Android Phone Demand Up 250%, iPhone Down 445
CWmike writes "A 'monstrous' jump in demand for Android-equipped smartphones has turned the market upside down, according to a retail pollster. Of the people who told ChangeWave Research in a mid-December survey that they planned to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days, 21% said they expected to purchase an Android phone. That number represented a 250% increase over the 6% that pegged Android as their mobile OS of choice when ChangeWave last queried consumers' plans in September. 'That change rivals anything that we've seen in the last three years of the smartphone market,' said Paul Carton, ChangeWave's director of research, adding that the sudden surge in consumer interest in Android had 'roiled' the market. 'This is an indication that Android has finally caught consumer interest,' added Carton, who cited the recent advertising campaign for the Motorola Droid smartphone as the reason why interest in Android has skyrocketed. Android's leap translated into good news for Motorola and HTC, the most prominent makers of Google-powered handsets, with the former reaping most of the benefit. Motorola's share of smartphone purchases in the next 90 days shot up from 1% in September to 13% in December. Carton tagged the company's Droid as the reason. '[It's] the first increase for Motorola we've seen in three years,' Carton said." Here is the ChangeWave report.
Re:Android sales since 2007 are up ERROR%! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes... share growth is a useless metric for a new offering. Whats 350% of nothing? Still nothing. How about giving us the market share instead.
Umm... (Score:2, Insightful)
I plan on writing a post after I write the subject (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like real data to confirm the survey (Score:5, Insightful)
Not What We're Looking At (Score:3, Insightful)
The number that changed a lot was people who were planning to buy a new smartphone in the next 90 days. Of these, 21% said they prefer a phone running Android. (That's up from 6% in September.) 28% said they prefer an iPhone, down from 32% in September. Windows Mobile and Palm's percentages also shrank over the last 3 months.
Re:I plan on writing a post after I write the subj (Score:0, Insightful)
Alternative headline (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this finding is more related to that fact that the only half-decent smartphone is currently limited to iPhone on AT&T. (Sorry Blackberry/Palm/HTC---no lightsaber app means that you're less than half decent B-)
Re:I am not surprised (Score:1, Insightful)
What's so hard about plugging it in when you go to sleep? I've done that with every phone I've ever owned, because I like starting every day with a full charge. Once a month or so I let it run all the way down just to keep the battery exercised, but I've never seen it as a hardship to charge every night.
Re:I am not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want to have to remember to bring a charger when I visit the in-laws for the weekend or travel for a meeting. Unless I'm going somewhere for >4 days I can leave the charger at home.
Re:I am not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
I sleep 6-8 hours a day and rarely use my iPhone while doing so. Like many clock radio these days, I got mine with an iPod/iPhone dock that charges it and/or plays music from it and it's sitting by my bed. It's really not that hard considering the utility it provides.
Re:I plan on writing a post after I write the subj (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I am not surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Googles-to-Apples Comparison (Score:2, Insightful)
As I joked about elsewhere... it's easy to get a positive infinite percentage of growth when you're starting at zero, you just need one. Apple has the most to lose right now because they have the largest share. The only other player in the survey to move up was Palm, and that was a mere 1% on the chart. Everybody else lost when Google moved in, which is kind of unavoidable because their percentage had to come from somewhere.
Why wasn't the graph in hard numbers rather than percents?
Re:Competition works (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe Apple will finally get it through their heads and open up the iPhone for real development...
Oh gawd, when are people going to get it. Just because it's important to you does not mean it's important to 99.99% of the other people out there. Hell, I'm a geek and it isn't important to me. Most people don't give a rat's ass about the iPhone not being an open platform. Hell, a vast, significant majority of people don't even know what an open platform is...
Except when markets fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine that! Competition works!
I hear that's why the US has such fast internet and cheap, reliable telephony service, both with excellent customer service of course, especially compared to the EU and Japan.
</sarcasm>
Sorry if I'm pushing it here. It's just striking to hear about the abuse US ISP and telecomms customers (apparently) have to put up with, compared to what I experience in Denmark.
