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Comment by lobotryas | Hacker News Reader

I never understood these comparisons. How can we reasonably compare a hardware product (iPad) with an operating system that runs on a large number of other tablets? I understand that it's a convenient "us vs them" analogy, but it makes no sense at closer examination.

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The comparison isn't of the hardware product, it's of the operating systems. Developers want to know what the installed base and rate of change for users of each OS is so they know the target market size to make decisions like which OS to develop an app for first. Consumers want to know what other consumers are doing because they don't want to get stuck with a device (like a Blackberry) that the market is abandoning and no one is making third party apps for.

If that's the case, then should we be including Kindle in the Android basket?

Amazon pretty much owns its own fork, and is substantially different.

Probably, but good luck breaking out the numbers on those.

Maybe. It's still a lot easier to get an existing Android app to run on a Kindle than it is to get it to run on an iPad.

It seems like kind of a moot point anyway. The Kindle has less than 5% market share. Even if you take it out, what really changes?

These numbers are kind of useless when Apple is weeks away from refreshing their iPad line-up. You'll see Apple back in the lead in market share after that. Developers will continue to target iOS first because of that and because iOS users pay for apps.

Notice that the post I was originally responding to was questioning why this information was useful. The answer is that some people rely on data in preference to speculative assumptions.

>These numbers are kind of useless when Apple is weeks away from refreshing their iPad line-up.

These numbers are the latest numbers. If you think they'll turn around then you can feel vindicated if they do, but for now the facts are the facts.

They're the latest numbers but still useless for any developer to make an assumption based on. Market share will obviously drop off going into the new refresh cycle. It's happened every time.

There is a difference between subject to change and "useless." The numbers are still quite valid to use to compare to the numbers present just prior to the previous Apple refresh cycle, which obviously tells us that Android has been gaining ground.

> You'll see Apple back in the lead in market share after that

So, at least we've come a long way from "There's not a tablet market, there's an iPad market".

I think one of the more useful measures of where we are at could be "the types of comments used by Apple fans to justify why Apple is still leading" metric.

The flood of lower end devices always made this a matter of when. What matters to developers is what to develop for first, and that will remain iOS for a myriad of reasons. Apple will be leading in this one measure once they release new iPads. In other important measures that developers consider, like how much iPads are used compared to the rest, it's not even close.

Because iOS is just a an OS that runs on a very limited number of tablets because of a decision by iOS's owners. There's absolutely no reason that iOS couldn't be just another tablet OS.

>>There's absolutely no reason that iOS couldn't be just another tablet OS.

There are many reasons. The primary one is that having the OS run on your own hardware allows you to have much tighter control over the user experience. After all, user experience is one area where iOS has always dominated Android.

> After all, user experience is one area where iOS has always dominated Android.

I don't think that's true at all. As of ICS, Android is much better. Especially considering the horrible state of notifications on iOS and the siloed nature of apps. And usability took a serious hit in the move from iOS 6 to 7.

No disagreement about user experience, but this constant goal post moving "it's total numbers!" then when that shifts it's suddenly "this is comparing OSs to devices!" is unbelievably tiresome to see played out over and over again.

Next up will be some other metric that will be overcome like profitability, or total apps purchased or app store size or whatever. Apple has simply made a decision and stuck with it and the result is that it limits their share of the market over a more versatile platform.

I think the parent's comment is better phrased as "There's no constraint preventing iOS from being just another tablet OS."

Apple consciously refuses to decouple their hardware from their software (and I agree with you that the iOS experience is better than the Android one, although I don't think it's an objective truth).

Comparing iOS adoption to Android adoption is not some universally indicative metric (I'll bet all the money in my pockets that many more iPad owners know what "iOS" means than Android tablets know what "Android" means, which is incredibly important when you're, say, trying to build an ecosystem) but it is still important (I'm a developer with limited time resources! Do I spend X hours building an Android port?)

>>and I agree with you that the iOS experience is better than the Android one, although I don't think it's an objective truth

Of course it is.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/167040-iphone-5-vs-gala...

Because Apple's business model isn't selling an OS to a third-party OEM, it's selling you a piece of hardware using a proprietary OS as a selling point. And has been for decades.

So? If Apple's goal is to increase total number of devices running iOS, then they have a good model to follow (Android). If it's to eventually end up in second place again in yet another market they should have owned, then they can feel free to keep on keeping on. There's nothing but their business model keeping them from doing it.

Apple's goal is to make money and the last time they licensed out their OS it didn't turn out very well for them.

Both companies are in the business of monetizing apps in an app market. That is what they are about- money through apps.

One company (Apple) chooses to restrict the hardware they let their app platform run on so they can have more control over the experience.

Comparing the use of one app platform to use of a competing app platform is a perfectly reasonable comparison.

Apple monetizing apps is ancillary to their monetizing of hardware. The real accomplishment is how Apple has managed to dominate market share while competing against a gamut of OEMs with a free OS and much lower price points. Apple may not be the leader in market share going into a refresh of iPads, but that's a temporary problem and not a reflection of the trend.

But from a developer's perspective, what matters is where the customers are. I still think in the near term, paid apps are a bigger market on the ipad but if your application is free, then android may be a better bet for initial deployment.

it makes sense if you think of them as software ecosystems.

What's to understand? How many other companies make tablets with iOS?

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