Android Outsells iPhone In Last 6 Months 514
tomhudson writes "Despite all the hype about Apple's latest iPhone, Android has sold more in the last 6 months (27% of all smartphone sales) than Apple (23%). The gains for Android are coming at the expense of RIM (still #1 at 33%, down from 45% a year ago), Windows Mobile (11%, down from 20%) and the iPhone (down from 34% at it's peak 6 months ago). If the current trend continues, Android is expected to be #1 within the year."
Already #1 in the US market (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:5, Insightful)
Notes:
- numbers are for new devices only (not total market share)
- does not include iPhone 4 - not a lot of people would buy an iPhone 3 in Q2 when new model was expected shortly
More interesting will be Q2 and Q3 totals combined when Q3 numbers are available. Then put BB6 and WP7 in the mix by year's end and it will get really interesting.
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Also note, that iPhone infers an actual model differing only in capacity depending on time reference. An iPhone now implies iPhone 4, last year, a 3GS, etc.
Android is just an OS with lots of different models. It's actually surprising that one device has that much dominance.
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure people in the comments will conveniently ignore those facts, especially the one about not including iPhone 4 sales. Many analysts say the iPhone 4 leak hampered 3GS sales because customers were waiting for the new model. Also, it's bizarre to be comparing an OS to one device. It's more accurate to compare Android to iOS, which would then include the iPad.
iPhone 4 + iPad = more than Android, sorry.
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:5, Interesting)
...but then ignoring non-phone Android devices is fine?
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more accurate to compare Android to iOS, which would then include the iPad.
No, it's a valid comparison - the category is smartphone OS market share, which is a perfectly valid and meaningful category.
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I'm sure people in the comments will conveniently ignore those facts, especially the one about not including iPhone 4 sales. Many analysts say the iPhone 4 leak hampered 3GS sales because customers were waiting for the new model. Also, it's bizarre to be comparing an OS to one device. It's more accurate to compare Android to iOS, which would then include the iPad.
iPhone 4 + iPad = more than Android, sorry.
Nor does it include the new batch of Android based phones that just came out (check Verizon for a bunch), so big deal. I suspect if it did, then Android phone lead would increase.
And since we are discussing smartphones which is prominently mentioned in each article title and the article itself, then it would be ludicrous to include iPads and the iPod Touch (or non-phone Android devices).
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:5, Insightful)
IN THE QUARTER. In the quarter. It's the biggest platform IN THE QUARTER.
Rather than admonishing other people to read your links, please read the story that you're talking about. They haven't caught up to anyone yet, they're just selling faster.
Ignore the 851% figure because it's meaningless. If I sell 1 phone in my first quarter and TEN phones in my second quarter, that's a growth of 1000% per quarter! All it tells us is that Android didn't have much market penetration before and it's up now.
In the end, this isn't news. There are MANY manufacturers using Android as a platform and only Apple using iOS as a platform. Apple is tied to the most hated major network in America, and Android isn't. The actual question is 'what took them so dang long?'
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It's true that the Android platform is becoming dominant. But it is interesting (admirable?) that the iPhones are still by far the most popular smartphone devices.
Great for Android/Google/HTC/Motorola/Samsung, but certainly nothing to worry about for Apple. People are willing to pay a premium for consistent, well-designed, well-supported stuff, even if the guy who runs the company is a little arrogant. He gets the job done.
Requisite snarky jab at Apple users: Why does it seem as if even though people prefer
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:4, Insightful)
And Apple may be the biggest individual seller of desktop computers (it was for a while, ISTR, don't know if that's still true) but the fact that MacOS has far less penetration than Windows means that MacOS is far less attractive for many application developers.
If the same thing happens with the mobile space, it will make native iOS apps less attractive to developers than other choices. Which has a feedback effect, as the decrease in iPhone-specific apps will reduce the incentive to buy into the platform for the apps.
