There are various trains of thought regarding Apple suing HTC, and one of them is that Apple feels threatened by Android’s rise in popularity. Some laughed this away, but when you look at recent statistics regarding mobile web usage, it becomes pretty clear Apple has every reason to feel threatened by Google’s mobile operating system.
The figures come from AdMob, one of the largest mobile advertising companies, who track which handsets and operating system hit their ads. Their figures show a trend of stagnation and decline for the iPhone, and a trend of growth for Android. Windows Mobile continues its decline into irrelevance, and the situation doesn’t look very rosy for webOS and RIM either – but do note that these aren’t sale figures; they’re mobile web usage share figures.
Worldwide, it doesn’t look so bad for Apple yet; it’s still the king of the hill by a long shot, steady at about 50%. Android is making inroads, though, now accounting for almost a quarter of the world’s mobile web usage.
And now we get to the interesting part: the United States. The top-notch Android phones have been available in the US for longer than in other countries, and carriers there have been pushing them longer. This shows: in the US, Android has almost overtaken the iPhone OS (which excludes the iPod Touch!) in mobile web usage – 42% vs. 44%.
In November 2009, the iPhone OS accounted for 55% of the mobile web usage in the US; now it’s down to 44%. In the same timespan, Android grew from 27% to 42%. The US can be seen as a test bed for the rest of the world, since Android hasn’t been pushed as much outside of the US as it has been inside of the US. In Apple’s defence, though, the arrival of the iPad in the coming weeks may reverse the declining trend of the iPhone OS. And, as noted, the iPod Touch is not included in these figures.
All in all, it’s clear that Android is no longer just a speck on the horizon. Google’s mobile operating system is a serious threat to Apple’s iPhone, which could further explain why Apple decided to sue HTC. Jobs might be drinking coffee with Schmidt in a nicely staged press moment, but in the meantime, the ’80s and ’90s are happening all over again for Apple: the PC business model beating the Mac one.
Why is there no Symbian in the US?
Nokia has such a low market share here that it just registers as part of “other”. This is largely due to the fact that most Americans buy their phones with contracts and large subsidies from the wireless carrier, but for some reason these subsidies are rarely offered on Nokia smartphones.
The iPad is not a smartphone, thus wouldn’t be included in those figures anyway
It WILL be included in the devices figure.
You didn’t talk about device figures in your article though – only smartphone figures.
You even repeatedly stated that the iPod Touch wasn’t included, so why should the iPad be?
You should read the report. They have graphs for smartphone-only and for devices in general (which includes things like the Nintendo DSi and the Touch).
I did. I was just a little confused as you were discussing smartphone only figures then discussed the relevance of the iPad (I hadn’t realised you were changing the context of your figures)
Anyhow, I now know it was my error (misunderstanding you) rather than your error (“misclassifying” the iPad)
I do think that is relevant to note that AdMob has been bought by Google. This doesn’t make their metrics invalid, but I just think that that is important to note. I am happy about Android’s rapid rise. I’m hoping to get an HTC Evo 4g to replace my aging Centro if the price doesn’t turn out to be ridiculous and a rise in Android’s popularity should result in a larger application catalog by that time.
The AdMob acquisition has not gone through and in fact it looks like it may be blocked by the government. So as of now AdMob is still free from Google
It’s hard to extrapolate anything meaningful from this. iPhone users tend to access web content via apps, not via a web browser. It’s possible that Android users tend to use a web browser more for accessing web content. Sales figures are what counts.
If I’m not mistaken, doesn’t AdMob do in-app stuff too?
They certainly do. From the beginning of that very metric document:
Sales figures aren’t that encouraging for Apple, either, I’m afraid – they are stagnant in the US with about a 25% share, far behind RIM Blackberry’s 40%. Android is growing rapidly here, though, already past 7%.
Worldwide,Nokia leads with around a 50% share, almost all of it Symbian based. RIM holds second place with 20%, showing decent growth year over year. iPhone is third with around 15% and also growing nicely. Android Linux exploded from nothing to 4% this past year, though, growing 250% per *quarter*.
By 2012, multiple analysts (IDC and Gartner) project that Symbian will retain overall world market leadership, with Android leaping to second place and RIM holding a solid third. iPhone and Windows will fight it out for 4th and 5th place.
So while iPhone shows market stability in the US and healthy growth internationally, it’s Android that has the bulk of momentum in both. Hence, Apple’s concern.
