Nielsen: Apple's iOS holds at 28% in US as Android rises to 43% smartphone share - Page 3

You must be a child. I have seen plenty of ads that give away older (less capable) iPhones for free with a new subscription. Of course some older Android phones will be give away just like older iPhones. You do not see many high end Android phones given away for fee.

I guess some Apply fan boys (and I stress boy) will never accept reality....

What can I tell you, but apparently he had been directed to other sites (before he finally went to the Android Market site) from which he could download apps to his computer.

Again, my point was not to upstage so much the difficulty he had getting an app for his Android, but the enormity of selection that is apparently available today.

All of it. It would help if the original claim actually mentioned the app and the phone model - don't you think

One problem... Why is it that the highest selling android phone on Verizon is not on that picture. In fact why is the highest selling android phone in the US, the droid bionic that has a MSRP of only 299.99, yeah thats a hundred more then the entry level iPhone 4. That seems weird that these people are spending more on that android phone when the iphone is cheaper.

Except your "rational" folk rarely get around to actually parsing the story at hand because they're too busy chortling about how pathetic the fan boys are, how utterly without merit the typical AI article is, what a colossal ass DED is, etc.

Like I say, not sure what the appeal of spending time on this forum is. The articles are always going to strike you as hopelessly one sided, the response from the long term members as buffoonish. So what's your deal? Aren't there any tech forums with smart, balanced discussion where your wits can be tested? Or is that you only feel up to shooting what you consider fish in a barrel? And how does that not make you lazy and self indulgent?

To put it another way, from your perspective your participation here is like you and a couple of buddies hopping on the short bus with a permanent smirk glued to your face, constantly yelling out "Good one, genius!" and "You must be a scientist, you have glasses!" So who chooses to do that?

I'm here because I can be...I enjoy the discussions...

If there wasn't a lot of misinformation in the commentary I probably would never have joined...but after years of being alerted to Android based topics on my RSS feed from this site and seeing extreme levels of misinformation from the writers and in the commentary, I decided to join to at least offer a fair side to the discussion. I read Android sites all the time but since Android sites rarely focus on anything other than Android (and if they do they are hardly as negative) I just read and move on as there's often nothing to say and just information to take in.

You are telling me that someone that could not figure out that the icon in their app drawer called market was not the market, instead went into settings found and checked the setting to allow third party apps (other sites, not Android Market) to be installed. Clicked Ok on the HUGE warning and disclaimer saying that your are now vulnerable to unknown sources and you take sole responsibility for continuing with this, then navigated to a third party app site and tried to install some apps. I dont buy it.

And you dont download apps to your computer. You click install on apps only available to your listed devices and it is installed remotely to your device.

when you first boot up an Android device (as far as I can tell any one regardless of skin) the Market icon is on the main homescreen. lol.

So his story if obvious BS.

"Google made them all accessible. Both are good for people."

I am curious as to how you defend this.

Do you know what google sells? Who their customers are? They sell you, to companies. How is that good? Ever?

If Apple sent thank you notes to customers they would say something like "thank you for buying stuff you really like from us."

If google sent thank you notes to users (not customers, you are not a customer) they would say "thank you for letting us invade your privacy and steal your personal information and sell it to companies that will pester you until you die. Shame you get a poorly made phone with that."

How exactly is that good for anyone with two brain cells to bang together?

This pretty much covers everything. I've used an android device (an HTC Vision, aka G2), and I've used an iPhone 4. Neither platform is vastly superior to the other; they each have their strengths and weaknesses.


Heh, I too am an ex-symbian user, and I definitely see the similarity between android and S60. A lot of people like to point to the pre-iphone blackberry-clone android prototype and claim that google copied iOS, however that doesn't make sense at all if you think about it.

The screen was expanded, touch capability improved, and widgets were added, but the core of the UI was already in place before iOS came out. The status bar and notification system is largely unchanged. The concept of desktops and the app drawer was already in place. the 'menu-driven' system that a lot of apple fans like to point to is still there; hence why one of the dedicated buttons on android devices is [MENU].

That is why I can never take the claim that android is a copy of iOS seriously.

What of the assumptions you are making with that post?

They go beyond absurd into psychotic, paranoid delusional.

Are they the same HUGE warnings that everyone who buys an Amazon tablet MUST agree to before using their store?

Doesn't that open a HUGE security hole?

That's not really what happens though is it? That's some sort of fear monger exaggeration isn't it?