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:4, Insightful)
The smartphone market in the US is consequently just starting to get going. And it shouldn't be shocking that Android with it's increasingly diverse set of options would be overtaking the iPhone and it's limited selection.
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:4, Insightful)
Blackberry has what, 4 current lines. iPhone only has one, most of the time. There are numerous Android phones on every carrier, pretty much.
And even people who want the iPhone can't get the latest one without spending a month on a waiting list, or I think their numbers would be higher. (Though this applies to Android in some devices like the Droid X or the HTC EVO).
It's most telling that Palm is flatlining and Windows Mobile has lost half of its already meager market share in the past year.
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:4, Interesting)
> It's most telling that Palm is flatlining and Windows Mobile has lost half of its already
> meager market share in the past year.
Are you counting people who own phones that were sold with Windows Mobile, but are now running Android (like the HTC Touch HD2)? The HD2 debacle will go down in tech history as one of Microsoft's worst marketing/business decisions in history. Here's a phone that was eagerly embraced by Microsoft's few remaining enthusiasts, even as their friends and peers ran for the door marked "Android", only to get its owners metaphorically kicked in the balls by Microsoft on what was probably the lamest pretense for non-compatibility *ever* (it had four buttons instead of three).
Microsoft could hardly have done a better job of driving its few remaining friends into the Android camp if they'd personally rebranded MSDN as an Android portal & given a free Nexus One to everybody who attended a Microsoft event in 2010.
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:4, Insightful)
That's just not a winning fight for Apple. And even if they added other carries, the other carries are already selling the other devices. Apple's 1.5 product releases a year won't keep up. The installed user base won't keep up. The innovation won't keep up. I'll be honest, people keep talking about an iPhone on Verizon. I just don't see it happening. Verizon seems to be doing pretty good with Android right now.
So why it's not a valid comparison or whether it is or not, doesn't matter. The end game right now is bad for apple.
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:5, Insightful)
That was exactly my point and Windows vs. Mac is a good example. This is about as relevant as saying that Windows sells more OS in a quater than Mac. It's just kind of a 'duh' statement. Although Apple is extremely popular in the smartphone segment, they are only a single company. They can't hope to compete with every other smartphone vendor releasing an Android phone.
This would be significant if it was a 'Droid X outsells iPhone' headline. Instead, they are grouping a slew of hardware models together into one big group who happen to all use the same base OS, and then comparing them to a handset that only comes on a single piece of hardware from a single vendor.
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of market share reports isn't like a sporting even where you cheer for your favorite team (fanboyism), but to help people understand the big picture of what is happening in the market.
For example: I need to migrate an enterprise application to a handheld computer platform, and this report makes me think I should start hiring engineers with knowledge of android instead of iOS or Windows Mobile developers.
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You don't get it. You think it's about hardware and you're completely wrong. It's about software, more specifically, OS. It doesn't matter how many of any given phone is sold, it's about how many phones with a given OS are sold.
They can't hope to compete with every other smartphone vendor releasing an Android phone.
They could compete if they wanted to. They don't have to be typical tyrannical Apple and insist on controlling everything about the phone. They could easily license iOS to other companies to make iOS phones and still have the iPhone as a separate phone (like how Google did with
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, none of the big names ship their best phones to the US, sadly enough, except for Apple. One can just look at the phones offered in markets like South Korea or Japan to see what should be here in the US. Those places, there is actual broadcast TV that people can easily watch (without being dependent on the data bandwidth.)
Until Apple came out with the iPhone and woke people up in the US, when I showed them what a smartphone was able to do, the response was mainly, "who cares about Bluetooth or E-mail. I just want a phone that is thin and makes calls. Any more and that is what a laptop is for." Ironic how things change. It wasn't that long ago when everyone was lusting after RAZR models and people with smartphones were either geeks or corporate execs.