On the other hand, your government isn't doing much better than failing markets. For instance, take a listen to a recent EconTalk episode about market failures and government failures at http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/12/winston_on_mark.html [econtalk.org]
In summary: it's the lobbyists.
If I recall correctly, the guest, Winston, only looked at government failure in the US. Extrapolating from there to government failure in general might be a wee bit hasty.
The really provocative statement would be that right-wingers don't get that government intervention is the right solution in theory, what left-wingers don't get is that it rarely works in practice, and the elephant in the room nobody is doing anything about is that the lobbyists screw up The Right Thing, making it Not The Right Thing, and so nothing works (as well as it could).
Re:I plan on writing a post after I write the subj (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably, because that's what "demand" implies?
Maybe, but while opinion surveys can be interesting, they aren't very good indicators of actual behavior. If I asked 4,000 people whether they planned to buy a second Bible in the next 90 days -- for their children -- I bet a lot of people would answer yes. How many of them would actually go out and do it?
Part of "demand" in the economics sense is not just wanting something, but willingness to pay for something. It doesn't matter what people say; if nobody is actually buying a product, there's no demand.
It's also extremely important to understand the sampling method in a study like this (which is probably why so many of them neglect to discuss their methods). Where did the people surveyed come from? How was the sample selected? At random? How random? From the phone book? From a Web site? Were the participants self-selecting (i.e. you're only surveying people who were demonstrably interested to begin with)? Obtaining a representative statistical sample may not be a "science," as such, but it's darn close.
There are also such things as leading questions. What if the question on this survey wasn't phrased the way it's stated in the report? What if they just asked, "Who is your preferred smartphone operating system vendor: Apple, RIM, Symbian, Microsoft, or Google?" Apple fans would immediately say Apple; everybody else would say Google. The typical consumer doesn't realize that when you're asking them if they want a smartphone with a RIM OS, what you're really asking them is whether they want a BlackBerry. (And judging from my own, purely anecdotal survey -- looking around me when I'm waiting in line for something -- a lot of people do want one.)
Some people also answer "yes" to surveys because they're secretly hoping they will get something for free. Sometimes it's not so secret; what if everybody who participated in this survey got a $20 off coupon for any smartphone they wanted from Verizon. Which phone would they be thinking about while they did the survey?
They say "lies, damn lies, and statistics" because it's easy to make numbers say pretty much anything you want -- especially if you aren't sticking to sound statistical principles. In my experience, fly-by-night marketing firms seldom do. It doesn't pay the bills.
Re:java/android sdk/eclipse programming howto (Score:3, Insightful)
The deal with catching the wave of any technology is to be at your best as the wave starts to happen, to already be where the action is as it happens, not to look at it from the beach once it's already happening (read: nearly over) and wish you'd had grabbed your board and gave it a go.
Sorry guy, or guy's friend, you have to put in your hours before the market knows that what you're doings is a market. There is no fast path to success if you're building your own merchandise.
Re:Android sales since 2007 are up ERROR%! (Score:5, Insightful)
For a brand new product vs an iconic powerhouse, that is little short of amazing.
Re:Except when markets fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Your examples are fallacious. Internet and telephone are heavily regulated in the U.S. worse yet, they are also monopolies (that's the exact opposite of a free market, where competition -- my original point -- exists). I lived in Europe too...for most of my life. Stuff is cheap there because landlines/telecom are often heavily subsidized by governments through high taxation.
I am not willing to pay $5 a month for a 100 meg line to the Internet and have 50% of my paycheck taken away. I will happily pay $100 a month for my fast connection...you pay for your own internet, wireless, etc.
Oh, and as far as "markets fail" - every market that failed in the US in the past 2 years or so was heavily subsidized and had marked government involvement. Throw in some examples if you have any, I am curious so see what un-regulated, un-subsidized private market failed?
Re:Now 5 people use em! (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you're comparing a third-generation iPhone with a first generation Android phone?
