You may not have noticed it, but in the past six months, we’ve been experiencing a true massacre. Not one written in blood, but one written in microchips and touchscreen displays. The scene of the crime? The United States. The perpetrator? Google’s Android. The victims? Everybody else.
Market research firm Nielsen has released its figures for the past six months (for the US matket!), and iPhone 4 or no, Android is by far the number one choice for consumers buying smartphones. In the past six months, 40.8% of smartphone buyers opted for an Android device, compared to 26.9% who preferred an iOS smartphone, or 19.2% who opted for a BlackBerry device.
Looking at the trends, Android is growing very fast, while both iOS and BlackBerry seem to be levelling out somewhat; iOS/iPhone after a period of growth, BlackBerry after a period of (sharp) decline. Of course, it is important to note that we’re looking at smartphones only; the Touch, iPad, and Galaxy Tab are not included, for instance.
However, if we were to look at installed base (in the US!), the iPhone still leads (28.6%) over Android (25.8%) – which is to be expected since it’s been on the market longer than Android. BlackBerry is in decline here, but still pulls out an impressive 26.1%.
Some say the arrival of a potential Verizon iPhone might change things around, but I highly doubt it will have as big an impact as many seem to think. There’s a whole new generation of Android-based smartphones on the waiting list, sporting things like dual-core processors and what not. The development pace of Android, and the accompanying devices, is far quicker than that of iOS and the iPhone. On top of that, All those people who bought a smartphone the past six months are people who will not buy an iPhone any time soon, Verizon or no; contracts, contracts, contracts.
Still, let’s not underestimate the importance of profit per device (the iPhone is clearly king here), or that of the iPod Touch and the iPad. iOS is a pretty healthy platform, and it will take more than Android devices outselling the iPhone for it to truly be in trouble.
So, taking the first graph of acquisions, and the inertia of Android share in the second graph, and factoring in under two months of missing data… Android has passed iPhone in market share in the US over Christmas / New Year?
If iPhone comes to Verizon, I would seriously consider jumping ship from Android, depending on what features they put into Honeycomb (Android 3.0).
The reasons for this are as follows:
– I’m tired of the crapware that carriers are shoving into OTA stock ROMs, and the OEMs who are putting custom ‘trinkets’ on top that I don’t want. And to get a custom ROM with just vanilla Android and WITHOUT all the crap, you have to wait for your device to get rooted, and then wade through a bunch of half-finished custom ROMs, where random features (such as wifi and GPS) don’t work. I know a lot of people get off on this kind of thing and that’s fine, but it’s just not how I’d like to spend my free time. (Of course, the quality of custom ROMs probably depends on which phone you have, which is a problem in itself.
– Whereas Apple releases new OS updates for all their phones at the same time, you have to wait for weeks (or even months) on most Android phones, or else do the root/custom ROM thing, and have to put up with the same shite I mentioned above. Of course, you could always get a ‘Google’ phone to solve all these problems, and end up (in the US) on a carrier where you’d have to walk outside and stand in the middle of the street just to get a signal.
– With the iPhone, you have access to many, many more accessories. I can’t even find a f**king armband for my Android phone.
– iPhone is still the ‘de facto’ standard for phones, so if there’s a cool new app/service coming out, it’s probably going to be on iPhone first.
– I think it would be easier/better to keep up with iPhone-related news/blogs, because they’re only concerned with one or two phones, whereas Android blogs are always talking about the 300 different phones that’ll be out in the next month, or updates/news about current phones that you don’t own and have no interest in.
– I can’t play ‘arcade mode’ on the Android version of Fruit Ninja
Of course, I’m not an Android hater and realize that it’s infinitely more customizable, but rarely (if ever) do I use any of that stuff, such as the battery-draining widgets that most folks seem to be enthralled with. I’ve played with my dad’s iPad and for the most part, I like the way it works out of the box, so there isn’t much I’d want/need to change.
As for the ideological ‘Steve controls everything’, that’s what jailbreaking is for
The only thing that’s holding me back at the moment is AT&T…. I just can’t deal with them. Though their service seems ok in my area, their customer support is absolutely atrocious.
Edited 2011-01-04 00:02 UTC
Inst there a little bit of irrational fanboyism here?
