Analyst Predicts Android Overtaking iPhone In 2012 385
Market watcher Gartner is claiming that by Q4 2012 Google's Android smartphone OS will have overtaken Apple's iPhone. Currently only the sixth most popular phone OS, Android is set to rocket into second place behind Symbian if the predictions are to be believed. The reason for the changing of the guard is that "many handset makers are betting their futures on Android, while Apple is just one company." 2012 rankings place Symbian at the top followed by Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry."
I dont' see it this way (Score:2, Insightful)
The iPhone is ahead because of the apps and the highly capable hardware. If Android phones don't step up to the plate app-wise, AND touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise, iTunes-wise... then you're just going to have a lot of companies betting on the wrong horse.
OTOH, if Apple doesn't start letting other companies than ATT into the game so that rural areas can have the phone, there will always be an opening for other phones.
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you talking about? Is this another issue with dumbed down US market? I don't own an Android phone, but I played with one. Has touch, has accelerometer, has GPS, has compass, has apps. Fuck iTunes.
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:4, Insightful)
More importantly a metric ton of apps still only boils down to a bushel of 'good' apps. The iPhoine definately suffers from the "Oh Wow! Someone is making money on this, lets release everyhing we can think of for it. Maybe we can too!" syndrome.
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This is just an analyst's prediction though. So a heaping teaspoon of salt is required while reading. Sure it's possible, but is it really likely at this point?
No but it does cause a lot of ads to be served on this site.
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I'm an iPhone 3G S user, and I AM thankful for the Android.
However, this analyst doesn't see what you pointed out, reaction to pressure.
If Android starts offering things software-wise that Apple does not, Apple can (not sure they will) change their App Store policies pretty quick. Starting with getting out of the exclusive AT&T arrangement, I'm sure we'll see some changes between now and 2011
Thankfully, I'll be done with my 2 years in 2011. If Android has the same share of apps that iPhone has, I'll g
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So, three years ago would you have predicted that Apple would be a dominant cell phone manufacturer?
Didn't even know about the iPhone at that time?
Hmmm... you think that's air you're breathing?
Things change. I'd doubt that Apple is just going to sit on its hands for the next couple of years.
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iTunes-wise...
QFT - Phones, service, apps, etc. are all fine, but iTunes is really the killer app or Trojan Horse depending on your point of view. I don't see any application out there to manage content that's nearly as robust and sustainable as iTunes. There might be desktop applications that are better at one thing or another, but the whole package is compelling. I believe most people trust that iTunes and the Apple store will be there years down the road, and are more willing to bet their music libraries on Apple's
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how is this not modded insightful?
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Because it doesn't take a lot to write an application to manage media on an Android device, and by 2012 I'm sure Google will have something out that will have blown iTunes away. If you think that Google is not already working on something like that, you're naive.
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...by 2012 I'm sure Google will have something out that will have blown iTunes away. If you think that Google is not already working on something like that, you're naive.
Obviously Google is working on something like that. Of course, don't expect Apple to stand still ...
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:4, Informative)
If you think that Google is not already working on something like that, you're naive
And it will be in beta for at least five years...
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And it will be in beta for at least five years...
So should be Vista.
Google's Beta is Microsoft/Apple's post-Rock-Solid-Stable equivalent. Really, and for the last time, versions and release names are nothing but subjective marketing data.
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How were YOU modded up?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's not, really. It's a rant on how someone loves their phone, and that no one could possibly make a better one.
What the hell. The post you were referring to, said phones were besides the point! It was about how iTunes is the feature that drives phone sales, and said nothing whatsoever about what you are claiming they rant about.
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because itunes is a piece of crap whether you buy music through them or not?
there are lots of services way better.
Oh, and the G1 can do itunes.
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God I hate iTunes. I might consider getting an iPhone if it weren't for the fact that it's chained and encumbered to iTunes.
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The iPhone OS is pretty nice but the lack of multitasking is annoying.
The hardware is good but outside of looks it isn't better than what HTC and others offer. The actual hardware cpu/gpu of the ZuneHD is much better than iPhones.
iTunes? who cares. I have an iPod Touch and I hardly ever use iTunes I do everything over wifi.