Re:I am not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
A perfect example of how feeling trumps logic is your assertion that charging daily takes a lot of time and attention. In fact it only takes 30 seconds of attention in the evening to plug your phone in, it is not something that should logically seem like a problem, and yet somehow it has created this loathing inside of you. That doesn't make any sense at all, and yet it is real (note: this doesn't apply if you actually use your phone so much that you have to charge it three times a day, but that isn't a problem for typical users, the type you were referring to).
Alternative Title: (Score:1, Insightful)
Verizon Finally Gets Credible SmartPhone
Seriously folks, this is pretty self-evident stuff. Verizon has been suffering for the lack of a credible smart phone offering (yeah, yeah WinMo and Palm Centros don't really count). Now they have one. Many cell customers are wedded to Verizon as a carrier and won't switch. Voila! Interest in Android spikes. What will really get interesting is when consumers can choose between Android, Palm Pre and iPhone all from the same carrier. Which will they choose then? That's what I'm waiting for.
Re:Now 5 people use em! (Score:4, Insightful)
So, you're comparing a third-generation iPhone with a first generation Android phone?
From an engineering perspective, that's a fair criticism, but not from a marketing one. When I go into the respective stores, I have a choice between a third gen and a first gen product.
Re:I am not surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
You are ignorant if you can't find lots of reasons why the iPhone is better than lots of phones. It doesn't have to the best phone out there, just better than phones most people currently have.
Have you heard of the app store, genius? There is nothing like it before. It was tricky in the past to get some app on phones, even for me. You have to get the right jar file, use Activesync, put it in the right place, then discover it doesn't support your screen res.
That is just one aspect. Are you really that fucking ignorant?
And most people go to sleep every night, so charging isn't a big deal. My iPhone will last two days without a charge.
Re:I am not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the answers are obvious; I'm not sure what's unsatisfying about them. It works well. It's not complicated to set up. It's functional as an iPod, which lots of people already owned. The web browser renders pages normally, the way a desktop computer would. It's mail application connects to mail servers normally, the way a desktop application would. "Visual voicemail" works the way voicemail should work-- no more "if you would like to listen to this message, please press 1". Apple proved that a touchscreen can work on a phone if it's executed properly. If you own a Mac and use iTunes already, then the phone will integrate extraordinarily well with your system in a convenient way. The iPhone had 8GB of storage built in for audio and video when most phones came with something more like 32 megs of internal storage. Apple managed to get a large set of developers to produce applications for their phone. The interface is simple and elegant, pretty, and responsive.
Android's success doesn't surprise me either. In a lot of ways, I think it's a validation of Apple's approach, and it proves that Apple's success wasn't simply based on hype and trendiness. The Android phones that are now enjoying success actually resemble the iPhone much more than any of the pre-iPhone smartphones. Look at the iPhone and the Motorola Q, and ask yourself which smartphone the Droid has more in common with. Apple was successful because they made a well designed product. Now Motorola is enjoying success because they've made a well designed product.
Re:250%??? (Score:3, Insightful)
I take it you didn't read the part about 6% of people polled wanting an Android smartphone to 21% of people polled wanting an Android smartphone.
6 * 3.5 = 21.
(remember, a 250% increase represents 3.5 times as much as the previous number)
Re:I am not surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
I often wondered what was so special about the iPhone. I have never got a satisfying answer.
If you're saying the iPhone isn't appealing to you, great. Fine. Whatever. Have some free mod points from people who agree with you.
If you're saying you don't understand people-- if you're saying you honestly try to put yourself in other folks' shoes, try to empathize with them, try to see why they love what they love, but you just can't-- well, congratulations, you're a geek. You've come to the right place.
Lies, damn lies, and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, so demand for a phone that has sold tens of millions of units in the 2.5 years it's been out is leveling off, and demand for a newer phone that has sold far fewer units is growing? Stop the presses!
Re:iPhone maxed out (Score:5, Insightful)
When the market for the iPhone is saturated, then of course it's market share will drop when some new do-dad comes out.
Except the market for the iPhone is not really saturated. It's the market for the iPhone on AT&T's network that's saturated. I bet nearly everyone reading this post knows at least one person who drools over the iPhone but would sooner take a hot poker in the eye than switch to AT&T to get it.