Dont you see an inconsistency in your statements? You are giving apple a pass on a stronghold they have on the device because you can root ios devices, but you are hard on android devices on the stronghold carries have when you can still root them too.
You most likely arent, but if you dont know, you are most likely high on what ever steve jobs dishes out and in his sales pitches you have an apologetic view of apple products and a critical view of their competitors and hence you will always have an opinion that apple products are always better.
You’re totally missing the point of what he’s saying – which seems to be par for the course when it comes to how people look at this argument.
He’s saying “why should I have to root the device to be able to get functionality that it’s already supposed to have according to Google’s marketing?” – ie, Updates, as opposed to CHOOSING to root the device if you want to make it do things that aren’t promised or supported by the OS’s developer. There is a real and significant difference in there, just many choose to ignore it and lump them into the same boat, as you have.
Actually, you missed my point as well
It’s not the rooting that bothers me, but the work involved just to get back to a vanilla base on most Android phones. It’s like PC vendors that cell you a computer loaded down with bloatware, and then they don’t give you the generic install disc so that you can reformat and start fresh.
With iOS, it comes vanilla, and then you jailbreak and add whatever you want on top of it; that’s how I like to roll.
And for the record, I have never claimed (nor do I imagine I ever will) that iOS devices are better than Android, and vice versa. (And since I own an Android phone myself and own zero Apple products, it would be hard to label me as an Apple fanatic.) It really depends on who you are, and what you want.
Take my parents for example… they have an iPad and are already familiar with that interface. They like iTunes and are already on AT&T, as they live in an area where the service doesn’t suck. I think even the most hardened Android fanboy would have a hard time making a case as to why they shouldn’t buy an iPhone, which they’re about to do in a few days when their contract is up for renewal.
Contrast that with a friend of mine, who hates iTunes and anything having to do with Apple, and loves to spend hours on end screwing with his phone. In his case, Android is a perfect fit. Not saying that you HAVE to spend hours screwing with an Android phone, but Android is a tinkerer’s paradise
Edited 2011-01-04 03:08 UTC
You arent coming across as an apple fanatic, you are just coming across as being critical on androids while giving apple a pass for the same things, can you explain why this is so or am i just reading you wrong?
Do you want examples?
Here is another example from your post
Dont see any bias in the above? OK, you have a jailbroken iphone and the update breaks it, whats next? You will either update to get the new functionality and loose the functionality you wanted enough to bother to jailbreak the phone or sit on the older version waiting for the community to jail break the phone. Again you are being critical on android here will giving apple a full pass, care to explain why?
Google phone gets an update in time, you acknowledge this but right afterwards discredit the phone by mentioning how terrible the network the phone is under implies the service is terrible everywhere in the US.
Why are you always lumping up “most android phones”. How many android phones do you use, how often are they updated and how often do you change them?
Look at the above, you dismiss one of androids strength, then you were critical on something you dont use and hence doesnt affect you finish up with giving the ipad a full pass with all issues it has.
Again, not saying you are android hater or idevice fanatic, i just made an observation that you are critical on android while giving apple a pass on some of the same issue and i am wondering if you did this intentionality or it just came out unintentionally and are you now aware of it now.
And you don’t have to root your Android phone to make it your “own” and have full control of it??
I really don’t know what you’re complaining about. Don’t buy an Android phone from one of the carriers. I purchased the original Nexus One, which is a powerful HTC Android phone in its own right (still is) and it pretty much meets your requirements. My Nexus One is unlocked which means I am able to take it to the carrier of my choice. It also shipped with a “vanilla” Android 2.2 installation that is almost immediately updated by Google whenever updates to Android OS are available. No wait; no hacked ROMs (unless I want one,) no fuss, no muss. Your other reasons for choosing Apple’s iPhone over the more open Android seem flimsy. You can’t play a game in arcade mode? Really? That’s reason enough to spend hundreds of dollars on a phone that Apple will tightly control? Apple is a phenomenon driven by a popularity contest. iPhone is over hyped. Android is much younger and it has a lot of room for improvement. It will get better and better with each new version. Hang in there. In future, I recommend you choose a Google phone, such as the new Nexus S, which ships with the just released Android 2.3 OS, instead of running to your closest carrier and then bellyaching about the crapware the carrier installs. Your new Nexus S will most definitely be on the cutting edge of Android and will be Google’s darling for some time to come.
