Android Passes iPhone In US Market Share 550
Adrian writes "61.5 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in November 2010, up 10 percent from the preceding three-month period. For the first time, more Americans are using phones running Google's Android operating system than Apple's iPhone, but RIM's BlackBerry is still in first place, according to comScore. RIM fell from 37.6 percent to 33.5 percent market share of smartphones, Google captured second place among smartphone platforms by moving from 19.6 percent to 26.0 percent of US smartphone subscribers, and Apple slipped to third despite its growth from 24.2 percent to 25.0 percent of the market. Microsoft, in fourth place, fell into single digits from 10.8 percent to 9.0 percent while Palm was still last and further slipped from 4.6 percent to 3.9 percent."
This is not unexpected, since Android sales have been outpacing iPhone sales for some time, but it happened significantly earlier than Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012.
Oh yeah? (Score:3, Informative)
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/apple-leads-smartphone-race-while-android-attracts-most-recent-customers/ [nielsen.com]
Obviously, someone is wrong on the Internet!
Re:Gartner's prediction: Q4 2012 (Score:4, Informative)
android already surpassed iphone in global market share. This happened quite a while ago. Look up smartphone on wikipedia
Re:History repeats itself (Score:3, Informative)
On second thought, they are making some money according to this URL. But 1bn a year is nothing compared to what Apple is making from iOS.
http://allaboutserver.net/google-android-revenue-now-running-at-1bn-per-year/
Re:Both are growing, however (Score:1, Informative)
Um...you can keep 'compressing' things in whatever algorithm (gzip, zip, rar, mp3, whatever), but eventually it won't make the file any smaller at all. All compression does is replace repeated sequences with a key to replace it and strip those duplicates out. As soon as the file lacks that sequenciality, there is no more stuff that can be simplified. And even if you could, the processor power to continuous decompress it out of all those recursive compressions would kill the battery life of any smartphone.
In short, you could NOT replicate what Google search does on hundreds of dedicated servers, with only a cell phone and an SD card.
Re:iTunes is most obnoxious sw ever (Score:5, Informative)
The feature is obvious:
* Plug in iPhone with iTunes open
* iPhone backs up automatically
If automatic syncing is turned off then do the following:
* Plug in iPhone
* Click iPhone in the left panel when it appears
* Click sync
The very first step of the sync process is backing up your phone, and it tells you it is doing that, every time you sync *unless* you sync shortly after already doing a full backup without disconnecting it or unlocking the phone with the slide control. The button is large and easy to see. And if the user has been using their phone "every week" then it will be immediately obvious.
Alternatively, if you want to use right click, you can do so by doing this:
* Plug in iPhone
* Right click on the iPhone when it appears in the left panel and select "back up".
Hunt around the net for how to back it up? Goodness me. Have you never used a computer before? It took you "over ten minutes" to find this? I'm amazed you managed to even register for a slashdot account. How did you find out how to submit the form?
Even if you had never used iTunes before, a computer literate person should have no trouble finding out how to back up an iPhone. I googled "how to back up iphone" also, and timed how long it took me to get to a page that told me how to do it: seven seconds, including the time it took me to open the tab and type the words and for the page to load. I could have shaved off some time by clicking "I'm feeling lucky" since I clicked on the top result, which was an Apple knowledgebase article.
Also, not to drag up that old flamebait nonsense, but the Mac has been supporting multi button mice since OS 8, and shipping with them since the mid 90s.
Re:Both are growing, however (Score:5, Informative)
It's also telling to note that Android is still growing whilst Iphone is stagnating.
Android +6.4%
Iphone +0.8%
So the Iphone only just managed to grow beyond Palms 0.7% loss in share. RIM and Microsoft lost 4.1% and 1.8% respectively. This was in August, the Iphone4 rush was still ongoing but some reports suggested that 4 out of every 5 Iphone4's sold replaced an older model Iphone.
What happens if these rates are maintained?
There's room for both Apple and Google (Score:5, Informative)
Apple is having amazing growth in smartphones also and the inclusion of more carriers in the US may help them some. I know a lot of people who just won't do business with AT&T even for an iPhone. There are a lot of Verizon customers who would like to give it a go. The share numbers don't exactly tell the whole tale either as the market for smartphones is also growing at an amazing pace. Apple makes a lot of money on every phone, they're selling a huge number of phones, and they're having huge growth. They should see a good bump when they open up to other carriers in the US. Their vast economies of scale are saving them on the Cost Of Goods Sold also. Any time Apple wants to take market share from Android all they have to do is indulge in that fragmentation bugaboo that seems to not be holding Android back and offer a variety of phones with different feature sets and price points for the folk who aren't a good fit for The iPhone. Frankly I hope they don't - they're consuming a large enough share of the world's production capacity for displays and Flash memory already.
