow people to have a useful phone for several years at a time, they saddle them with an osbolete OS and don't provide upgrades.

It's a very big pain point that Android makers don't provide upgrades for their older devices (even 1 year old ones). For some models they don't provide upgrades AT ALL, and you have to get custom-install on them to have a new Android.

That's why (Google's own numbers) older (by up to 3 years) Android releases amount to 60%+ of the CURRENT installed base, whereas on iOS over 80% of users update on the latest version on the very first month of its release.

I don't think this is an Android issue, but with the carriers, and to a lesser degree, the handset makers.

If it gets down to the users, then it is an Android issue. After all, the Android maker choose to have this kind of collaboration and enable the carriers to do this.

Most of the phones running 2.3 aren't shipping with Google Play (is Play even compatible?), so there isn't the integrated app marketplace that defines the modern smartphone experience.

These are drastically underpowered devices. Even if an app can run on 2.2, it doesn't mean it'll run well (or at all) on sub-$100 hardware.

Mini is 2.3 and uses Google Play.

"Most of the phones running 2.3 aren't shipping with Google Play (is Play even compatible?)"

This is wrong, Google Play is compatible with every Android device. (link: http://source.android.com/compatibility/)

I don't know where you got this information from, but I can assure you that 99,9999% of all Android devices you'll find outside of China will have Google Play on it.

"These are drastically underpowered devices. Even if an app can run on 2.2, it doesn't mean it'll run well (or at all) on sub-$100 hardware."

Drastically underpowered like an iPhone4/4S? Most 2.2 - 2.3.3 devices out there are just 1-2 year old phones, so of course they are underpowered compared to todays standards.

Still, most apps will run on those devices the same way they still run on an iPhone4/4S - in a few cases slow, but still usable for the mayority of consumers.

I think Amazon devices comprise more than 0.0001% of non Chinese devices. OK not exactly Android.

Like you said, Amazon devices are not Android, even though they are architecturally very close.

Stop and read my grandparent post. 99,9999% of all Android devices you'll find outside of China - yes, but I was referring to phones in places like China.

Drastically underpowered like an iPhone4/4S? Obviously you're so hyped up by your anti-Apple venom that you failed to read my original post, so all is forgiven. No, think underpowered like an original iPhone - if that powerful.

My original point: there's tons of phones out there that aren't even remotely in the same category as the market that Apple and Samsung are selling to. Yet, those numbers keep getting included in the discussions about the Android install base. Samsung and other mid-to-high end Android makers are killing it; there's no need to be intellectually dishonest by including number that are irrelevant to their market.

All phones running 2.3. are Google Play capable. The lack of Google Play on some phones is due to manufacturers not certifying with Google.

In my country 90% of smartphones ship with Android, so I've seen a lot of 2.3. devices (I own one).

They are usually NOT underpowered (exception: the Galaxy Mini I certainly is, and it's the "free" smartphone over here), the user experience is quite good, usually better than an old iPhone.

I have a Galaxy Ace (which I don't like), my girlfriend has a Mini 2 (extremely good value for money), coworkers have Motorola Defy, Defy+, LG P880 4x, Galaxy S Advance, SII, SIII, SIV, Sony phones... all work reasonably well, I'd pick any of them over an old iPhone (and the LG and SIV over the latest iPhone).

Sub U$ 100 phones sold here all have Google Play btw.

Yes, truly a great time to be an Android developer...

Thank you for sharing this enormously important insight. I'd bet you had to think hard to come up with that one.

Btw: I am an Android developer having a truly great time with this and other platforms.

Yes, and that point drove my decision to buy my now 2 year old Samsung Ace. It was a 2.3 device, thus it will run most apps without any issues. What I found later was that a particular hardware spec would really annoy me to the point that I couldn't install any more apps, and it's probably an issue that many low end phone users face: small internal memory. Hey, the phone has only 128Mb of memory for apps. The problem is not when you want to install new stuff, but the natural process of updating existing (default) apps like YouTube and Maps. When I run out of memory I have to reset the phone and start over. I'm thinking about buying a new phone just to get rid of this annoying thing.

If it has an SD card slot, you can fix this problem by rooting the phone and installing a custom ROM that lets you force apps to be stored to the card. That's what I would do. In the process you would even get to have a 4.1 or so version of Android.