1. Apps. Android needs more developers for more apps. With more android phones hitting the market the developers will follow so will the apps. .Apple is not selling the iPhone O
2. Betting
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In the UK the iPhone is no-longer O2 exclusive; Vodafone and Orange will soon have it as well, and there seems to be no reason all carriers couldn't have it, other than Apple's ability to keep pace with demand. Is this not happening in the US?
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No and it isn't likely.
Only T-Mobile and AT&T offer GSM in the US and T-Mobile uses a different standard or frequency for 3g than AT&T and the EU does.
Sprint and Verizon use CDMA and EVDO for their phones. I really like CDMA better than GSM since I don't get the GSM clicking when my CDMA phone rings. I can tell when anybody on AT&T gets a call in my office.
I just don't see Apple making a CDMA iPhone.
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The GSM clicking???? Are you f***ing kidding? The 90's called, they suggest the US start using shielded electronics!
I haven't heard electronics being affected by a call in ages - only if I've been near some really _REALLY_ cheap electronics.
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It maybe the band that they are using but I can hear GSM calls clicking on my compter speakers when ever anybody in my office or right outside my office gets a call. Yes even the iPhone does it.
It is not uncommon.
http://www.smartdevicecentral.com/article/that+crazy+gsm+buzz/199379_1.aspx [smartdevicecentral.com]
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/07/2111217 [slashdot.org]
Here is the reason why it happens.
"The cause of this buzzing has to do with GSM's "time division" nature. The ever-knowledgeable Keith Nowak, spokesperson for Nokia, exp
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The iPhone is a very nice phone but AT&T is a lot more expensive than Sprint...
Is it? I went straight from Sprint to AT&T/iPhone. I pay $10/mo. more than I did with Sprint, but now both my GF and I have unlimited data plans. (When I was with Sprint I had a data plan on my phone but not my GF's.)
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Sprint seems to be about $20 less a month for the Everything plan verses an iPhone data plan plus you get unlimited texting and navigation for the price.
Also now on Sprint all mobile to mobile calls are free which is also pretty nice.
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1. Apps. Android needs more developers for more apps. With more android phones hitting the market the developers will follow so will the apps.
Maybe. Piracy is killing developers on a massive scale. Even the most successful Android developers barely make enough to scrape by (~63.00/day for two top selling apps). Piracy for Android exists for many reasons. One often cited is pay apps are not available in many markets; so people pirate simply because its not otherwise available. Once people start pirating apps, it seems many don't reconsidering supporting their developers once pay apps are available in their market. Even after excusing the pirates w
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Piracy will decrease with popularity. .99 cent app when you can just buy it from the store. That is the real key to piracy make it not worth the effort.
Most users will not take the time to root their phone anymore than they take the time to jail break.
Why steal a
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Piracy will decrease with popularity.
Maybe, no proof one way or the other.
Most users will not take the time to root their phone anymore than they take the time to jail break.
On Android, rooting is not required to pirate applications. Rooting/jailbreaking is only required for the iPhone.
Why steal a .99 cent app when you can just buy it from the store. That is the real key to piracy make it not worth the effort.
Several recent studies indicate many are pirating because they feel entitled and because they feel they are not hurting anyone. Price is generally not a factor in the equation. If it were, piracy would practically not exist for Android and the iPhone. Unfortunately, many pirates wrongly assume that stealing applications does not injure the bottom line for smal
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1. Apps. Android needs more developers for more apps. With more android phones hitting the market the developers will follow so will the apps.
Or, more phones will mean more variety in specs, making it harder to create one app that runs on everything, obscuring the market and confusing the users, leading to less developers interested in this platform.
I'm not saying this will happen, I just don't think that more phones will automatically lead to more developers and more apps. There are loads of WinMo and Symbian phones out there, yet the platform taking the lead app-wise is the iPhone, with basically only three versions of one model from one manufa
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No, I assure you, it's a shortcoming. Palm's WebOS did multi-tasking the right way (hell, even the iPhone's browser manages tabs in that way). And when I get a call on my Pre, I've never had an issue with "having too many apps open to take a phone call" as you imply. And when I recieve a phone call, it takes up half my screen to inform me of it. You say you rolled Pre's out to your user base recently and they didn't like them, but you fa
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My wife has a pre and I have an iPod Touch aka an iPhone without the phone.