Some light reading for people who, like me, are way too interested in market share figures. 😉
– http://www.simbasics.co.uk/iphone-os-largest-market-share-growth-in…
– http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9148218/Google_s_Android_wil…
– http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139301/Symbian_Android_will…
These figures (%up, %down etc) look good on the surface but what is missing is the overall market size for smartphones.
A market share could drop in % terms but due to the growth in the market, you are stil shifting a whole she load of phones and possibly even more than the previous month.
Unless you have both sets of data, one on its own is pretty meaningless.
I’m not saying that the iPhone is not losing market share but until there are numbers as well as percentages then we really don’t know.
This isn’t about that. This is about showing that Android is making inroads into mobile web usage, which was, up until a few months ago, totally dominated by the iPhone.
You don’t need sales figures for that.
Ok then. How about having the total number of different phones that are in the different 100% samples?
This would allow us to see the raw numbers. How many iPhones, how many Blackberries etc.
Sure, as a market matures the % of the market taken by the first to market will drop as other players enter the scene.
I have an iPhone 3G and used to have a BBerry but I hardly ever browse the web with either of them. As one poster said, there are many apps that give me all the data access I want or I might even browse those sites that are not counted in this survey.
I know that all my own sites are not in this as I refuse to let any webcounters/tracker anywhere near my web pages.
What I’m trying to say is that taken out of context, the percentage figures are pretty meaningless. It is like extrapolating the total number of cars on the road from counting the traffic on one highway for one day.
You’re the one doing the extrapolating. Nobody is talking about these figures being indicative of sales figures (in fact, I specifically mention they’re not in the article), except for you.
what these figures indicate is that in mobile browsing, something more or less launched by the iPhone and can thus be seen as a traditionally iPhone-heavy area, Android is starting to take over. That’s big.
I still fail to see how “that’s big” except in the way all statistics are – for marketing purposes. The largest demographic for Android users is those who are more tech savvy. Those users will also generally be much heavier ‘net users on their phones – there are probably more iPhone users who’ve never browsed the ‘net on the device than there are Android users in total. There are also now more choices in the marketplace for devices that are capable of this, so of course it would be expected that iPhone’s percentage share would fall – if you’re the only cab on the rank you’re going to get all the business but as soon as another turns up… But of course you can read into the figures what you will. I think it’s just good healthy competition – as it should be.
What will be more interesting to see is if Android does become the dominant player whether certain people will judge Google by the same yardsticks they’ve used for Apple. I suspect not – the comments about Windows Phone 7 have been a prelude to that.
Because we all know that Android is open so its good whereas iPhone is closed so it’s evil. And Google is totally user focussed, they’ve got no interest in profit at all so their intentions will always be pure and selfless unlike Apple who are just “inherently evil” money grabbing scum building products with the sole intention of ripping people off. That’s right isn’t it Thom?
Apple is very different from Google and from other mobile companies like Nokia. They prefer closed ecosystems, and they try to monopolize everything on mobile experience, from apps development to media consumption in general. I do have an IPhone and a Symbian based device and I can do a lot more on the Symbian. Iphone OS interface and the apps are cleaner but I still prefer the Symbian openess (I can install multiple apps, from multiple repositories, develop my own without permission from anyone, browse and download ebooks, music, sync with 3rd party apps or by drag and drop, etc, etc).
1) All companies are inhernetly evil. I’ve said so about Apple, Microsoft, and yes, Google. As usual, your hatred towards me is completely unjustified. Not that I’ve come to expect anything less from the likes of you.
2) I have an iPhone, and I love it, and wrote an incredibly positive review about it (as well as writing only positive reviews about Apple products). Convenient fact the likes of you forget simply because it doesn’t fit within your set paradigm of me being anti-Apple. Basic cognitive dissonance theory at work there. Predictable.
3) I find the lack of copy/paste on WP7S just as dumb as I found it when the iPhone came out. I find the lack of multitasking, while understandable from a hardware point of view, just as annoying for WP7S as I find it on the iPhone.
As usual, people like you try to shove all sorts of opinions into my mouth, even if I state very clearly I do not hold them, only because you want to paint me black in your black and white world. I dare to point out flaws in The Apple and His Steveness, and Apple zealots such as yourself can’t handle that.
That’s okay, you can’t help it. Everybody can recognise the patheticness of it all.
Edited 2010-03-29 12:36 UTC
1) All companies are inhernetly evil.
In other news Thom’s world is black-and-white only, and Thom is rather lonely there.
It’s all from a philosophical point of view. A company wants to give you as little as possible, for as much of your money as possible. You want to get as much as possible from a company, while paying as little as possible for it.