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It's probably largely due to the fact that until around the time the iPhone hit the market, US smartphones were mostly limited to ugly hunks of plastic like the Treo 650, Blackberry 8700 series, or various Symbian bricks, and they generally didn't have particularly remarkable web browsing or media playing capabilities.
It wasn't until Apple came along and thrust style (and admittedly, usability) to the forefront of smartphone design that the non-business market really started to pay attention. Say what you w
Symbian and RIM growing faster than Apple (Score:3, Informative)
I understand that Nokia makes some excellent hardware, but with the explosion in popularity of Android and iOS, it seems we have two winning platforms here, and it's almost too late for anyone else to catch up. RIM had something good going, but they're losing out big time.
The market data disagrees with you. Even on current sales, Nokia are still number one, with RIM number two. In the US, Nokia have no presence (and they never have, so this wasn't them losing out to the Iphones or Android), but RIM are stil
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Out of curiousity, what do people typically have for business phones in Europe? Nokia?
My impression in America is that almost no one has a Blackberry for their personal phone, but that nearly every business smartphone is a Blackberry.
(Which also explains why it's interesting to talk about iPhone vs. Android -- they're currently seen as more "personal" phones, whereas Blackberry's market dominance is largely based on businesses, a market in which neither is remotely competitive with Blackberry yet.)
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iPhone vs. Android -- they're currently seen as more "personal" phones, whereas Blackberry's market dominance is largely based on businesses, a market in which neither is remotely competitive with Blackberry yet
At the company where I work, tons of my co-workers have picked up the iPhone. Corporate IT has been forced to offer Outlook email integration for iPhone in addition to Blackberry (they offer no such support for any other smartphone OS, including Palm, Android, and Windows). I'm happy to stick with my Blackberry as it does everything I want in a smartphone, but to say none of the others are remotely competitive is to ignore the reality on the ground.
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Obviously we're trading anecdotes here, but I've yet to encounter a business iPhone.
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Obviously we're trading anecdotes here, but I've yet to encounter a business iPhone.
I work with a 35 employee Photo Studio / Equipment retailer they are 100% iPhone users. I don't guess I know what you mean by "Business" iPhone, but by my definition those phones are all "business" iPhones. The manage communications, scheduling, billing, etceteras on their phones, communication with the corporate servers, the production system for the service bureau, and the sales and delivery systems. I can't imagine what else they'd need the iPhone to do to get labeled as a "business" class phone, or wh
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In our company, any smartphone under the sun is supported. Until September, when we start enforcing passwords, remote encryption/wiping abilities, etc.
Pretty much every major smart phone made in the last couple of years supports these features, except Android based phones.
People are very upset that their very nice Drod's will stop working soon, and they still have over a year on their phone contracts. (many people get re-imbursed by the company for monthly expenses).
Microsoft has published their spec for
Re:Already #1 in the US market (Score:5, Informative)
Eh? Android does support ActiveSync. It just that prior to 2.2, it didn't enforce all the corporate security policies of ActiveSync. See Feature Enhancement Request 4475 [google.com] and see this article [informationweek.com] for a summary of related changes in 2.2.
2.2 seems to address most of the password/security policy issues with ActiveSync. I have 2.2 running on my Nexus One, but don't use Exchange server, so can't comment here.
For Droid owners, the update to 2.2 is supposed to come out officially this week [androidcommunity.com], though I'm pretty sure there are unofficial 2.2 ROMs out there already. So basically, what you are talking about is no longer an issue, or at least not a particularly significant one.
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Ok
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After almost 20 years (Score:5, Insightful)
Turns out Linux doesn't suck and it is good for something mainstream after all. I still haven't seen the real "year of the Linux desktop" but Android has already given us a year of the Linux phone, and we barely even realized it.
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Turns out Linux doesn't suck and it is good for something mainstream after all. I still haven't seen the real "year of the Linux desktop" but Android has already given us a year of the Linux phone, and we barely even realized it.