When Apple opens up the iPhone to other carriers in the US, iPhone adoption will skyrocket due to that pent-up demand. And they are definitely going to open it up to other carriers as soon as the latest exclusivity agreement expires-- because AT&T has dragged them down long enough, and because other carriers will give Apple what they want, now that they have seen the success it brought to AT&T despite their sub-par network.
~Philly
Die Microsoft die. Long live Android. (Score:5, Insightful)
iPhone = AT&T, Android = Everything else (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Competition works (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Except when markets fail (Score:2, Insightful)
When a politician assigns economic benefits to corporations through his or her political standing, that's crony capitalism [wikipedia.org] and it has little or nothing in common with free markets [wikipedia.org] where only fraud and violence is regulated, while property is being freely exchanged by individuals and organizations.
Currently the U.S. is not a free-market economy; it is a crony-capitalist and mixed-market economy where a new class of wealthy elites control the masses through the political class and/or political donations. When people blame "free markets" for the recent economic collapse, they usually talk through their asses. Example: Michael Moore's anti capitalism film - perfect strawman attack.
Re:Competition works (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it's a Free as in Consumer and Business issue. People should be free to buy products that suit their needs without government interference and businesses should be free to implement a business model without government interference.
Apple has a piece of hardware and software that people want to buy, but people like you want to interfere.
I should be free to buy what I want.
Re:Android sales since 2007 are up ERROR%! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes and no. The iPhone hasn't changed much since it's inception. It was huge when it was new. Now the improvements are incremental. Makes sense that a new phone with similar capabilities, a fresh face, new paint, and unknown possibilities will evoke keen interest. Time will tell of course. Until the actual sales numbers, rather than intent are in, this is worrisome, but hardly crushing news for Apple.
Re:Except when markets fail (Score:3, Insightful)
AFAIK all landlines/telcom the world over are heavily subsidized by governments including (AFAIK) the USofA --even if only in startup capital and/or right-of-ways. The only remaining question is whether you or a CEO is keeping/reaping the benefits of said subsidy?
Please tell me of this land where there is a 50% tax rate where 100% (hell, a measurable/relevant percentage!) of said tax goes to subsidizing Internet/telephony? I suspect that while you have lived in lands where 50% tax is common (I do) a barely measurable percentage of that pays for Internet. I suggest that most taxes in such countries goes to health care and defense (aka: military).
so, again, the only remaining question is whether you or a CEO is keeping/reaping the benefits of said subsidy? Stop drinking the KoolAid.
Re:Except when markets fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Mobile telephony in the US: expensive, poor phone choices, consumer lock-in. Mostly an unregulated market. Pretty much the only major regulation imposed on mobile carriers here in the past decade was number portability, and that was a boon for consumers. Compare that to Europe: cheaper plans and can take your phone to any carrier. Not to mention much better coverage. That's what a smartly regulated market looks like.
On the other hand, poor regulation can lead to monopolies/duopolies, like the ones we enjoy for broadband net access in the US.
Re:Googles-to-Apples Comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple will lose this fight because they made 3 big mistakes:
As it stands, Android will be capable of gaining a lot of ground in the coming year and dare I say even be dominant in 12 months time as contracts expire. Hell, if Palm can pull some decent hardware out of their asses for their nice new OS, they might even finally be able to gain some ground too.
Re:250%??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows Mobile post 6.0 has one feature I wish Android had. The ability to encrypt everything on a memory card. This way, should a device be stolen, it would erase itself by too many wrong password guesses, or erase itself if told to, and the items on the memory card would be useless to the thief.
This is very easy to do in Linux, either via a filesystem method (encfs), or just block loopback encryption.
I just wish this was implemented properly, so when an Android phone tells an Exchange server it supports encryption; it actually does.
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Insightful)
>> Like Mac in the desktop/laptop/netbook market? Or like Safari in browser market? ...and with only a 15 year head start too.
>
> Mac hasn't entered the netbook market (yet).