She loves the multi tasking. She can and does keep several applications open and once and flips between them.
It is a pain to exit one app on the touch to go to another app. I would say that you don't know until you have a phone that multitasks well.
It is funny but the lack of multi tasking comments sounds way too much like the people back in the DOS days saying that multi tasking was usless because they had TSRs.
Your feelings on the
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iphone has the same hardware as most of the other cell phones, including the Pre. latest ARM core CPU, infeneon 3G radio, broadcom wifi chip.
iphone only became a hit with the 3G when it got Exchange support and the app store. before that it was another pretty thing apple made up with no features that the cult of steve loved
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:5, Insightful)
As compared to US market, in Europe it has been pretty common to buy your phone from store and *then* get a contract for it (or prepaid, refillable SIM card). The "make a contract with us, get a phone and pay for it monthly" came maybe 4-5 years ago, and they're not still even locked the operator you bought it from - you can switch to another operator and just pay the monthly price for the phone.
Interestingly, iPhone changed this a little bit in Europe where people haven't got used to it. It was exclusively available from single operators per country and you had to make a contract with them too. A bad market for Apple.
I rather buy the phone once than get tricked in to paying more to it, but just monthly for a long time. Even more so if its locked to a single operator.
That is why Android will be a lot more succesful in Europe than iPhone is. And what comes to software and the phones supporting Android, theres still only a few phones out and software starting to come out too as the userbase grows. This is different from Apple's way who just made a single phone, so it takes more time to grow.
Just history repeating itself? (Score:2)
There was a time when similar things could be said about Macs. But ultimatelly other companies betting on more open solution catched up and overtook them.
I suspect Apple might make similar errors with iPhone / iPhone OS...
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My view is a bit different although I think you're close. I'm not counting Apple out but my reasons are different.
The touch screen, accelerometer, music store, etc. are all things other phones have. Some phones even do some of those things really well. But the iPhone was the one that did them all really well, and did them first. So even though other phones have comparable hardware, few have the same polish and none have Apple's first-mover advantage.
What remains to be seen is whether the first-mover adva
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. Isn't this exactly what we heard about Microsoft's PlaysForSure platform? "It's a whole multivendor platform. Apple is just one company. Of course PlaysForSure will win." How did that turn out again?
I'm not necessarily saying the iPhone will become (and remain) as dominant in the smart phone market as the iPod is in the music player market, mind you. But the specific reasoning behind this specific prediction is clearly faulty. Tech industry analysts tend to assume that there's something inherently attractive to consumers about multivendor platforms, but the consumer market has demonstrated several times that this is just not the case. Consumers don't care about multivendor platforms in any abstract sense; consumers buy products, not platforms. They'll only gravitate toward multivendor platforms because of the specific products offered within those platforms.
If, for most people, there is no specific Android product (i.e. combination of device and software) that is superior to the iPhone, there is no reason the iPhone cannot outsell all Android products combined.
Note, again, that I'm not necessarily saying this will happen, just that there's no inherent reason to believe it can't.
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Huh? Android phones have a capacitive touch screen, gps, and an accelerometer. A "compass" is an application that uses an accelerometer. And I'm surprised anyone would list iTunes as a strength. Android devices allow you to mount the sd card as a drive. And finally, I think we've determined in this c
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At any given moment, you can find PCs that have cutting edge features that Macs won't have for a while yet; but, while PCs run the gamut from superb to crap, Macs are relatively consistent and don't have a real low end. In the same way, iPhone specs are consistently better than average(touch screen that is actually functional, reasonable CPU/GPU/RAM/Fla
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:4, Informative)
"If Android phones don't step up to the plate app-wise, AND touch-wise, accelerometer-wise, GPS-wise, compass-wise, iTunes-wise... "
My Android phone has touch, acclerometer, GPS, and a compass. They all work magnificently, except the compass, which if you have a magnetic clasp on your iPhone case, you have similar issues.