> installing a custom ROM that lets you force apps to be stored to the card

I almost tried that, but stopped when I read in the custom ROM page that in some cases it could brick the phone. Since my phone is a "branched" version of the standard Ace I decided not to take the risk.

yes, firmware upgrading has a chance it will brick the phone. That didn't stop me doing it 10 times, after the nerves of the 1st time go away it's easy.

What do you mean "branched" version of Ace? nothing comes up on google :s

I mean a different sub-model (I guess...). Mine is a GT-s5830 instead of a s5830. All of the ROM updates I found made reference to the latter only so, again, I decided to not take any chances while it is my primary phone. By the time I buy a new phone, I'll sure update the old one and see how it goes.

AFAIK "GT-" is just the Samsung prefix. My S3 is a GT-i9300.

I have an Ace too (180 mb internal memory), and it's an extremely annoying problem.

Only a very few low end phones made that braindead decision - my girlfriend has a cheaper Mini 2 and it has 1 GB of memory for apps.

You can install apps on the SD, but they still take a little of those valuable megabytes. The only apps I have on the internal memory are Gmail, Maps, Facebook and Youtube (plus Play Services). Several apps can be moved to the SD (Opera Mobile, most games, MX media player, Adobe Reader, so I manage.

Which is a problem. There are a lot of things that have changed between 4.0 and 2.3, and it would make most developers lives easier if 2.3 would go away.

>Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market.

That's like suggesting that Mercedes Benz have lost already to Ford because they have smaller market share. Apple produce a premium product with prices and margins that reflect that. Of course they would prefer dominant market share, as would Mercedes. But a non-majority share does not imply that they've somehow lost.

The car analogy gets trotted out over and over again when talking about smart phone market share but it really doesn't work at all. Smart phone ecosystems have powerful network effects that just don't exist for most luxury goods.

Ok, then go by profit.

Samsung is very quickly closing that gap. This is likely to snowball if iOS's share starts dipping into single digits.

Maybe a better example is the PC market, where Apple also has a small market share but huge profits?

Sure. This analogy I can buy and this seems to be where Apple is headed right now.

Good point. Which ecosystem seems to be stronger again?

It's like mercedes, only mercedes also gets to drive on nicer roads that go more places.

When market share translates to usage and developer revenue, as it may some day, this will change. But network effects scarcely reinforce your point.

Every single indicator is trending away from Apple here, from number of app downloads, to overall revenue, to revenue per-app. It's still in Apple's favor, but the gap is narrowing quickly. I've seen a very dramatic change in the attention devs feel they have to give Android even in just the last year.

Maybe this won't continue but if you're skating to where the puck will be then it doesn't look so much like Apple right now.

http://blog.appannie.com/app-annie-index-market-q2-2013/

That's like suggesting that Mercedes Benz have lost already to Ford because they have smaller market share.

Which they have, when you're talking about market share. There's some cognitive dissonance going on here- Windows Phone can't succeed because it has a low market share. But Apple succeeds because it has a low market share.

Basically, if low market share isn't a problem for Apple, there's no reason why it would be a problem for MS.

Apple didn't always have a low market share and built up a huge importance for developers before their share started to slide.

There are still millions of iPhones sold every year, even if they're a smaller piece of the overall pie.

Contrast to Windows Phone which never had any kind of market share or importance, and has to fight up from absolutely nothing.

That's the difference between iPhone's small market share and WP's small share.

Actually, Apple's share of the mobile phone market is still growing, as it has been since 2007. It just isn't growing as fast as Android's.

Market share vs units sold. One is sliding down (market share) while units sold are still going up as the pie gets larger.

I'd say the difference is that Apple's share, while smaller than Android, is still large. Apple is selling huge quantities of devices and making huge quantities of cash from it. Windows Phone is doing neither.

So Microsoft has lost the PC to Apple because of the manufacturer fragmentation in Windows PCs? Yeah, that makes sense.

Android has 80% worldwide market share, but it's much much closer in the US. If you take out the crap phones that are smartphone in name only, it's much closer worldwide. While Android is clearly winning by a decent margin, I'm not convinced it's over. I think the hopefully coming soon cheaper iPhone could make things a lot more interesting.