But Google and Apple are not Microsoft. Neither of them has taken the position that for them to win everybody else has to lose. Their goal is not to own the market and use their dominance to suppress progress like it's some tech version of King of the Hill. Apple is going to take for the most part the premium end of the business and Android will take the volume. They'll each get a chunk of RIM's enterprise share. Every developer worth their salt is writing for both platforms now so they're getting some app-fusion going on. In the end there will be a lot more Android phones than Apple phones if for no other reason than not everybody in the world can afford an iPhone and the iPhone feature set doesn't meet everybody's needs and can't, no matter how awesome that feature set is because people have conflicting needs. Some people need battery life, some daylight-readable displays, some huge storage, some need low price, some need a physical keyboard, some want the thinnest possible phone. Apple will get a bunch of dollars, Google will get many more dimes and it will work out well for both. They'll both innovate as fast as they can to compete with each other, so we all win.
Everybody else though? It sucks to be you. You can't have the premium end, you can't have the volume end. You can't crack enough market share to get good developers because one cheesy breakout app on iOS and Android (Angry Birds [rovio.com]) moved 50 million units and that's the KaChing lotto developers are looking for. You can't get the mobile ad dollars either. If you create a niche hardware feature it'll be on an Android phone in six months. If you create a useful evolution of the user interface it'll be a UI skin available on both iOS and Android with a dozen competing versions in three weeks ranging in price from ten dollars to free, and the developers will make more money on the skin than you will on the platform. Apple and Google have between them got this thing sewn up. Just to make it completely unfair those app and media stores and the Google home page are awesome places from which to sell the next generation products that latecomers are not going to have access to.
Tablets? I don't see any reason why the same story shouldn't play out there. Android's getting a late start like it did with phones, but there's only one iPad just like there's only a couple models of iPhone. There are hundreds of Android slates coming out to hit every price point and feature desired. They're not quite too late to the party. Apple should get the premium end again with the lion's share of the profits at a good margin because they have the innovator's advantage, the product is damn good, and the iPad 2 will be even better. Android should get the volume again and have to work harder for their money but rake it in too. By the time a credible third player shows up we
Meanwhile in the rest of the world... (Score:4, Informative)
The global numbers are more amusing. Over the year, Nokia/Symbian has retained its majority market share, only dropping 7% in a market that has grown 64%; with Android and iOS more or less in equal competition for second place. (Source [asymco.com])
For some reason the discussion on the completely distorted US marketplace is amusing. But I question the relevance.
And finally, let me add that I vastly prefer my phone run an operating system that is designed to run phones, not an app or advertising channel primarily, no matter how shiny it looks.
Mart
Re:It's funny (Score:4, Informative)
"So what is making all these other people choose Android phones instead of iPhones, assuming they don't share my unique background and prejudices? "
The answer to your question is quite obvious. People are choosing Android because they are not having the same experience you claim to have had, instead they are quite enjoying Android even when switching from iPhone like myself.
I don't know what god forsaken Android device you purchased, but I haven't rebooted my htc incredible in weeks, and even then it only rebooted because i forgot to charge it two days in a row and it ran out of juice. I've never had any issue with stability. Nothing random or strange has ever, ever happened on my phone. In fact, it's much more stable than my iPhone ever was.
Re:The iPhone commands a huge market.... (Score:4, Informative)
But look at the UK, where the iPhone is on every major network. Apple is currently stable at about 30% (although the article seems to write it as a large gain for Apple) and Android's growth is skyrocketing.
http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2010/12/symbian-still-leads-uk-smartphone-market-but-apple-and-google-are-gaining/ [comscoredatamine.com]
Re:Many vs. one. . . (Score:4, Informative)
OK, I'm tired of people acting like Android isn't locked down to the end user as much as the iPhone is.
It's not an act. My Android phone allows me to install any application software I like, from any source, without having to jailbreak it or engage in any kind of hackery. The iPhone does not. Same goes for every T-Mobile Android phone. The only locked down Android phone is one of AT&T's.
Re:Verizon iPhone data plan (Score:4, Informative)
It almost certainly won't be, at least this year. My bet is a GSM/CDMA "iPhone 5" model (using the Qualcomm dual-transmitter chip) that runs on any US network this year, with a 4G "iPhone 6" next year, or perhaps with "iPhone 7" in 2013 (which, coincidentally, is when Verizon predicts their LTE coverage will "match current 3G area.")
The LTE chips are still very power-hungry, which means you either carry around a big battery pack, or you get sub-par battery life when 4G is active. It's also available in only a couple dozen cities around the US so far, with plans for "aggressive growth" this year and next. Early adopters may want the 4G, but that feature is pretty pointless outside of a fairly small number of urban areas. My guess is Apple doesn't want to limit itself to 10% of Verizon's customers, and will push for an initial release that will appeal to lots of people - a 3G-capable phone. I suspect we'll see one GSM & CDMA version, rather than two separate "Verizon" and "AT&T" versions, because Apple tends to favor simplicity in its product lineup, with a few key differentiators that are easily grasped: 16/32GB; Black/White. I don't see them willingly entering into a "Black/White, 16/32, GSM/CDMA, 3G/4G" type of model lineup - gets too confusing too quickly for customers.
Of course, this is just pure speculation, but I think it's the most likely course, given Apple's recent history and current product lineup.