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Comment by salient | Hacker News Reader

Next year Android is poised to have a 1.9 billion user base [1], or roughly three times that of iOS, and the difference is only going to get bigger as Android with its higher penetration reaches new markets.

I think Apple's ecosystem will inevitably fall to second place in 2 years time, when all developers wake up to the fact that Android will be by far the world's largest platform (and yes, it should be better paid, too, by then, as it already almost caught up with Apple in revenue/app).

[1]- http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/07/gartner-2-5b-pcs-tablets-an...

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This is a tangent, but I've always wondered... is it silly of me to be hesitant to use Android for the fact that Google owns it? I'd trust a jailbroken iPhone to do my bidding (and not be sneaky) more than an Android phone, but perhaps I'm being a bit crazy.

Still, it's hard to shake the feeling of an all-seeing eye watching everything I do when I use Android. I installed it in VirtualBox and there were at least five different options I had to turn off just to ask it to please not transmit my data to Google's servers: Auto-backup, location info, usage statistics, crash reports, and a couple others I'm forgetting right now.

Google has a vested interest in knowing as much about you as possible. Apple may have the same interest -- like I said, I'd trust a jailbroken iPhone rather than a vanilla one -- but they make their money by selling you hardware and apps.

If you're wary of Google, just don't create an account on the phone.

I've recently de-Googled a number of Android phones, and the cleaned-up experience is wonderful. Long battery life and plenty of apps from F-Droid or Amazon.

Browser-sync is nicely handled by Firefox Sync, which you can self-host.

Ideally it'll be a rooted phone and you can also delete all the com.google.*.apk files, too, so none of their apps run in the background ( uselessly spinning and burning CPU cycles in case you suddenly decide to create an account ).

Awesome! Are there any resources I could read to learn how to de-Google an Android phone? Thank you so much!

It's fairly straight-foward on the lastest versions of Android that allow you to freeze apps, rather than having to root and rename the apks.

Here's a list of the apps that are safe to remove, noting the Google ones:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2299805

If the phone has a Google account already configured, lock-out the phone by changing the account password on a PC. If its rooted, delete the accounts.db file.

Apps that I usually then install for the user:

- Osmand to replace Google Maps

- F-Droid and sometimes Amazon App Store

- K9 Mail ( you can even point this to G-Mail quite safely! )

- Firefox in place of the stock browser

Once your phone is rooted, use Titanium Backup (there may be similar apps on F-Droid for free) to uninstall the Google apps and services you don't need.

Many (most?) of those androids are the new feature phones and relatively 0 revenue upside potential for many developers. That won't change in the foreseeable future due to how free and open android is for any manufacturer to shove onto any free with contract device they want.

> Many (most?) of those androids are the new feature phones

Redefining words doesn't help the case. By that logic all ipod touches, ipad minis and iphones older than 4s are now 'feature devices'.

If my parents are average, most people buying Android phones aren't downloading any apps, free or not. Plus android apps tend to be free and have ads, which, I assume, aren't being counted in revenue listings.

If my parents are average, most people buying Android phones are excited about the future, eager to learn and sample apps on a regular basis.

On the other hand, my father never installed any apps or really experimented with his iPhone at all. It was just the most expensive contract phone at the shop.

It's stupid to assume either are complete summations of user behaviour. Smartphones are smart even if the users are dumb.

I wonder if there are there any figures on how many paid apps on the average iPhone compared to the average Andriod?

I didn't intend to pay for anything on my Android when I reluctantly got it as part of my internet / phone bundle 9 months back (I didn't want a smart phone, but price was the same with or without one). But after 6 months of using Swype, I found out it was a free trail, and at that point it was too difficult to go back to the normal keyboard. Likewise I am using Whatsapp a lot, and I think the first year is free, then its a small amount. Will still be cheaper than sending international texts to my mum, so I will pay the small price.

(I always find it amusing that this is the story I was told about how drug dealers operate when I was in school, free trail then once you are hooked bump up the price. Never hear of anyone get drugs like that in real life, but its completely common in the corporate world).

From what I've seen, iOS users shell out much more money than android users. Is there any poll or survey suggesting that android users are paying more for apps and IAPs?

As of November, Android developer revenue/dollar was $.19 to the dollar compared to Apple.

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-the-differen...

Facebook ad revenue on iPhones yields a 1,800% ROI over Android. And Facebook ads on Android offer a negative ROI overall.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/16/facebook-ad-profit-a-stagg...

So the Android ecosystem still looks very bad.

I think one big cause of that is that in the early days, ios was just plain better than android. Everything worked better, looked nicer, etc.

I don't believe that's true anymore, so we might see some shifts.

Does Google ever say how much they pay out? I've never seen it, only estimates from 3rd party analysts. You'd think if they were gaining fast on the iTunes store they'd talk about it. Nothing attracts developers faster than money. Or is it because IAP don't need to go through the play store that there is no way to calculate it?

The difference in UX from iOS to Huawei Android was huge. I don't consider the two systems to be comparable at any level. That said, it's 100% certain that Android would one day dominate, but in order to have a clear view on what's going on you have to take many more statistics into consideration.

Doesn't Google have a problem in China, which is probably 300 million users? Most people are not downloading apps from their app store?

http://bgr.com/2013/10/03/android-china-app-store-analysis/

The real problem for both platforms, however, is that most apps aren't making enough money to support a company.

The real problem for both platforms is disc

Android hasn't remotely caught up with Apple in revenue/app. They have a huge market share advantage and yet currently the revenue share is hugely in Apple's favor. I think currently it is something like 70/30 iOS in the lead.

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