I'm well aware I am Google's product. But the methods they sell their products are not straight forward. They don't sell Tommy David Donna and Jill they sell compositions of data compiled by algorithms.

No they don't. He was obviously being purposefully general. If you feel it doesn't apply to you then it doesn't. (It does apply to you though)


Does that even make sense to you?

Apple also sells you to advertisers. It's just not the largest focus of their business nor as successful (yet?). It will really jump in importance and focus once they roll out their own branded location/mapping services.

Most Android phones are cheaper off contract than the 3GS, here in the UK ( and across the world). Off contract is the only way to properly measure the cost of a phone. The fact is simple. iPhones are expensive. Even the 27 month old model is expensive. Something like £428. the IP4 is (from)£510. Modern Android phones sell for £200, or less. Not top of the range, but ridiculously cheaper than a 3GS.

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/hom...co=MjU1NTYyNDA

All of this will be reflected in the price of any contract.

If Apple reduce their prices they will take back a huge segment of that market. Think about it. Two models make up 26% of the US market. 4-5 models, with two cheap models, will take 40%. That's inevitable.

iMessage will help too, as it saves money on SMS. And locks people in as they have friends who use it, so they have to - although here in the UK BBM has that market sown up, unless someone builds a bridge between the two platforms.


if your primary interface with a phone is multi-touch then it is a totally different phone to a Symbian.

...and in other news Porsche sales hold as Kia sales rise.

On a very expensive contract with O2 - the iPhone 4 is "free", but the contract is £40 a month, so the cost close to £1000 ( about $1,500), so that is what you are paying. You dont get unlimited data with that in the UK.

Androids are free with much lower costing contracts.

PAYG phones are big in the UK. The off contract iPhone is massively expensive ( see my previous post). If there is a sub £300 phone - which may not happen this refresh, Apple will take that market.

True, and I have been arguing that point. On the other hand Apple needs to maintain platform share.

Lol the iPhone is not a porche if any Android is a Kia. Some? Definitely. But to generalize like that is purposefully dishonest.

The HTC sensation is not a Kia. The g2x is not a Kia. The Motorola cheapo is a Kia.

The gains in Android share is due to the Kia type Android segment.

it's due to all the segments.

The most popular phones are the benzes and the bmws of the Android world.

provide a link to Android sales. The term "the most popular phone" can be meaningless in a large number of phones. If there are 100 phones, selling almost equally, getting 2% of the market can make you the most popular. In Android, it is the long cheap tail which is selling.

Total exaggeration. The news media and the fandroids flip out because Apple is tracking you!!! Except it turns out it is just the phone, and Apple is never sent the data. Then goggle proudly announces that if you give them a number for a google phone they can tell you where it is within seconds...

But I am sure it is good. After all, they do no evil, right?

I have to agree with this. The sensation i tested is more like a Jaguar. You know, it looks like a quality car on the outside, has ford taurus parts under the hood.

Apple is rolling out several "features" meant to convince you to allow yourself to be tracked by them. Beginning with iOS5 they'll be making much more of an effort to lure their users into sharing location data via the perceived value of social and mapping applications, much the same way Google does. Knowing where you are, where you've been, and once Apple mapping appears, where you're going, makes you a valuable commodity to potential advertisers. The social element will be rolled into iOS5, and I expect the mapping before 2012 is over.

http://www.rmtracking.com/blog/2011/...ds-with-apple/

Yes - but they are doing it for very different reasons. Unlike Google, Apple does not make most of its profits by learning everything about you. They want to sell iPhones, which means they want to add features that people will use and find useful. Location-based features are very useful, and even more so if you can include large amounts of anonymized user data. It would make no sense to omit those just because a few paranoid commentators start screaming.

We don't know they're doing it for reasons any different than Google does.

Whether it's their primary business or not, I have no doubt at all that Apple recognizes there's significant profits to be derived from using their extensive user-base as an attraction for advertisers and marketers. Read their privacy policy and it's plain that they have the right to gather and share both your private as well as anonymized data with outside partners and entities. With billions in profits at Google, what makes you think that Apple would have no interest in a piece of it? iAds was just a start.

There's a breakdown of the changes they put in place with last years iOS4 update here, and an explanation as to why:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/sec...cy-policy/3951

It doesn't mean they're doing anything devious or underhanded, unless you feel Google's similar gathering and retention of personal data is somehow evil.