If iTunes was let out of the box by Apple, then that would be a non-issue. Oh, wait, it is anyways, since I do not want or need iTunes. In fact, iTunes is not the only source of music. My G1 hooks up with Amazon, though I acquire my music the old-fashioned way mostly. So a non-sequiter for me. Or something like that.
Now for apps, I have a few thousand apps to choose from, everything from games to fart apps. How many fart apps are there in the iPhone store? And how many are free? The iPhone store suffers from app bloat in a big way, with countless copies and duplicates of mortgage calculators, fart apps, stupid phone tricks, and such. The raw count of apps isn't nearly as important as the variety of unique and useful apps. I suspect Android is already very close to the iPhone in that regard.
The reality is that Android is doing pretty well, and is damned good.
Now for the bad.
So far, every OTA update has caused me to do a factory wipe, and I lose data from apps that don't give me the option to save it. I don't see this changing.
The Bluetooth stack is somewhat flaky, and A2DP is very poor - reception and streaming cutout problems. Interested? I may start a blog dedicated to this. I'm understanding the hardware limitations. But I bet the iPhone has some of the same issues, which makes it a BT problem.
My G1 doesn't have enough RAM to do what I really want it to do. Sadly, it was too little, too soon. Ask some iPhone 1st Gen users how they feel. But I do like the keyboard. Sometimes, buttons are better.
I'm betting before 2012 Android will surpass all other platforms. It's free, as in beer. Just add a few developers, and you are jammin with your new models. Motorola grokked this, and will save money both in licensing and staff.
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In addition to the shortcomings on Android hardware (or perhaps linked to that and the limited time they've been out), the market for Android apps just isn't there yet. This is an interesting comparison of revenue from a game developer:
http://larvalabs.com/blog/iphone/android-market-sales/ [larvalabs.com]
One example he gives is Trism - $250,000 sales on the iTunes store, $2000 earned on the Android store.
Android is a great first effort though, and it'll be interesting to see what they do with it - the best thing they can d
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:4, Funny)
A common misconception.
It's actually the year the Mayans predicted as the year of the linux desktop.
Symbian and Windows Mobile (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish Symbian would die already, its a horrible system and all apps require certification from Symbian if other users want to run them.
Windows Mobile I still except to stick around, it's quite nice system and you can run any apps on it (I have HTC so I only have experience with their modifications to it, but still)
However it doesn't really come as a surprise that Android is going to climb it's place up, and great that it is. Even if iPhone is a nice phone OS, it's way too locked down, only runs on Apple's closed phones and apps store.
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Wrong, some funcionalities require certification, not all apps per se (and it's actually quite trival to work around; at least on typical unlocked phone available in Europe, don't know how it is in the US...)
Better accept that Symbian stays - it still has almost half of whole smartphone market, and Nokia seem to be starting to push it into mainstream (true mainstream, occupied by S40 / feature phones now). Also...it might not be that bad, Symbian^3 or 4 will supposedly rely on Qt.
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And to add to that, having developed for both iPhone and Android - Android is simply a better platform to develop for. Not because of objective C, that's okay. It's the lack of features such as multi-tasking and simple cross-app data sharing that makes Android shine over iPhone OS. (Just my opinion!)
But I think I'll take the pragmatic programming approach and develop for both. Cross platform dev for both will be the hotness by then IMHO.
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Nokia is starting to release phones with its Maemo operating system. Maemo is Linux based and uses a Mozilla-based web browser. The new N900 is, I believe, the first phone to use it.
Nokia hasn't made any statements about phasing out Symbian in favor of Maemo but it at least it's a good start.
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This changed in Symbian 9.1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_OS#Symbian_OS_9.1 [wikipedia.org]
Symbian OS 9.1
Released early 2005. It includes many new security related features, particularly a controversial platform security module facilitating mandatory code signing. Symbian argues that applications and content, and therefore a developer's investment, are better protected than ever; however others contend that the requirement that every application be signed (and thus approved) violates the rights of the end-user, the owner of the phone, and limits the amount of free software available.
Gartner (Score:5, Insightful)
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You lost me at Gartner.
Exactly. Sorry, but I'd love to have these paid to make a report analysts put their reputations and jobs on the line when it is readily apparent that the iPhone market penetration has only just begun.