This means that from a consumer’s point of view, companies are evil, because they’re trying to accomplish the exact opposite of our own desire.
Of course, the term “evil” is exaggerating, but I use it because of Google’s “Don’t be evil” thing. I should remember to use quotes.
It also means that from the company’s point of view, consumer are evil.
As a consumer, I don’t see as evil a company which sell me a product I want to have for a price I consider fair or at least acceptable (because as you said, consumers never ever consider a price as fair).
I don’t see Apple as evil based on my own definition. It’s less clear for Google, because I’m not sure I understand each and every consequence of using their free products (understand privacy issues).
Google doesn’t seem to match your definition of evil. I get a lot of use from their products for *no* money. I’m not saying that Google isn’t “evil” to some degree, but your definition of evil seems flawed.
Edited 2010-03-29 17:25 UTC
For advertising companies such as Google, you are not the customer; you are the product. Their actual customers are the advertisers.
Wow. That’s awesome.
I think that’s a perfectly defensible position given your definition of “evil”. I would actually use the term “amoral”. That is, their actions are not largely dependant upon morals. So they can appear to be “good” or “bad” depending on what happens to make business sense.
But in the sense that the Deivl’s greatest trick was convincing the world he didn’t exist, yes they are all evil.
That’s no longer the case and hasn’t been the case for a while now.
In fact, I’m puzzled why people keep making this point when I’ve found my G1 (read: the 1st Android handset) easier to use than my Smasung and Sony Erricson non-smart phones.
Android really isn’t that much different from the iPhone in terms of usability (ok, it lacks some of the graphical gleem, but it’s not far off).
You should think twice before concluding anything based on these stats.
Another possible conclusion would be that iPhones users are more and more switching from mobile Web to dedicated apps and that more and more iPhone users are willing to pay for apps compared to Android users (paid apps does not include ads).
Conclusion: iPhone app store is more and more successful and become a real money maker for developers while Android users are interested mostly in free apps or are using mobile web because there is not enough native free apps.
Your conclusion or mine?
Edited 2010-03-29 11:54 UTC
Thom, that was spot on! Android is in a good position of becoming the Windows of the phone world, if that makes any sense 😉
I just hope that more viable operating system choices will exist in the long run on phones and that no market player will ever be as dominant as Windows is on PCs.
I for one just bought a Palm Pre an saturday and I totally love it so far. A huge drawback for the iPhone was Apple’s restrictive politics regarding the App Store. I still believe in Palm you naysayers! 😛
Let’s just hope that they stay as open as they are: the other important point here is that openness was once Microsoft’s strategy too and look what happened. That said, I don’t know what you can do to mess up GPL’ed code. Slapping that GPL on is kind of an all in.
Openness does not equal success, it is only one factor. Linux (can you get more open) is still at 1% market share after many many years.
Anyway, i also hope WebOS succeeds even if does not dominate.
You cannot compare iPhone with Linux.
Linux is easy for geeks & nerds but extremely hard for IT illiterate mass ;-p
Darwin is even harder than Linux!
Compare MeeGo or Android with the iPhone, not linux!
Actually I think Apples draconian grip on the iPhone is the main reason why a lot of people nowadays buy Android instead. Android is as open as WinMobile, well more open even, but with an App store as option not as an enforcement and a good enough UI (well in fact some parts are excellent almost all parts are good enough)
Compare to that to the I know what you have to do mentality in Apples enduser products.
Many people for alone that reason think of going away from the iPhone or not even considering it anymore.
Again Apples arrogance or more along the lines Steve Jobs arrogance is the beginning of Apples decline in a market segment.
the ’80s and ’90s are happening all over again for Apple: the PC business model beating the Mac one.
Talk about learning nothing from history.
And with that, I mean Thom, not Apple.
It wasn’t the “PC business model” that beat the Mac one, but a variety of factors (Jobs absence and a series of lackluster CEOs didn’t help either).
In fact, Apple is doing JUST FINE with that very “Mac business model” TODAY (and for the previous 11 years).
How is Dell doing? Where is IBM’s PC department? Compaq all well?
Talk about long toes.
I never said Apple isn’t doing well. All I’m saying is that the “PC business model” (for the lack of a better term) has clearly won out, and is still by far the preferred model. Despite all the attention Apple gets, the Mac business model (only employed by Apple at this point in the desktop world) only has a share of round and about 4-5%.
So, yeah.
Actually it is almost forgotten, that Jobs in the first place was the sole reason why Apple killed off the entire Apple II business segment.