Edited 2011-01-04 03:48 UTC
Yeah, assuming your carrier of choice in the US is either T-Mobile or AT&T. So then for me, it’s a choice of standing in the middle of the street to get a signal at my house, or deal with a company who consistently ranks in the top 5 companies having the absolute worst customer service.
If Google ever releases a CDMA phone, then we’ll talk.
And the Fruit Ninja comment was a joke
The unlocked version of the Nexus One will work on any GSM carrier, not just T-Mobile or AT&T. I have one and use it on CellularOne. The only difference is the the 3G only works on T-Mobile’s network, not on AT&T. There are many GSM carriers in the US, small regional carriers that have roaming agreements with the majors that will get you coverage over virtually the entire US with the Nexus One. 3G isn’t available here from any carrier, so I am quite happy with my Nexus One.
Well, you can get several different unlocked phones from Google still – but you have to register as an Android Developer first (for a cost of $25 USD). I’m sure you can pick up a CDMA model if you like.
No, no no. The reason the two unlocked phones state they’re for either AT&T or T-Mobile is to accommodate those two carriers’ popular network protocols. In my case, I chose the unlocked T-Mobile phone so I could use my Cincinnati Bell Wireless SIM card. My Nexus One works flawlessly with my carrier of choice (I wouldn’t touch either AT&T or T-Mobile with a 10 foot pole!)
So buy a Nexus then – they’re deliberately released with vanilla Android.
tbh I don’t see the point of phone accessories. If I wanted jewellery, then I’d buy myself jewellery.
So long as my phone fits in my pocket and has a headphone jack, then I see little need to extend it’s physical capacity.
That’s really not true:
* AR – such as Layer – came out on Android first.
* Sat nav came to the iPhone long /AFTER/ every other smart phone
* Android handsets had digital compasses nearly a year before the first iPhone featured it
* …and don’t get me started on how late Apple were in implementing “multi-tasking” or even basic features like MMS and copy/paste.
Sure, the iPhone does also pilot cool features too. But it’s not nearly as pioneering as many make out.
That’s a rather silly reason buy one handset over another.
I think a lot of the “widget” mentality is users customising their phone because they /can/ rather than because they need to.
If you ignored widgets and custom roms, then Android works much like iOS – and thus works “out of the box” just like iOS.
If iOS supported widgets then I’m sure just as many iPhone/iPad users would play about with the interface as Android users do with their phones.
The first thing people ask when they see my jailbroken iPhone is: how can I get that stuff?
People want to customise their phone. His Steveness may not like it, but it’s a simple and utter fact. Just look at all the cases, case stickers, and so on, you can buy for phones.
It would be interesting to see the figures for Europe. The US has such as strange mobile industry…
50-60% Nokia
Rubbish!
Q3 2010 W.Europe smartphone share:
Nokia 32%
Apple 24%
Android 23%
Source IDC.
Rubbish!
You might want to check their dumbphone sales as a percentage of the whole phone market.
This is the decade of the Android OS.
Some say the arrival of a potential Verizon iPhone might change things around, but I highly doubt it will have as big an impact as many seem to think.
We’ll revisit this quote at mid-year. I think you are in for a rude awakening.
Considering that the iPhone has already lost the lead to Android in the rest of the world, the fantasy that AT&T is holding the iPhone in some sort of death grip seems like evident bullshit to most people.
I agree, one more carrier in one country means little.
Yes the US is the largest market, but most people forget that Verizon actually holds the same or less smartphone market share than AT&T. Plus AT&T has never had an attractive android phone before the Galaxy S, so it was mostly Verizon with Android VS AT&T with the iPhone.
Now both will have good phones on both of the largest networks, however the 6 month old iPhone 4 will be competing will duel core android phones sporting 720p screens and android 2.3 or 3.0. Plus Android still has phones on Sprint and T-mobile.
And again, that’s just one county. Worldwide the iPhone 4 is on multiple carriers and still experiences high dropped calls and intermittent data outages that appear on no other phones. So far this has automatically been blamed on AT&T, where neither blackberrys or Android phones have the same problems.