.."the iPhone market penetration"... (Score:2)
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Now, he has a bunch of associates working there doing the actual predictions and analysis. For what that's worth.
Gartner himself, I believe, is on a tropical private island and surround by beautiful naked women.
I could see that (Score:3, Funny)
Sure, I could see Sybian [wikipedia.org] at the top.
What?
Ohhh, Symbian... Uh... Sorry...
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Sure, I could see Sybian [wikipedia.org] at the top.
Actually, that's more likely to be at the bottom.
WinMo trap (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with WinMo isn't the OS itself. It's that Microsoft never pushed OEMs to build much more into their devices than the existing apps and services supplied with the WinMo development kit. So it's a half-baked system sold as a complete solution.
Google Android has the exact same problem. Google is focused on developing a great OS, but the better the OS is out of the box, the less likely OEMs are to develop their own IP and create real differentiation, not to mention a truly user-centric experience.
This is where Apple's iPhone really shines. Since it is in itself a final product, Apple can exert a huge amount of effort in order to meet their own user-centric standards. The product succeeds or fails as a product, not as a delivery of middleware to handset manufacturers.
Re:WinMo trap (Score:5, Informative)
But the iPhone isn't the top smart phone.
Blackberry is in the US and Symbian is in the world.
Android has the same advantage that Windows does on the Desktop.
Lots of vendors.
HTC, Motorola, and Samsung all have android phones. In the US you can get Android phones from T-Mobile with Sprint comming on line next week and Verizon coming soon.
LG I hear is also going to have an Android phone soon.
I wouldn't bet that Android doesn't come out with a bigger market share than Apple.
Of course I an still wondering why QNX never got into the smartphone market.
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Where do I get me a paranoid android phone?
re: Where do I get me a paranoid android phone (Score:3, Funny)
At the Radiohead Shack.
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Upcoming Android phone from Sony Ericsson shows quite some amount of UI customisation; it's not the only one from what I remember.
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Phone companies want to compete with the iPhone, android is just a tool that allows them to do that. I think the fact you have 2 companies 1 working on software to beat apple's, and 1 working on hardware to beat apple's is a strength not a weakness. What they need to add is a 3rd company to bitchslap apple's marketing into line. a TV campaign along the lines:
"Because we don't arbitrary reject apps our app store is growing faster than any other leading smartphone's"
"By putting unlocked devices in the hands o
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Biased like crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
"many handset makers are betting their futures on Android, while Apple is just one company."
Lots of companies bet their futures on Linux 5 years ago and are doing just fine, but has Linux surpassed Windows as top desktop OS?
Google is just one company.
Microsoft is just one company.
Just because some handset makers are betting on the future of Android, doesn't mean their bets are panning out.
Oh yeah.. and their bets can pan out without their OS overtaking the iPhone OS.
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But Google isn't, and isn't going to be, making Android devices to sell to consumers. Lots of phone vendors (and some non-phone vendors -- e.g., the reported B&N e-Reader) are and plan to do that.
And Microsoft doesn't make Windows (whether you are talking the traditional OS or the movile one) devices to sell to consumers, at least not most of them; lots of hardware vendors do that.
Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been an analyst. I've been a consultant. Does anyone realize how little it takes to be either of the two?
If we simply replace the word "analyst" with the word "dude" the headline more accurately reflects the absurdity of this piece (and its utter lack of press-worthiness).
i.e: "Dude thinks Android will overtake the iPhone by 2012". ...Yeah, and?
What's worse is that Wall Street plays this game daily to make non-news look like news, and to make bad news look like good news. Did your company lose money *again* this quarter? No worries, you still beat the expectation of some analyst, er "dude", somewhere.
This is non-news. Wake me up when Android actually makes a dent in the market. Some dude somewhere thinks it will? Great. Some other dude somewhere thinks the opposite. Must we write an article every time some moderately paid asshole has an opinion?
Re:Can we please stop quoting "Analysts"?? (Score:5, Funny)
i.e: "Dude thinks Android will overtake the iPhone by 2012". ...Yeah, and?
The Analyst abides.
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The dude who runs the "#1 site for free tarot and astrology?"
