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."
Re:Symbian and Windows Mobile (Score:1, Informative)
> I wish Symbian would die already, its a horrible system and all apps require certification from Symbian if other users want to run them.
This is not true at all. You will need a signing key IF your application needs to be able to interface with the phone book or such, but all other things like bluetooth or wlan/3g and everything else works without.
I do agree that Symbian C++ is terrible however. Or at least was before they ported STL to it.
Re:Symbian and Windows Mobile (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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:I dont' see it this way (Score:1, Informative)
My bet is on Nokia becoming #1: http://maemocentral.com/2009/10/09/unboxing-the-nokia-n900/ [maemocentral.com]
They allready are...
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.
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...
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:3, Informative)
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, explains it as follows: "[[With GSM]] the RF transmitter is turned on/off at a fast rate, and that 'pulsing' is often picked up by nearby devices that don't have good RF shielding. In the case of GSM the pulse rate is 217 Hz, which can be easily heard.""
In the EU the must shield computer speaker cables which in the US really isn't needed as much since CDMA phones are a lot more popular and do not cause that interference.
Of course if GSM didn't use a pulse rate in the audio range that would fix it as well.
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.
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:3, Informative)
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 do in my opinion is to set themselves up in opposition to Apple as a more open, welcoming alternative, which is on the side of the consumer and is not indifferent to users and downright hostile to outside developers (as Apple occasionally is).
Re:I dont' see it this way (Score:4, Informative)