If anything the Verizon iPhone will reveal these defects as Apple’s responsibility and Apple may finally fix the biggest problem plaguing iPhone user for three years, instead of just using AT&T as a scapegoat.
iPhone never had a lead in the rest of the world, but Android is slowly catching up to symbian in the rest of the world, but then so is iPhone.
Edited 2011-01-04 14:01 UTC
I don’t really understand why people think that having the device on multiple carriers will lead to an explosion in sales. People who want an iPhone will generally get one, regardless of what carrier it’s on. For the most part (I know this doesn’t apply to everyone so don’t go mad at this comment) it’s a bit of a fashion item. I’m an Android fan and I’m gonna be honest; the iPhone is an extremely desirable device, on both looks and functionality.
Now if these people suddenly have the option to go to two carriers they now have a choice. That doesn’t mean double the amount of people will now buy one, just that roughly the same number of people will be buying on two carriers. Obviously in places where AT&T have bad signal this might not be true as people will have been holding out for another carrier, however nationally it’s likely to remain relatively true.
The UK has had the iPhone on every network for a while now (both big ones and small one) and I wouldn’t say that lots more people have been buying them. Obviously you’re seeing more and more, however that’s because they’re selling well across all networks. Every network can’t be selling as many as O2 did when it first came out on there though, it’s likely to be spread across all the networks.
I’d love to be able to talk about how Android sales compares to iOS sales in a place where there’s more than one carrier selling iPhones, however I’ve never seen any data for places like the UK yet. If you find any leave a comment cause I’d love to know
Currently we are still seeing phones that are just phones.
Android devices have already been modified to prove the can run equal to a thin terminal desktop. This was done with the Nexus One(Not that powerful really).
Basically the day you can dock your phone on your desk and it has Screen, keyboard and mouse connected and you are just able to surf the internet. Is the day the big change to market is here. Also as soon as you pick up phone from dock everything you were working on could have been saved in the phone until the next time you dock.
USB 3 is more than fast enough. The muli-core arm chips will also be more than fast enough to pull this off as well. Its not liking doing work for most people requires 3d graphics.
Agreed, although I don’t see why this can’t be done already. Modern smartphones are running 1GHz processors and hundreds of MB of RAM, that’s more than enough to browse the internet, they have video out capabilities and I’m sure adding a USB hub chip to support keyboard/mouse wouldn’t be all that hard.
My ideal computing scenario is Minority Report style where I can literally swipe an app from the desktop screen to the mobile tablet/phone seamlessly and data flows between them all without fuss.
Hey, this is kind of possible today. I have a Galaxy S It has:
Bluetooth mouse and keyboard support (did not test it)
HDMI output, today’s standard (ok, my screen does not have it)
Of course, right now, it is not very appealing because:
– It’s a hacked solution (not a dock but you need to connect the mouse and keyboard and the screen manually)
– The OS UI does not morph to support this
– The apps UI do not support this (they will in Android 3.0)
– ~500 MB of memory is not enough
– 1 GHz is at the limit but the dual core will be ok (similar to atom CPU).
– No USB OTG on Android (but Nokia has this
)
I AM expecting a surprise here because I believe that bluetooth mouse support was introduced in Froyo for a reason, and I hope the first step in this direction will be made by Android 3.0 tablets – they have the resolution and the app layout they need.
If that works ok, who knows, an android phone with an interface that could adapt when docked
Also Nokia with MeGoo could easily go in that direction.
If this will happen it WILL BE the killer feature against IPhone, that will have a harder time finding a way to morph the interface (Google and Nokia have the advantage of not relaying so much on multi-touch, and not being so puretist on the UI)
Did anyone think anything else would happen? ALL the carriers have some for of Android. It makes sense that this is so. It doesn’t make it better than iOS it just means it sells more.
Is this attempting to say “Look! Android’s better than iPhone ’cause it’s outselling it!!!”? We all know the fallacy of that argument.
Is it saying “Apple’s dooooooooooomed!!!!! Android’s going to kill iOS and Apple’s gonna shrivel and DIE SUCKERS!”? Surely nobody is that stupid?
For those suggesting carrier lock-in with a single carrier is having no impact, check out the markets where iPhone and Android devices are both available on multiple carriers. I think both will end up with sizeable, and similar, shares of the market over time. Keep in mind we’re really yet to see second generation Android buyers. How well will Android powered devices hold on to current non-techy users after they’ve been through some of the issues mentioned in this very forum by someone who uses an Android device on a daily basis?