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---I've been an analyst. I've been a consultant. Does anyone realize how little it takes to be either of the two?---
No....
How do I get started? What does it pay? IMO I have an opinion on just about everything. And...I can be an asshole.
Where do I sign up for this gig?
As always, xkcd is relevant here (Score:4, Insightful)
3 words into the summary and its already (Score:2)
The Android may or may not overtake the iPhone, but we need real research, not Gartner crap, before we can say so definitively.
iPod Killer (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. That's what I thought. Talk to me when something is actually worth talking about.
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Since the article apparently talks about whole world picture (otherwise it wouldn't count Symbian as dominating the place) - iPod, worldwide, was just one of many mp3 players; and not very attractive/popular due to price. For some time it doesn't stand a chance against ordinary mobile phones, from which people usually listen to music on the go now.
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Anyone can create music that can be immediately used by fans on their iPods without subjecting each song to a lengthy and questionable approval process before having their songs solely available through Apple's storefront. Pick a better metaphor.
and the iTunes store was crushed by rivals in 2008 (Score:5, Insightful)
By that same logic, the iTunes store should have been crushed by rivals (amazon, walmart, emusic et al) in 2007. Guess what? Didn't happen that way. I think that android will gain marketshare, but most of it will be from Symbian and WinCE Mobile (or whatever they're calling it this year). Apple will also gain market share at an equal or greater pace, fueled by the advantage of the app store. Focused competition will beat apple (remember Palm vs Newton?), but unfocused, dispersed competition is going to have a hard time beating Apple at their own game.
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The summary talks about the market in which Symbian dominates. That means it isn't US-centric. On the scale of the world iTunes isn't that strong.
Also, why do you all forget about another possibility - that Android (and Symbian, and...) will grow mainly thanks to people moving en masse from feature phones to smartphones? You know, the latter are a very small part of the whole picture now. That will cheange when they will get cheaper. Symbian goes there. Android goes there. Other players...not so much. And A
Re:and the iTunes store was crushed by rivals in 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Focused competition will beat apple (remember Palm vs Newton?), but unfocused, dispersed competition is going to have a hard time beating Apple at their own game.
Each sector of a market has it's own influences. So it's a little tricky (if not downright self deceptive) to draw conclusions from one and apply it to another. That being said...
The PDA sector was different. The Newton was cutting edge - but it was part of an emerging market. Things really didn't take off until Palm introduced the right form factor. So while it isn't fair to say Palm invented the PDA, they really set the market. But then, that market has ceased to exist along with Palm's domination.
Another example with some parallels is the microcomputer market. Apple defined that market. They weren't the first microcomputer. But they were, at the least, among the first to treat it as a consumer device. They were the first platform for the killer microcomputer business app - the spreadsheet. A market exploded around them. And while they were challenged by IBM's entry in to that market (after IBM realized what was going on in a sector they ignored), it wasn't until IBM lost control of their platform and the "PC" became commodity did Apple get truly buried. This despite the (arguably) superior product of the Mac.
Again - this doesn't mean that what happened in the PDA market or the Personal Computer market is guaranteed to be repeated with mobile computing. But it does provide enough parallels to keep in consideration when trying to make an educated guess at the future.
Android + Shanzai = Number 1 (Score:3, Interesting)
If you've ever tried a KIRF $50 Chinese smartphone you'll see that all that has been missing is Android. The Shanzai ability to innovate in hardware is so powerful that I predict this is the future model for building phones, computers, and such.
All that's been missing is a decent free OS.
While the Shanzai firms take over most of the world's production of smartphones, and sell their designs and models to Nokia, Samsung, Apple, and Microsoft, they will also be taking over PMPs, netbooks, and god knows what else.
And finally we'll all be using $20 smartphones and $75 computers. I cannot wait.
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And finally we'll all be using $20 smartphones and $75 computers. I cannot wait.
And I can't wait to hire software engineers for $3500 a year. Of course, nobody is going to be employed in the US in any technical position anymore - why would they, when any company in the US just has their products stolen and copied cheaper in China. I guess there is also the idea that there isn't any point to paying anyone for software development because it is all free now, right?