They were in the position to counter IBM, and basically make the Apple III the PC of the world. Jobs however insisted that the machine must be fanless, it then overheated en masses, and the engineer who figured it out finally did not tell Stevie boy, because Stevie boy refused a raise before telling him he was just a lowly engineer.
Result, the Apple 3 died upfront and with it the entire Apple II based business line.
Jobs can learn from his mistakes, and by god he has, but his arrogance, still gets in his way too often.
I personally cannot see the iPhone making bigger inroads than it has, without opening severely, which is exactly what Jobs hates.
Spot on.
People talk about Jobs as some kind of saviour for IT, but they forget that he was single-handedly leading the company into bankruptcy (that’s why he got fired!)
True. The real genius in Apple is Woz and not Jobs ;-p
Jobs is only good at reality distortion ;-p
What you should read in those statistics is the relative share of OS people use to reach Admob’s servers. No more and no less. If you use your phone’s browser to read non-mobile pages or mobile pages without ads from Admob, then it is not counted. If you use a proxy, like the one of Opera, then you are not counted. If you use apps that spams you with ads from Admob, then you are counted as much as you are spammed. You should not read more than that in those statistics. It’s actually very far from actual mobile OS market share. The actual fact is that Symbian is by far the most used smartphone OS. The iPhone is not so much important as those statistics would suggest.
The iPhone OS will always remain an also ran OS. It’s never going to sell in big volumes because it’s tied to Apple hardware. Even if that was the best OS around, they can’t hide the fact that the hardware it runs on is inferior and more expensive than the competitors. The press will continue to praise anything that comes from Cupertino, Apple will continue to fund heavy marketing campaigns, but their hardware will continue to lag behind.
I just don’t think Apple can keep up with the sheer number of Android phones coming to market these days. Samsung, Motorola, LG, HTC, and soon Sony Ericsson are offering multitude of features, size, style and prices while iPhone has just one handset with different storage capacities and prices. Every one of these companies in Open Handset Alliance have multiple handsets in the product development pipeline while Apple seems to have a release cycle of one hardware update per year. The sheer selection of devices and wireless service providers makes Android much more flexible platform at this point.
Apple has to address couple of issues with the iPhone or they’ll once again have a single digit market share product in the long run.
1. AT&T exclusivity. iPhone needs to be on multiple carriers especially Verizon to compete against the Android onslaught.
2. App Store. The current state of App Store is not sustainable. It’s almost impossible to find apps because of the sheer number of apps and the search system is entirely inadequate. The ratings system is largely broken and they skew towards the negative since users rate the app during uninstall process. The app approval policy is a mess and it’s getting worse.
3. Multitasking. If you’ve used Android for couple of days, you’ll know that lack of multitasking is single biggest technical drawback on the iPhone. The purported stability and battery life issues with multitasking aren’t entirely a myth but it’s definitely overblown by far. Ability to multitask makes a huge difference on how you interact with the device as well as what kind of apps are possible on the Android.
4. Performance. The Droid and Nexus One are much snappier than the iPhone. This is immediately noticeable when launching and using apps.
5. Screen. AMOLED screen is indeed much better than what iPhone has to offer. The long explanation about how pixel count of Nexus One AMOLED screen isn’t what they say they claim doesn’t matter. You just have to look at the Nexus One and iPhone screens side by side and you know which is better hands down.
6. Keyboard. If you are going to win over the Blackberry crowd, you have to have a real keyboard. There is a segment of the smartphone users that will never even consider to buy the iPhone because it doesn’t have a keyboard. You can point, scream, taunt, and jump up and down all day but that’s not going to change this simple fact.
1. FYI, Apple does not only sell in the US and it sells on multiple carriers often. But it would sell better in the US indeed without exclusivity.
2. Agree mostly. Approval policy is however not a critical point IMHO as it concern only a small fraction of developers. My guess if that this will be addressed somehow soon (iPhone OS 4)
3. Don’t agree. This is mostly BS from tech saavy people. But multi-tasking is more important on the iPad and it should comes with iPhoneOS 4, at least on the iPad.
4. iPhone 3GS is snappy and I don’t feel a real need for better performances. The iPhone 3GS is however now 1 year old and you will most probably get a boost un performances with iPhone 4G within 2-3 months.
5. I like OLED (I’m a shareholder in Universal Display
, but NOW, AMOLED are not much better as they are worst in some circumstances. Moreover, AFAIK, not enough AMOLED screens are produced worldwide for the iPhone (remember: the Nexus One has been sold 200k only). OLED screen will come to iPhone someday, but not in the immediate future and I don’t see it as a real issue.