I wouldn't say its the "Year of the Linux desktop" since Android is a highly modified version of Linux. Like how no one is waiting to call OSX's rise as the "Year of the Unix/BSD desktop".
Re:After almost 20 years (Score:4, Interesting)
You may consider putting your hopes into MeeGo with this. It's planned to be an OS that will function in both netbooks (and notebooks) and smartphones, and just might smuggle linux onto desktop through the back door.
Or at least get it decent games and applications finally making it a worthy opponent of windows, rather then one that is constantly playing catch up, and never having any good games supported natively.
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In quite a bit more. Apart from (obviously ;) ) tablets, there's also a team of few major car manufacturers. [wikipedia.org]
(and you know, with how FB/Flash/etc. games are taking the world by storm for some time, are in realiy a big part of "PC gaming")
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How many people buy a windows computer and tell everyone "I bought an NT kernel based computing device!"?
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People also buy phones because of the apps they can get for them.
Just like they buy a Windows PC not because they are Microsoft fans, but because there are apps they want that's available for Windows. Similar with Android devices; the chance of finding the apps you want is higher for Android than any other system, and this helps drive sales.
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How many people tell you (who are not geeks)
More than you'd think. The week I got my Evo I was in a meeting with a bunch of non-technical people, and one guy commented that I was "playing with my Android". I had my pants on, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't a euphemism. Another of my non-technical friends asked me if it was "a droid phone". Non-technical consumers do know the difference between an iPhone and an Android device, but they still have no clue or care that it's powered by Linux.
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I've heard a fair number of people say exactly that.
My daughter, who's as fashion-conscious as you would expect a 21 year-old to be, said she "wanted an Android phone", in fact. She currently has an iPhone and has complained about it a bit. Her complaint is equally divided between connection issues (dropped calls) and the App Store lockin. She seems to have recently picked up an awareness of lock-ins and open-source software.
God, I hope she's not dating a Linux g
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For whom?
Re:After almost 20 years (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, how dare we prefer an OS on our mobile devices that shares technologies and toolkits with our desktop instead of a unique, incompatible Java implementation from a single source.
Curious... (Score:2)
...I wonder which is more popular amongst geek culture. Android is Linux based, so it has a ton of geek cred...but many a geek has allowed Apple's products to take them over (Ars Technica recently had a statistic in which roughly 26% of their visitors use macs)
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Every culture has their sellouts.
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Although your post is pretty much both content free and apropos of nothing, I'm glad you posted it! I was sitting here wondering what your view on Apple products was. Elaborating on why you feel "jailed" using BSD on a Mac or what you meant by "mindlessness and intolerance" or even what about Apple's ethics you disagree with would have really dilluted your thesis, so good call on leaving that part out.
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There will probably be an Android for every type of user, rather than just one version that everyone will be forced to adapt to.
Because people are forced to buy and use iPhones against their will? *rolls eyes*
You'd be amazed at how marketing will effect your thoughts and buying habits. Thats why companies will spend so much on it.
Higher demand after iPhone 4 release in Q3 (Score:4, Insightful)
The numbers for the iPhone are of course going to reflect that the apple crowd has been holding off and waited for the new generation iPhone 4. The numbers for Q3 will be more interesting.
And then again, who cares, it's just a phone.
Re:Higher demand after iPhone 4 release in Q3 (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not just a phone. It is determining how portable device will be used by the mainstream. Locked down, or open? The ability to load your own music and ring tones, and app, or only loading what you are allowed ..at a price, of course.
Both are locked down to the mainstream (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just a phone. It is determining how portable device will be used by the mainstream. Locked down, or open?
To the mainstream, both devices are locked down. Android requires rooting for full openness, the iPhone requires jailbreaking.
Where you got confused is that the degree of open differs more significantly if you are a developer. But then you should not be confusing what is relevant to the mainstream, vs. the developer.