Sure, you can have your cheap stuff. Just remember who is being paid to make it. Won't be you. Or your neighbor. Both o
Two Predictions (Score:4, Insightful)
I have 2 predictions for Android (though this might seem obvious to some people.)
First, if Android overtakes Apple, it will be because Android eats into the market share of other mobile handsets/OSes. It probably won't hurt Apple as much as other companies.
Second, Android probably won't overtake Apple any time soon. Having a single company means a focused business strategy. Having many companies involved means a market strategy that is unfocused and hard to define. For every 2 steps forward the Android companies make, they will take 1 step backwards. There are just too many disparate interests involved. If Android surpasses the iPhone, it will be long after 2012.
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Uhm, Symbian is used pretty much only by Nokia. Yes, there are other players, by their share is miniscule.
It likely has become no.1 thanks to what you hint at - low prices. I think people often got Symbian phone without really realising its capabilities, OS, even that it's a smartphone. Now that Nokia and Android devices makers start to push with even lower prices, into segment dominated now by feature phones, this will be how they grow, big time. They don't even have to steal marketshare from each other...
Here's where it lost me (Score:5, Interesting)
So Gartner is saying WinMo will grow. Based on what? Their last release 6.5 is being panned by many reviewers as window-dressing of 6.1 with few new features. The only thing that WinMo users can hope is that WinMo 7 will catch up to iPhone, Android, Palm OS, etc. But at the earliest this is a year away and no one has seen it yet. By that time, WinMo competitors are not likely to be sitting idle and will be continually updating their software.
Very large assumtion that (Score:2)
Gartner has a clue about what they are talking about.
NB: non cell phone user, so I really don't care who "wins".
Is that you Ballmer? (Score:5, Informative)
"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2007/04/ballmer-says-iphone-has-no-chance-to-gain-significant-market-share.ars [arstechnica.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Further proof that Ballmer is, and always will be, a complete buffoon.
What's that old maxim about opinions and assholes?
only 2 more years of unimaginable profit (Score:2)
drat!
OMFG are you kidding me?! (Score:2)
In what universe?! The only way that could happen is if Apple were to discontinue the iPhone. I think my comment history largely speaks for itself. I disapprove of the iPhone for a variety of reasons, but the public likes what it likes and we don't need to go into the causes. But the most powerful reason the public likes iPhone does not presently apply to Android. So unless they are predicting a huge and successful marketing push that would best Apple's, nothing will change the status quo we are seeing
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Actually, if we are talking about what is likely to be successful in the future, rather than what is successful right now, we do need to have some understanding of the causes of why the public likes what they like. Simply stating that "X is popular now, which means the public likes it and we don't need to examine why, and it will always, therefore, remain the most popular" doesn't
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Is Gartner Group a paid Microsoft shill? (Score:2)
Gartner declares Android a second place winner in 2012. Why?
> Looking into its crystal ball, Gartner Group has predicted that Google's Android will become the second largest smartphone platform by 2012. Problem is, nobody's talking about how terrible Gartner is at predicting things, or that Gartner's "research" has historically been paid for by special interests. So why the headlines?
> But calling Windows Mobile a dud at this point isn't very bold, even for Gartner, a group that has dutifully suckled
OK (Score:4, Funny)
Gartner's other claims... (Score:2)
I'm also an analyst! (Score:2)
And I predict that I will be rich, because there is this incredible hype around people giving me money for no reason!
Rich! RICH I tell you!
Unfortunately it will happen on the same day as the end of the world.
Oh, and I predict... (Score:2)
...that ol' big daddy Nokia will put those two fighting dwarf children in the opposite corners of the room until they behave again! ^^
Android vs. iPhone = Software vs. Hardware (Score:2)
IMHO it isn't really possible to compare a software product with a hardware/software product anyway... We're talking about two different things here.
I for one, welcome... (Score:2)
In my RSS reader, right above the previous headline "PhotoSketch Image Manipulation Tool Taking the World by Storm", I totally misread this as something like "Analysts predict androids overtake world by 2012" at first glance. ;)
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Well, if Android overtakes the the mobile version of OSX for smartphones and similar non-phone devices, it is more like the year of the Linux palmtop.