There’s a lot to play out in this game yet, but at the end I really think both will be big players with similar followings. Only time will tell…
Your Apple fanboyism is getting the better of you. Read the article, and you’ll see it says nothing of the sort – quite the opposite, in fact.
But hey, don’t let simple reading get in your way!
Newsflash! Non techies don’t really care.
People adapt, and second gen Android buyers are going to be just like second gen iPhone buyers. But those(2gen Android buyers) will appear only in a year.
Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry are only from their respected companies where as Android is used from number of companies. People have preferences so not everyone likes same device from one company. If there are equal chance for each of those devices. Android (in whole) would surely be surpassing other devices from Apple and RIM. Therefore, I think those graphs only show that Apple outsells rather than the other way around.
but iOS is much smoother, less choppy. The wife’s DroidX is running 2.2, and the UI reaction time always has a split second delay when you want to do something. Compared to the iOS, it feels like an inferior product. It is cool to play with, but for a phone for myself, I think I would still have to go with the iphone. It’s just a more polished product, regardless of the jobs factor.
I have to agree with this. I have a viewsonic g tablet running tnt lite firmware and I also have a nokia n900. The nokia is clearly more responsive even though it has dramatically lesser specs. This is a performance problem coming from google’s implementation of their shell. I can’t say if its the use of java, their use of java or just sloppy coding.
I really wish something like meego would have actually made it out of the gate faster.
It seems to me that Apple, while it is *Poisonous* to FOSS is still the way to go. I as a developer would like to give and or share my class libraries. But I cannot due to the Bouncer at the door (of the Mac App store). Yes Android has made inroads, and they are big, but in the long view, well there is something there. BUT there is an elephant in the room and that is Java.
-=- See on the one hand to be successful I had to learn a lot of Cocoa, (then I had to really learn it) but the payoff is great. I am reminded of an old Daring Fireball/Gruber blog ( http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/broken_windows ) about the state of the MacOS v. Windows on Malware/Spyware and what I got out of that was the idea that my code has to be better than the next random guy on the block with a compier. I do not want to release an app. Let’s say some game or whatever that has the high scores in the cloud or such and have it leak all kinds of data that I did not want to. (SO I Had to hella step up my game)
-With the App Store Apple knows who I am (Since 1997) and even if I wanted to make another fake profile and app under a different name – Well there would still be a lot of clues as to who it is. (Just like if I stopped being ‘kaelodest’ here – I would still type like kaelodest and smell like me and come from the same IP or at least in a few other ways be trackable)
So while Android or some other future handheld OS might be ‘as good as’ or even better than the iOS by the numbers or whatever metric-on-stilts that you want to magnify it might not be soo good for my Mother or my aunt Mary. Who might be willing to le bad stuff happen to their machines (after all they do not fix broken configs I do)
A parallel might be 2 cars, equally fast but one without airbags or seat belts. Sure I can buy one that has more ‘EXTREME’ features. But I cannot really enjoy it because I can’t drive without insurance. And even if I could, can I take my son and daughter out for a drive? So what good is a feature fone that needs Me or another equally as savvy as I am to baby sit it. How can I tell my son to go for Android or whatever without a net? Is all code that good?
THIS might seem like an edge case and to the user it really is. They want to use the phone and not wonder how or why everyone caught that weird bug that they caught.
SO I like Android BUT not enough to make a bad name for myself as a developer even accidentally
As an Aside I have heard the same thing from at least a dozen Windows techs this year – Roughly translated. (sic) “So what about the bugs, I get paid to fix them…” 2 guys had the BALLS to say that in an interview. (SMH)
Their work on CUPS, LLVM, WebKit is poisonous? Apple make heavy use of FOSS and contribute a large amount back as well, may be not as much as Google but still a significant amount of useful code.
Yeah… That is why my very non-techie sister is asking to give my N1 to her. In fact, my 60 yo mother, that has issues with the DVD remote, has less issues with Android and iOS.(That does not sound good for the DVD remote designer, does it?)
If your spelling and presentation are as bad as this post, you already have a “bad name”.