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What phone are you talking about? I have loads of music ripped from my own CDs and purchased from Amazon on my iPhone. And I've been using a free utility to make my own ringtones for like two years. [rogueamoeba.com]
I'm not saying that the iPhone is as open as most Android phones, but overstating your case only makes it seem like you're spreading FUD.
-Peter
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The world is not binary, it will be a combination of both.
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I don't know what android phones you've got; but the ones I've seen aren't really that much better than an iPhone when it comes to being 'open'.
If you buy a phone directly, without a carrier, sure, it's "open". But then you are spending several hundred dollars extra. If you buy it through a carrier, it's going to have limits and restrictions imposed by the carrier. Truthfully, even if you buy it yourself, you'll still have restrictions, just fewer of them.
The source is available for android phones; but t
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Re:Higher demand after iPhone 4 release in Q3 (Score:4, Insightful)
And how many non-geeks really care about such a thing?
You do realize that you're posting it on a website titled "news for nerds", right?
Anyway, which model dominates does affect you as a geek, because it defines how much you will have to shell out for an open phone, how many applications will there be for it, etc.
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The rest of us don't. We just care about how it directly effects us. We don't give a shit that we can't run some one elses hacked together copy of the OS, the one that came with it works just fine for what we want to do with it. ... I do expect my phone to be 'open' but my definition is rational, yours is fanatical
You're putting words in my mouth. That, or trying to construct a strawman. I suspect the latter, since you seem to be addressing not me specifically, but the "averaged" take on iOS openness on Slashdot, which is rather meaningless as it comes from different people with different backgrounds and outlooks on life.
Now, personally, I'm not a Stallman adherent. I don't care about openness as an abstract value, in and of itself. I do care when it practically limits what I want to do with my phone.
Example #1: my N
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It's not just a phone. It is determining how portable device will be used by the mainstream. Locked down, or open? The ability to load your own music and ring tones, and app, or only loading what you are allowed ..at a price, of course.
Uh what android devices are as free as you claim? Last I heard you have to wait for someone to "jailbreak"/root the android device to be able to do what you want with it. This "android is open and free" is a load of bull. Motorola phones are all locked up so are HTCs. I also heard many Android devices, just like iPhone, has apps you can't even remove by the user. Yes, that doesnt sound very open to me.
Sounds like you've never seen an Android either. Rooting an Android device is just unlocking the firmware. Software is still open as is much of the layout. You can install any program you want for the Android regardless if it came from the Market Place or the internet (and I've done that before). While some of the core applications that came on the phone are uninstallable by default, most of them never run unless you open them so its not as much of an issue as you seem to make it out to be. I can also chang
Re:What are you smoking? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong.
I have a Motorola droid. I plug a USB adapter into the phone and my computer, swipe the status bar down, and tell it to mount the SD card. I then get a removable drive on my PC. I opened my music directory, selected all my songs, right-clicked and selected copy. I then opened my SD card, created a directory called "music", and copied my MP3's there. Never once did I have any need to root my phone for that one so I can certainly load my own music and I do not need iTunes or some other application to get anything through, it is just a standard USB drive. Ring tones required an app from the Android market, I picked one called "Ringdroid" IIRC. I then can open any MP3 I have and one of the menu choices is "set as ringtone", if I press that choice it .... sets it as my ring tone. I still haven't rooted my phone at all. I can also check or uncheck a security feature that allows me to install unsigned applications, that still doesn't require root. So as far as I can see everything the person you are responding to says they can do one can regardless of what you may have heard.
Some manufacturers do have some applications you can't remove - Android is Open Source and people are allowed to extend it in ways they see fit and that includes that. However Android itself doesn't. Some manufacturers have also chosen to require rooting for other common functions too - again it is Open Source so they can modify to their hearts content. There are people who want a phone with no "dangerous" options and are fairly locked down (as many iPhone users say they want to be) and Android can accomodate that - indeed Motorola's answer to signing ROM's on the Droid-X is "If you want an extensible phone, purchase a different model" for that very reason. Android itself is open and it isn't hard to find currently sold models that are near as "free" (as in speech) as the nexus one is.