> In the other two, Mac is far ahead of Linux
None of what you said is so (Score:4, Insightful)
Symbian, J2ME, Windows Mobile are "open" because they have a very paranoid security model which some hate.
And so, too, does the iPhone.
iPhone has nothing of that sort, there is no "Apple signed" scheme
Just how do you think app store apps run anyway? All apps coming from the app store are signed by the developer, using an Apple generated certificate. Just try running an unsigned app on a non-jailbroken phone. Springboard (the app launcher) will not run it.
All apps run in a sandbox (unless you jailbreak) and cannot get to the system. There's that "paranoid security model" you claim they do not have.
I can't really picture Apple allowing 2-3 resident apps
Well sure, because it eats into battery life. It's pretty ironic to take down the lifespan of your device by an hour just to have a battery measurement app wake up the processor every few seconds... I can understand why people want background apps but actually notifications are a decent compromise for users so they can have a somewhat predictable battery experience. For instance, there are already a number of IM apps that use notifications for this and are thus essentially "running all the time" as far as the user is concerned.
Re:Now 5 people use em! (Score:3, Insightful)
Currently Android platform is a balkanized mess and it's going to get much worse as every Asian device manufacturer gets onboard (wait for CES to see the Android flood). But try writing an app for the platform. Which OS do you target? 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.soon? Which handset do you target? Should it have both capacitive and resistive soft buttons? How many handsets will use multi-touch? What kind of artwork should I use to display a crisp image? Do I start off with a WVGA resolution and scale it down for every other resolution so it doesn't look like dogshit? Does it have an accelerometer? Et al.
Coding for an android platform is like shooting at a moving target that constantly changes it's shape. As a developer I can get behind the whole "open" aspect of Android, but open doesn't pay bills.
Also, as long as HTC and Motorola create their own phone UIs there is little chance of Android actually being something more than a glorified embedded linux kernel for powering vendor-specific mobile devices. I prefer iPhone's top-down approach where manufacturer control directly translates into 3rd party developer control. The idea of side-loading apps is really overrated because that model has been tried before and it didn't reach critical mass.
Both will die in the long run (Score:3, Insightful)
Both systems will probably die in the long run as they will be replaced by normal operating system. The iPhone already officially runs on MacOSX, but because of stupid marketing decisions it's not open. The Android is marketed as a Linux device, but instead is just running a proprietary flavour of Linux which is barely compatible with anything. It doesn't even use X11!
So I predict that in the future, people who actually care about what their phones can do (which is a minority) will probably run some kind of stripped down normal OS. Early devices implementing this are the Maemo ones which is essentially a stripped down Debian. It's probably already possible to share repositories with Ubuntu ARM. (need to try that)
Re:Now 5 people use em! (Score:3, Insightful)
So, basically not different than coding for the normal computer... Different display sizes, different hardware, different everything.
Also, it's not just the Android platform, it's the same for every programmable handset. Coding for Windows Mobile? Just the same. Coding for Symbian? Just the same. Coding Java midlets? Just the same.
Re:Now 5 people use em! (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell even for iPhone it's the same. Plenty of apps require a specific version of the iPhone OS. I've had to update the OS on my iPod Touch once to run an app, and the update completely hosed the thing. I was able to boot back to default settings and resync, but all access point settings and user preferences and such had to be reconfigured. Wasn't fun. I'm on 3.1.1 now (3.2 is out but I'm timid about the upgrade), but if I see anything that requires anything newer than that I'm just holding off.
In regards to the GP's "open doesn't pay the bills" statement though, I'm counting on the opposite. Whether it's going to be fun or easy to code for remains to be seen, but it's already obvious that the demand is there for Android phones, which will pretty much mean that there's going to be demand for Android apps. Which do you think is going to be a more lucrative market? The already over-saturated platform that's so easy to code for that a monkey can do it, or the slightly harder platform with fewer apps?
I wrote a few iPhone apps just to play around with the coding. Never published anything to the app store though. Android however, is a different story. I've got 4-5 apps already planned out.