First, re: -1… I had a chance to play with a friend’s new android phone and found it to be choppy as you said.
My wife’s iphone4 is smooth as butter.
When I went in to try a Windows 7 phone, the store manager tried to talk to me about an android phone, then when it was obvious I was not interested he let it go, but he did the same for every person that came in. It makes me think there was some sort of instruction from higher up to have the sales people push the android phones.
Android phones sell twice as fast as iOS phones. Great. However, there 89 models of Android phone and 5 models of iPhone (2 of which are currently sold). Android is sold by every carrier selling smartphones in every country in the world, whereas iPhone is sold in half as many countries and only by one carrier per country (for the most part).
If people felt Android was superior, or even that there were no difference between Android and iOS, then Android should be doing a lot more than 2x iOS sales. The question is why.
Is it like OS X and Windows? OS X is the OS you want, but Windows is the OS you use?
Not exactly, I’m from Romania but the situation is the same all over Europe and other countries with a free telecommunication market:
Almost all the carriers sell iPhones. At first the price for the contracts were high but right now they are ok.
And if you want you can buy it free of contract and unlocked (expensive though). The only downside that iPhone has (opposite to all other phones) is that it will lock itself on the first network that has a sim card inserted (at least iPhone 3g).
I don’t know if it is also sold in China, but in the rest of the countries it available for everybody.
But Android has a big advantage (or disadvantage?), you can find it in Galaxy S, Nexus S, Desire (HD)… as well as cheap phones with android 1.6.
Not very related: I have to say that it is hard for me to understand the problems that are in USA with carrier customizations since in Europe carriers do not interfere so much in the phone market.
They do sell phones locked in for batter prices and they do have special offers for some phones and also some terminals of there own (HTC was introduce in Europe first under Orange brand).
While most of the phones are sold on contract the only customizations that a phone has are:
– carrier lock-in – legal to brake but you still have to pay your contract
– sometimes carrier’s logo somewhere small and maybe the default wallpaper/theme, 3g configuration…
So what we see here is a position where there are three dominant players with roughly equal usage (I refuse to use the term market share) and a whole lot of smaller players (Microsoft, Bada etc) trying to make an impact. Nokia might still be able to pull off a surprise and make it four major players.
What exactly is the problem here?
Isn’t that precisely what we have been wishing was the case in the desktop OS market for years now? If Windows, OSX and Linux each had around 25% and the remainder was made up of other OS’s, wouldn’t the entire OSNews crowd be singing hallelujahs?
For the record, I have an Android phone. A sony Ericsson X10 Mini. It makes calls and with the barnacle app it serves as a wifi hotspot for my iPod Touch, which is my portable computer of choice. Now how does that show up in the sales data? 🙂
It seems to have gone unnoticed, but it it possible to buy an android phone without a contract: Boost mobile sells the Motorola i1 for $400 (at Best Buy only), and you then pay $0.10/minute when you use it. This is the only pay-as-you-go android phone afaik.
An unlocked Sciphone N12 android phone is $140 including delivery.
There is a book, called How to Lie with Statistics. And this graphph uses one method from it. Well iOS = basically 2 phone models and iPad. Android = dozens of HTC, Samsung, Motorola, etc models.
It’s quite hard to say, what this graph wants to show. Android naturally will be more popular, because of lower prices and much more models to chose from. iOS has only 3 devices from one company.
Somebody should make a product satisfaction survey, that may be more useful.
These graphs show which smartphone operating system sees the best sales. Don’t try to muddy the waters because INSERT_COMPANY isn’t coming out on top.
“it will take more than Android devices outselling the iPhone for it to truly be in trouble.”
I guess it is only human nature for people to argue that my smart phone is better than your smart phone. What people forget is that everyone is different and people like different things. Because someone likes something you don’t doesn’t make them an idiot. The iPhone defined what the smartphone could be. The fact that Jobs is such a visionary means the iPhone will most likely continue to define the smart phone and will not be “in trouble” as long as Jobs lives. But this does not mean it is the best phone for everyone. There is lots of room for innovation and features the iphone lacks. As long as Jobs can dictate design, the iPhone will always be a strong seller. But, because of the inherent limitations of Apple (discussed in detail here and everywhere), it is only reasonable that the iphone will be outsold by another platform (could be android or Microsoft… yes, even microsoft). But, what is the best smart phone? Well, that will be the one the person has bought and loves. Finally, it is my sincerest wish that people would stop flaming each other for what is an affront to their immense ego. Choice is choice even if you think the chooser is stupid. Granted. some are, but have a little compassion, eh? Not everyone can be as smart as you are.