Maybe last you heard was from another Apple user that wishes Androids were not selling like they were? Or at the least you believed someone that was *very* misinformed and you should take what they say from now on with a large grain of skepticism as they were easily fooled.
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The numbers for the iPhone are of course going to reflect that the apple crowd has been holding off and waited for the new generation iPhone 4. The numbers for Q3 will be more interesting.
And then again, who cares, it's just a phone.
The iPhone 4 was released on June 24th, so if the Apple crowd was holding off for it then June/July should have had one hell of a jump making Android outsell iPhone for 5 month's before being re-taken by the iPhone, but that hasn't happened. So its more likely not the case.
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Who says there wasn't such a jump? The figures in the article are before the iPhone4 release.
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I agree that the Q3 numbers will be interesting but Q3 also holds the release of the HTC Evo and The Motorola Droid X, which were both highly sought after Android platforms. So all this Q3 competition should be a sight to see. Now if only I liked popcorn...
Not to mention the return rates of the iPhone 4 due to people not being able to "hold it correctly" might add some fun to the numbers.
Not to trivialize these facts... (Score:4, Insightful)
If this trend continues... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this trend continues, Android will have 100% of the market in just over 8 years!
I love linear extrapolation.
OMG (Score:2)
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I also love how a single model mobile phone (well maybe four versions or so by now) is compared to a complete ecosystem of maybe dozens of models, and then decried that this single phone can not keep its total sales larger than a pool of a few dozen models. It's apples and oranges. The iPhone versus "all phones running the Android OS" - many with so different functionality and user interface that if you know one runs Android you wouldn't recognise the other as running it as well.
Is there any single phone m
Re:If this trend continues... (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there any single phone model that is selling as well as the iPhone these days?
Last year the Motorola Droid was selling more then the iPhone 3GS... and now with the Droid X coming out it's quite possible that it can outsell the iPhone 4...
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But what happens when it exceeds 100%? That's what I want to know.
This dial goes up to 11.
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If it exceeds 100%, then...it will exceed 100%. Just like overall mobile phone penetration in many/most(?) developed places.
I, for one (Score:2, Funny)
welcome our new Android overlords.
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I wonder how much of this you can blame on AT& (Score:4, Informative)
Or rather, the exclusivity deal between AT&T and Apple.
Anecdote: I had lunch over the weekend with a friend who lives in a part of the country that AT&T doesn't cover at all. He and his wife had seen other peoples' iPhones while travelling outside of that area, and all things being equal, would have preferred to buy iPhones, but couldn't. (Yes, they could have bought one someplace else, sucking up a useless contract, jailbreaking, etc., but come on -- that's not a real option for most people.) They ended up getting Android phones instead.
AT&T's commercials assert that it covers 97% of Americans, but if you live in or spend much time in one of the areas (more than 3% of the map) it doesn't cover, the iPhone loses by default even if Apple's marketing is successful.
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Quite a bit more than 3%; size of the map area not served doesn't follow anywhere near that close the percentage of population served.
Re:I wonder how much of this you can blame on AT&a (Score:4, Insightful)
AT&T's commercials assert that it covers 97% of Americans, but if you live in or spend much time in one of the areas (more than 3% of the map) it doesn't cover, the iPhone loses by default even if Apple's marketing is successful.
97% population does not cover 97% land area, it probably is closer to 60% or less land area.
Re:I wonder how much of this you can blame on AT&a (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a shame that AT&T held a gun to Jobs head to force Apple to sign an exclusive agreement with them.
And most important: multiple sources for applications.
It's not like Steve had a lot of choice (Score:3, Insightful)
AT&T was the only carrier that would let Apple retain a degree of control over the phone. Given the crap that, say, Verizon tends to load their phones up with, and their tendency to nickel and dime you to death with fees for everything, I can't say I'm sorry about how things worked out.