6. I would say then that this segment of the market is not targeted by Apple. I don’t think Apple want to target 100% of smartphone market.
Conclusion: iPhoneOS 4 and iPhone 4G should push Apple ahead of other actors again in smartphone market and considering that Apple has also iPod Touch and now iPad running on iPhoneOS platform, I would say that the iPhoneOS platform is WELL ahead of competitirs in mobile devices market.
Because indeed most of you forget to see the iPhoneOS as a platform, the iPhone being only one part of this platform (same for Android which is probably the only true competitor to iPhoneOS).
Even including the iPod and the iPad, the iPhoneOS is far from the big OS in term of market share. It’s ahead in pinching but not in market share, far from it.
On the topic of multitasking on a phone…
Have you ever used a webOS device? Multitasking is a big deal on a smartphone and Palm got it right.
Full-disclosure: I own a (non-refurbished) first-generation Palm Pre. I love it.
Multitasking is really usefull and you didnt give any reason to disagree.. i love been able to browser, copy some txt i want and paste it in evernote…. i know you can do that in the iphone, but here u dont need to “close” the browser.
or reading an epub, find a word i dont know and go to search for a definition in google without having to wait to the app to load.
Sry.. multitasking is really useful for me and im not a techsaavy.
and btw, checking your comments.. do you work for apple? u only comment on news related to them and only to praise them
Edited 2010-03-29 18:07 UTC
Actually, Safari on the iPhone doesn’t get closed when you switch to another application. Safari, Mail and the music player all keep running in the background.
I don’t miss multitasking on my iPhone. It would be nice to have it on the iPad though, but I single task on my iPhone.
And I will just posit 2 of them, to keep it simple:
1. In the US, there’s exactly 1 carrier: AT&T. For better and worse, Apple went with AT&T, and either because they have lousy coverage in some areas, or they’ve gained a reputation for coverage with lousy throughput due to overloaded systems (I’ve seen EDGE-based stuff crawl, and I suspect 3G has similar issues at time) or how they treat customers, they’ve reached a relatively stable point for people that will put up with AT&T, are willing to switch to AT&T if they weren’t there already, and who also had their previous contracts run out, if they had them, from other mobile network operators, all the factors. How many networks in the US does Android run on currently?
2. There are a lot of free, ad-supported iPhone applications, and, it’s important to note: there’s far more than AdMob out there supplying to the iPhone system, though AdMob is a big one, it’s not the only one: perhaps there are also a large number of free ad-supported Android apps, and AdMob is, by far, the most-used one on the Android platform.
From AdMob’s data, from what they can see, perhaps it’s dead-on data: from what they can see! But, let’s face it: they’re just another one of the blind men feeling a specific part of an elephant and deriving their elephant-view from the small part they can see, and in the US, they’re feeling the elephant’s butt.
When Apple’s quarter results are announced they will piss you off.
And if they aren’t, it’ll be interesting to see how *you* react. You might think Thom has an anti-Apple bias, but I must say you’re on the other end of the spectrum. Tell me, if His Steveness told you to bend over, would you do it? Seriously, take a look in the mirror once in a while there.
As for the quarterly results, they’ll probably be similar to what they’ve been for the first. There will be a little rise with the iPad I think, but I doubt it’ll be too substantial at first. Now, if they cut the price of the 3g models by a good $200, I bet they’d take off in droves right out the gate. As it is, I’m not expecting any massive quarterly gains until the price drops. It’ll rise a bit at first, peak, then drop off until next year when the 2nd gen iPads are out. Assuming Apple does a price cut as they usually do once the 1st gen product is a year old, then I predict is when we’ll see the iPad really take off. Apple seems to test the waters with the first gen of anything they create.
As for me, I’ll wait to see what kind of a selection the iBook Store gets, and then I’ll make my decision. It would be the first really accessible book reading device without the Author’s Guild being able to stick their fat middle finger in it like they did with the Kindle II and, if the content selection is good, I just might have to buy one. I’m not a big Apple fan as far as their practices go, but sometimes if there’s only one game in town you’ve gotta go with it whether you like them or not.
Who is this “Tom” you speak of?
You guys shouldn’t really count Nokia out from this equation. While Nokia dropped under the radar for high end phones (you could debate how “high end” N97 is despite the price), it’s serious about getting back to game with MeeGo and Symbian^3 / Symbian^4.