You take that reasonable attitude elsewhere, it ain’t welcome around these parts!
In the PC market there is an overall understanding that security is a major problem, unfortunately there is only really one player in the mobile space
that has an understanding of the PC era. In that updates need to be rolled out uniformly and quickly to avoid any potential problems. The player that has
gone into the ‘mobile era’ with that knowledge is apple and it shows in the way that they control and manage their platform. While I don’t agree with many of
the apple business practises and refuse to spend any money on apple products they have some things right.
At this point we bring in the carriers who have so far not really had any ‘security issues’ to think about, as mobiles have been telephones they are basically all about phone calls, unfortunately while the mobile era devices are called smart phones they are more like tiny mobile PC’s and all the problems that come with PC’s come with Smart Phones. The ‘Android Problem’ as some apple bloggers/writers/analysts call it with carriers delaying updates, installing bloatware and other problems is a time bomb waiting to kick off. Why? It’s simple if the carriers are not providing or stopping regular updates from the handset manufacturers then its going to only be a matter of time until a Worm is successful at manipulating and spreading like wild fire through the network. The network carriers will have a few PR problems but its not going to be a huge problem for them, rather its a billable problem in that carriers bill for data and phone calls etc so its just a window for increased revenue, there is no incentive for the carriers to provide bloatware free regular updates to the handsets.. its simply not in their interest to do so. To give an example, I spent many years working for a large international Telco, they had no interest in developing DDoS mitigation platform/strategies because they billed their customers for the traffic, so a DDoS was just increased revenue for them, often the service charge for any mitigation platform was lower than the potential revenue from the DoS traffic itself. These same attitudes are prevalent in most carriers that I have had exposure to or worked for. Nothing is going to change until users start to spend their money with alternative providers. Personally I buy my phones unlocked direct from third parties which do not have any bloatware installed and so far I get regular updates on all 3 android handsets made by HTC without carrier intervention.
The unfortunate situation is that when a worm does start taking down mobile networks, its going to affect all uses regardless of the handset they have chosen.
I’m glad to see the growing of android. I used linux in my pc, but so many apps that i used to can’t work on it, so i replaced it with xp. It seems that apple knows custmors better than android. I really want android get more mobile market share, because it’s free as well as these apps. http://www.ifunia.com/iphone-column/free-iphone-apps.html
Edited 2011-01-05 02:22 UTC
Am I the only one that feels like I’m back in the late 80’s/early 90’s listening to the debate as Windows started gaining popularity against Apple’s more dominant Mac?
Substitute Android for Windows, and iPhone for Mac, and it is history replaying.
“Mac/iPhone has redefined the market”
“Windows/Android just copies Mac/iPhone”
“Mac/iPhone has a superior interface. Windows/Android is clunky and not intuitive.”
“Mac/iPhone has the advantage with developers and apps. Windows/Android apps are crap.”
“Windows/Android is fragmented with too many hardware choices to support. Mac/iPhone approach is superior.”
“People are only buying Windows/Android because it’s cheaper.”
“The next version of iPhone/Mac will blow away Windows/Android forever.”
“iPhone/Mac still has more market share even if more people are buying Windows/Android.”
Etc. etc. Even Jobs’ rant about Google’s “betrayal” of Apple by competing with them after they originally partnered with them echoes Microsoft’s approach of pursuing their own GUI OS despite originally partnering with Apple, proclaiming Mac the “future of computing” and targeting it as a primary application platform.
We all know how that played out in the long run.
For better or worse.
Edited 2011-01-05 05:16 UTC
In Australia an Apple 4G with 16GB memory costs $859 with a 7 day delivery time.
I’ve just ordered an unlocked Android phone for $140 from Hong Kong with free delivery. It will cost me another $30 for a 16GB microSD card.
Android $170 vs iPhone $859.
I can also get a new battery for my Android phone for $4 on Ebay and replace it myself.