Yawn... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yawn... These are sales from January to June - before the iPhone 4 was released. People were intentionally holding off purchases because they knew iPhone 4 was coming out. Wake me up if they outsell iPhones for the next 6 months.
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Not to mention that this is a comparison of a phone from a single company to a multitude of phones from a variety of companies. The fact that the iPhone holds it own so well with so few models against all the Android phones is quite a feat.
Re:Yawn... (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_simple.svg [wikipedia.org]
Yep, the market really cooled off in Q1/Q2 in bated anticipation...
A couple things (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A couple things (Score:4, Informative)
So what is the right statistic for Android owners? The honest answer is that we don’t know. You’ll note in the excerpt above, we were careful to say “Google-branded Android phone owners”.
The numbers actually ended up being that 77% of iPhone owners intend to purchase another iPhone for their next phone, one third of ALL smartphone owners plan to buy iPhones for their next phones, 36% of Google-branded Android owners (e.g. Nexus One) plan to buy an iPhone for their next, and 32% of Google-branded Android owners plan to buy an Android for their next phone.
What is a smartphone exactly? (Score:2)
Where is the line between smartphone and non-smartphone? My last two phones have not been considered smartphones, despite being multifunctional, supporting multiple web browsers, having downloadable apps, handling email, camera, GPS, etc. My latest one does all that, is a touchscreen and better at multitasking than the iPhone 4, but isn't considered a smartphone. Why not?
I'm thinking they draw an arbitrary line that suits their point and only look at the phones above it, despite the many below the line th
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That's logical (Score:3, Interesting)
because Apple are limiting themselves too much with the One True Form-Factor. Some people want a keyboard, either palm-style or N900-style, some people want a bigger screen, some want a smaller device (though the iPhone 4 is getting small), and some a more rugged one. No matter how good the iPhone gets, most people I know just won't consider it because of the form factor issue. I for one want a larger screen (my HD2's is 44% bigger by area than the iPhone's, I'm strongly considering a Dell Streak, 99% larger), above all other considerations.
All the rest (features, locked-ness, looks) can be argued about. Form-factor is a very straightforward issue, and there's a reason why there are so many different ones on the market.
Re:Bring tha hate, bring tha noise! (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, the iPhone wasn't even close to being the #1 Smartphone in the US. That honor goes to Blackberry. So why compare to Apple? Ah, because it's cool to hate on Apple.
Slightly different markets. People have Blackberries for business, mostly. iPhones and Android phones are more personal consumer use products.
If we're going to ignore the business/personal distinction, then I'm going to hate on Macs for doing terribly in the business server market. You just can't win! :)
Re: (Score:2)
I think the survey shows that Apple needs to free itself from an exclusive contract with ATT. I have an Android phone, but I would replace it with an iPhone as soon as it becomes available on T-Mobile.
Re:Bring tha hate, bring tha noise! (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sorry, but this comparison is pretty crap.
RIM = 1 company
Apple = 1 company
Android = oodles of companies...
Its comparing apples to oranges here.
Of course you do see that Android is doing well. Something that I expected and it will continue. This is why I question RIM's, Microsoft's and Nokia's sanity of trying to go against either Apple or Android.
Though I wonder how long Android will do well. Here is the thing, people buy gadgets, but upgrade devices. With the iPhone 4 people upgraded. With RIM people upgraded. Nokia less so, and Android is an open question mark. I don't know either way and only time will tell.
Re:Bring tha hate, bring tha noise! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an excellent way to compare them. The strength of platforms like iPhoneOS, Android, WindowsCE, etc. is that you can run the same apps across all of the devices. The more devices there are out in the population, the more enticing it is for developers to develop for them. The more developers there are developing for a platform, the more decent quality apps there are, and the more decent quality apps there are the more people will want to buy into the platform. It's a cycle that accelerates at an increasing rate as the install base increases. It's what has made the Apple app store so successful up to this point and will work the same way for Android.