Note that I don't actually want the iPhone to win. I would very much prefer that neither "wins". 50% each would be a better outcome for consumers for years. Better yet, windows gaining share and having 3 at 33% would be awesome.

No, please, we have such hard time moving MS out of the hot field, don't bring them back!

Remember when everyone feared MS? I mean, that was really terriying time for our industry. How forgetful is it to "wish" MS could gain a third of the phone OS market shared... Apple and Google conjugated efforts kept the wolf outside and you want to open the gates?

However, I agree that a domineering Android/Google or Android/Samsumg is harmful for the market. Let us hope some other OSes can grab a piece of it. I have some hope in Cyanogenmod, which could be forking away from Android (just like Linux forked Unix). And, if you look at it, that is just what Chinese companies are doing (xiaomi, etc.): forking Android and gain market shares.

Huh? Microsoft was terrifying because they dominated the PC market. This comment proposes their having 33% of the smartphone market. How is that "terrifying"?

Microsoft has a long history of not playing fair. If it were to have 33% of the market, it isn’t unthinkable that it will try all possible dirty tricks in the book to gain the upper hand. Right now, Windows Phone’s market share is negligible, Microsoft has zero leverage so it has to play by the book.

Microsoft is also a completely different company now than it was dozens of years ago when this was an issue. They're more safe now, less risky.

“Microsoft executives have proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing.” –Judge Thomas Jackson, 2001, United States v. Microsoft

In the last decade, Microsoft has been investigated and fined by several governments, and investigations by several are still ongoing.

That's a dozen years ago. So while you may think it's relevant now, it's not.

Since then, most of the leadership has changed, and, really because of that lawsuit, Microsoft became more serious, precautious company.

Last year, Microsoft was ordered by the EU to pay Euro 860 million, for breaking promises it made after the 2004 antitrust case. In March of this year, Microsoft was fined another Euro 561 million.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A ruling that is very controversial. The browser ballot was enforced based on the idea that Microsoft had a dominant share of the market, which this very thread goes out of its way to disprove. The EU decision was a cash grab, nothing more. Microsoft has no market dominance, and other more dominant players aren't forced to live by the same rules. If Android has 80% market share, why isn't Google forced to present a choice of default browser at first start up (simply allowing alternative browsers in the ecosystem was not enough for Microsoft in this case)?

Microsoft has been convicted multiple times for abusing its market position. As a repeat offender, different rules apply for it. That’s why Microsoft isn’t allowed to live anywhere near a school or playground.

Apple has been convicted of patent infringement multiple times and was recently convicted of abusing their market position to commit unfair trade practices. Yet no one breathes Apple and anti-trust in the same sentence.

> Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect

Funny, replace Microsoft with Apple in this pull and it would still make sense (but not with the rest of the quote)

>just like Linux forked Unix

Darl McBride? Is that you?

Lol! Not sure why anyone would downvote you for that gem!

Can we not talk about this in terms of war and battle? It is the business of selling consumer electronics, same as it has always been. You do explain your position well but I feel the references to war and battle water it down.

No one has been killed in the development of phones. I get that the MBA crowd read the art of war and it's practical knowledge seeped into popular discussion. But the endless reference to war in consumer electronics (and other areas not really war) is tedious and uninformative.

Whatever your personal hangups are, words such as "battle" (an extended contest, struggle, or controversy) and "war" (a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end) are entirely and absolutely appropriate for such discussions.

Your comment borders on bizarre.

No personal hang ups. Just expressing an opinion on the use of words that I think are overused and therefore watered down in today's environment. You clearly have a different take on it. No need to belittle me for my opinion.

Those combat terms assume zero-sum conflicts. There can be a situation where the smartphone OS market consists of multiple survivors, even if it's only a duopoly.

Neither of those are the full definition of the terms mentioned. Both have connotations of violence.

War is an armed conflict.

Battle is a military conflict.

Both have non-military meanings, but what is being said about the use the terms is not weird or bizarre.

How about we use language and imagery that most people understand.

Is this a question or a statement? Modern battle and war have very little in common with business. So, it is my opinion that the use is such terms waters down an otherwise reasonable well thought out comment.

Statement.

>the use of such terms waters down an otherwise reasonable well thought out comment.

This may not be a battle you're going to win.

> This may not be a battle you're going to win.

