Google's Better iPhone
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
Google will win the Cell Phone Wars if they can iterate fast enough to become "Good Enough" to Apple's "Great". That's what worked for Microsoft. But I don't think a normal consumer will ever choose an inferior open phone over a closed one with more capabilities.
Yep. There are only two ways to "beat" Apple at this point: install Android on the freebee (< $100 unsubsidized) phones with basic contracts that 99% of the world uses (this would be the Microsoft strategy), or honestly build a better product than Apple. Given the limitations of the average cell phone, I can't decide which path is more difficult.
People continue to claim that an OS will dominate all of the non-Apple smartphones out there. Symbian is already there and no one is talking about how dominant they are. Dethroning the iPhone is clearly going to be more difficult than most of the cacophonous mouthpieces realize, so my advise to them is to stop making your future self look bad, and think harder.
When apple introduced the iPhone, it became a big to-do because it was 10x better (at least?) than anything else on the market. "Me-too-ing" the iPhone (palm?) (android in another year) isn't going to get you there. The trouble is, Apple had a lot of opportunity -- 3.5 years ago, if you looked at a cell phone, it was absolutely clear that a LOT of things needed to be done. Apple simply executed on those things, but did so in an absolutely stunning way -- it just worked. And it worked in a way that most of us didn't realize was possible.
The second idea -- that a low cost version can work, I think is valid. But then, is that the chunk of the market that you want? To be another dell, making $4 per unit? Do carriers even want the smart phone that doesn't come with the data contract?
As for openness, as the other commenters have pointed out, most people don't care. If something ends up happening that causes people to actually care about the openness (or lack there of), than Android will be well positioned. For now, with 75k apps, we certainly haven't seen it (regardless of how many rejection horror stories we hear about on hacker news or techmeme).
In short: I think you're wrong. Android can win this by me-too'ing the iphone as long as it has strong differentiation in hardware.
Do you want a small stick phone? How about a blackberry style one with a physical keyboard? What about something flashy like the side-kick? Do you want a highly customizable phone with brightly colored cases and add-ons? Android can rise to address those quirks. That high level of segmentation shouldn't be discounted.
A cell phone isn't just about software. It's a highly personal choice. If Android succeeds in becoming a mobile operating system with a vibrant 3rd party application base... well then they can win by appealing to a large number of segments through support of a number of form-factors.
The issue of course being that supporting all of those form factors in anything resembling a consistent way is VERY difficult. It's something Symbian has never really figured out. If anyone can...it's Google.
Which one do developers build for?
Multiply this by different capabilities (one has a compass, the others don't. One has a high quality graphics chip, the others don't, etc.) In this latter case, you can really see that it will be difficult to get a significant amount of developers to take advantage of all the capabilities of the phone.
I think gruber talked about this a while back, but all I could find with a quick search was this: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/09/24/g1-flaws
Clearly it's not because Symbian is a solid OS. S60 is a usability abortion and UIQ is basically DOA. The Japanese mutant versions are hardly any better. Hell S60 basically failed at launching a touch-screen version.
What they do have is a boat-load of devices. Nokia alone covers basically every segment imaginable from the very high end to the very low. They've taken a shotgun approach that very directly targets individual consumer preferences.
Android is headed down the same road, except with a MUCH more polished product. Is it as good as the iPhone? I don't think so. Is it 'close enough'... I think it is, and it's only going to get better. With something like 18 phones coming out and widespread carrier pentration, I think this is a done deal. Android, in the United States in particular, is going to assume a dominant market share position.
What does that mean for developers? I have no idea. The jury is still out as to what the demographic make-up of those users will come to look like. Will they buy apps? Will they support a app-store style eco-system? Will they use the web features and consume data like iPhone users? I have no idea, and really can't come up with anything resembling a sensible guess.
I think Apple believes they have the premium user cornered. I think they're betting that the types of users drawn to Android phones won't provide very much market value. That is why they've stuck to this position.
The whole thing is very Mac/PC all over again. I wish I knew how it was going to play out in the end.
They may not care about openness directly, but openness usually leads to more possibilities. Consumers will care about the new features and possibilities that openness welcomes.
You can already see examples of Apple losing features because of its closed platform: no google talk, among other things.
And I think it's only a matter of time the rest of Android get's polished up. But the main point is that while Apple has primacy and great design as it's advantage, Google has the openness as its advantage.
Developers will, which will hopefully lead to consumers following suit after cool stuff gets built.
No one would argue Windows 3.11 was as elegant as the MacOS but it had a mouse/icon based interface and sold for half the price.
(I actually made a blog post on this a year or so ago (http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/Android-vs-iPhone-Can-Googl...) if you have a couple minutes to spare)
When was the end?
This is purely subjective.
I have a G1 and like it more than I've liked any iPhone I've used. Especially after the latest build release (donut!), which I've seen incredible stability and performance increases with.
It might have ended up true, in a sense, but by that point nobody really cared anymore, the world had changed. I think the same thing is going to happen here -- Apple has such a ridiculous head start in this market that by the time we can look out and see what looks to be a healthy ecosystem it will probably be well past the point anyone really cares and have moved onto the next big thing.
Palm Pre? Supposedly it was the top contender ... but I have yet to see anyone walking around with one in the wild. That's a fact.
Anyone who thinks that Verizon's Android phones will be 'open' has never written mobile software that'll run on their network. I'm really hoping to be wrong about this, but historically Verizon's track-record is to lock down any platform on their network.
I suppose it depend on how good Android gets [i.e. whether people will use it as heavily as they do the iPhone].