Re:Bring tha hate, bring tha noise! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. Windows Mobile = oodles of companies and it still fails.
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they are instead smug about hopping on the walled-off Apple bandwagon where customizing a device you own is not allowed unless it's approved by the company that sold it to you.
I hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of people who own phones don't care about customizing it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
they are instead smug about hopping on the walled-off Apple bandwagon where customizing a device you own is not allowed unless it's approved by the company that sold it to you.
Uh... Isn't Android largely just the same? To freely customize an average Android device you own, you have to root it using methods very unapproved by the operator that sold it to you? How is this different from iPhone?
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Well, what else is it supposed to do? There's only one current-generation iPhone, whereas there is a large selection of Android phones (the way it should be)
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But the swarm of Android devices reminds me a little of the horde of Wintel PCs that swamped Apple's desktop offerings.
A little? The parallels are many. Apple has a platform that is considered the superior platform by many people. The problems with their platform are all based on how closed it is, either that they can't install what they want, or they can't use it how they want, or they have to use AT&T, etc. Other than the antenna issues, criticism for the iPhone isn't very technical, it's all usability issues related to the closed Apple system.
Contrast that with Android, which is designed to run on many different
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I find it impressive that a relatively new platform is selling comparably to a platform that's been around for 4 years and has had a chance to "iron out the bugs".
Oh, and Apple's selling three different iPhone models, so it's not exactly a "single handset".
Re:I wonder how this factors in... (Score:4, Interesting)
My employer-provided phone is an HTC EVO 4G (Android). I could have chosen a Blackberry or an iPhone (or even Windows Mobile). And I work for a large Fortune-500 company. Corporate America is opening up to the new options.
(My company is large enough that they've outsourced the phone purchasing to some other company that specializes in it. I went to that company's web site, selected the phone that I wanted from the list that had been approved by our IT department, and they shipped it directly to me. All said, it seems like a very good system, especially compared to some of the other services that have been outsourced.)
Android 2.2 is supposed to take Exchange integration a step further, letting corporate IT wipe the phone if it's reported as lost or stolen, as well as allowing corporate security policies to be enforced. So expect Android to compete even more heavily with Blackberry once 2.2 comes out.
Re:I wonder how this factors in... (Score:4, Funny)
Are there any small Fortune-500 companies? What definition of "small" covers, "we have annual revenues in excess of $4 billion"?
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Why should it matter it is "just one" (not quite...different gens, different memory sizes...even different colors! ;p ) phone? Its manufacturer limits it that way...
Going further, one could say it's not that big of a deal how Android (for example) has 99% of the market - if it's uniformly distributed across 100 devices, while iPhone, with one model, has 1%.
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Why are you battling semantics? People make the comparison with iPhone's because Apple exclusively uses iOS on their phones. If They licensed the OS to other companies, you know damn well they'd be comparing iOS vs. Android. Just like how we always compare phones with Symbian and WinMo against RIM phones. Since RIM doesn't license, we never really refer to the OS independently. The only real break from this trend was with Palm and their WebOS. The WebOS became such a large selling point for Palm that people
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And even then, Android devices outselling iPhones should be expected because the latter is only sold on one carrier in the US and comprises of just 'one' product from one manufacturer.
I don't see how this should be expected. Windows Mobile runs on all carriers but is soundly being beaten. And Windows Phone 7 will run on all carriers too. Does that mean it is automatically expected that it will outsell the iPhone? The fanboy logic trying to downplay the successes of Android breaks down .
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Its certainly relevant to anyone who cares about targeting a platform (such as, say, developers) to compare sales of one platform to another.
So compare the platform then, not the device. iOS runs on multiple different devices. Android does too. If a developer is targeting Apple's platform, they're targeting a version of iOS, and by all indications, developers are targeting iOS more than Android [thetechjournal.com]. The fact that there are about 5x more apps in the AppStore just backs up that claim.