I think the war on this phrase has already been lost to be honest.

It probably felt like it to the staff who got fired a couple of years back

If you want to play a fun game, switch "Apple", "Google", "Microsoft", "Samsung", etc with the names of toothpaste and deodorant brands. It pretty much shows these oddly passionate arguments for what they really are: weird tech company zero sum games repackaged as religious wars. So long as any of these companies have appreciable market share and are profitable they're winning.

If Apple goes out of business it'll be scrappy MS v.s. Giant Google. Or if Google goes out of business it'll be the underdog MS v.s. the 800lb Gorilla named Apple. Even AMD, who has really no business competing with Intel at this point, and also has to deal with the higher performance ARM chips manages to survive and sometimes be profitable. Ultimately none of it matters because history has shown that there's always going to be competition. And ultimately thats exactly the way we want it to be.

Not a single person here should hope Apple and MS go out of business. Otherwise we might find out how evil Google is willing to be. The same holds true for the others. 90% Apple market share wouldn't be particularly good, even for the most rabid Apple fans. iPhone 5SSSSS anyone?

Ultimately what I find the most amusing about the rhetoric, is that post iMac and pre iPod/iPhone, Mac users were just happy that Apple wasn't going to go out of business. Pre Android, Samsung users were happy they were buying quality air conditioners and TVs... People would do well to gain some perspective on this stuff.

I agree.

I strongly dislike Apples locked down ecosystem and many of their offerings, but there can be no doubting that their success has been great for the industry. It's broken the MS monopoly (which has had beneficial side effects for linux too), encouraged companies to make products that aim for better than the lowest common denominator, brought UX front and center, recreated the small team of developers making software that lots of people can buy dynamic, encouraged the open web, etc.

As long as we have healthy competition for these marketplaces, I don't worry about the future too much.

Hey it's not just consumer electronics, Nokia used to develop DPI surveillance technology for oppressive regimes too!

I can't quite decide if them being eaten by a US corporation is a good or bad thing.

Nokia dearly promised[0] they wouldn't do it any more. But now all that expertise is safely owned by a US company and Nokia technically is not the same company any more, plus it's not really an oppressive regime if it's the global role model for Democracy(TM)

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. They are going to make phones. I can do some creative wildly free-associating tinfoil kookery if it's buried this deep in the comments, can't I? :)

[0] http://nsn.com/news-events/press-room/clarification-on-nokia...

Back at Netscape, Jim Barksdale hated the term "browser war", on the grounds that a war justifies extreme behavior. He didn't want us believing the browser war meant we should be breaking the normal rules.

I'm sorry but moving this conversation towards being about Android and Android's "market share" is going off topic.

Microsoft clearly did not need to purchase Nokia to have a Windows Phone. That already exists (in partnership with multiple hardware vendors as well). So, market share of Mobile OSes is obviously not a (main) motivation behind this acquisition.

Nokia accounts for 80% of Windows Phone sales.

The "other OEMs" are basically HTC and Samsung. Both of which are primarily Android companies.

> Microsoft clearly did not need to purchase Nokia to have a Windows Phone.

They could not afford having anyone else buying Nokia. With the low stock valuation of Nokia, that was a realistic and very scary scenario for Microsoft. I see it as a pre-emptive move of Microsoft, and a move of Nokia (the non-phone part) to preserve their long-term independence.

>Apple already lost to Android. Last count, Android had 80% of the market.

Yes. The low-margin 80% of the market that makes few profits. Apple makes as much revenue/profits from it's 20% share as the rest of the 80% Android OEMS combined (namely, Samsung).

>There is zero chance of that changing anytime soon.

That's great, because who would really want the 80%, low margin market segment?

If it'll play like the PC Market (where Apple makes more money that the rest 4 top PC makers), then Android will be like Windows all over again. Dell, anyone?

To put some figures on this -

Global operating profits in the smartphone market for the second quarter of 2013:

Apple - 53% (shipped 31.2M smartphones)

Samsung - 50% (shipped 72.5M smartphones)

All Others - negative 3% (operating losses)

Market Share (of a free OS) <> Profit.

Plus, Market Share has little correlation with innovation or product quality. In fact, Innovator's Dilemma presents a compelling case of the exact opposite.

So, exactly which "war" are you referring to?

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