There's a lot of businesses ranging from grocery and drug stores, mapping and gps companies, app developers, Facebook, MS, and various telematics companies that know how valuable you can be. Yes, Apple knows it too.

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Lol. Clever.

Since, you're actually too lazy (or wilfully ignorant) to look, I did it for you. O2 has an iPhone 4 for Free with a plan that costs 37 pounds a month. That's not expensive. Even in the UK. And definitely not expensive by global standards. That's about USD 58 for a plan that has unlimited incoming calls, 600 outgoing minutes, unlimited texts and 500 MB of data. And for comparison, the same plan costs 32 pounds a month for a free Samsung Galaxy SII. This is for an iPhone 4 by the way. An iPhone 3GS can be had for free on plans costing as little as 25 pounds a month.

The idea that these plans are expensive to get a free iPhone are utter rubbish. If you want to believe that a mere 5 pounds a month (USD 9) is what defines Android users as "cheap" be my guest. I'd suggest to you the flip side of that argument. Obviously the much vaunted Apple "experience" is simply not worth the extra 5 pounds a month to a lot of users.

It's not Apple that gives away the phone. It's the phone company. And they will give you whatever you want as long as you sign a nice long contract with a high monthly rate. In Canada, it's quite normal for customers who already have contracts with the telcos to routinely get huge discounts or free iPhones when they renew their contracts on retentions terms.

None of this is to say that the iPhone is not a premium device. It is. And I would never suggest otherwise. But the idea that premium Android handsets are significantly cheaper or are given away far more frequently than iPhones (this contention often being based solely on BOGO deals in the USA) is ludicrous. It hurts the phone company to give away a $600 Android handset just as much as it hurts them to give away a $600 iPhone.

Yet, even this does not make sense. The Android Market is pre-installed on his phone. It says it in the manual and on the box that this is the source for apps. But he went looking for apps elsewhere? And that too had to go through the trouble of side-loading instead of an OTA install from the Android Market. That's like saying he got an iPhone and immediately went doing a Google search on his laptop for apps instead of looking on the App Store. Then decided he would jailbreak his phone and get apps from Cydia rather than click on the App Store icon. Would that make sense to you?

Sure Android has alternative venues (Amazon App Store for example) from where you can get apps. But the most natural way to do it, would be to click on the store icon (which looks like a shopping bag is called Market...lest there be any doubt) and open up the most populated app store that's natively installed on your device. I wouldn't even really think of using the website first.

I'm sorry but your friend is an utter moron if he couldn't figure out something this basic, irrespective of what OS he uses.


The selection has improved dramatically in the last few months. I was sorely disappointed when I first got my Nexus One. But in the last few months, I've found the gap on app availabitlity between Android and iOS has narrowed significantly. Quality-wise Android apps still seem to lag iOS apps (and I strongly suspect this is why revenues are lower). That'll take some time to redress I suspect.

unlimited incoming calls are free everywhere in the UK. On three the Samsung SII has 1G of data, 500 outgoing minutes, and 5000 texts. Which is about the same as saying unlimited. Cost is £27

http://threestore.three.co.uk/dealsu...T5D212&id=1184

Now to get a bit simple for your benefit. The cost there is £12 per month difference ( the free iPhone costs £39 a month, as a post I copied showed, not £37). Thats £12 per month for 24 months. £288 over 2 years. About $450. Hardly insignificant.

The real cost, the is off the shelf cost. I posted those recently. Take a look.

the iPhone is expensive. That explains some of Android's inroads. My housemate's gf has an Android because she got herself the cheapest phone possible. Apple may not be at the cheapest level, but they need to reduce prices.

( that said she never buys anything)/

Exactly. And I'm sick of die-hards that insist one is better than the other. And sadly the doctrinaire attitude actually prevents things from getting better. For example, Google could easily curate the Android Market, because unlike iOS, any Android user can always side-load apps if they can't get it on the Market. Yet, their open mantra compels them to allow any garbage on the market. Conversely, Apple takes the, "we're all about the user experience" mantra to the other experience. Banning cross-compilation tools? Come on.

In reality, you're right, each platform has very specific strenghts and weaknesses. iPhones are polished, smooth and slick. However, I find them to be less of a productive tool but I can't personalize them to how I acutally use a phone. The desktop homescreens and widgets allow deep personalization. For me, for example, I have one homescreen that has all my reading apps and music for my commute. My prime homescreen has just different messenger apps (whatsapp, GTalk, SMS) and comms apps (Skype) and maps. This is what I use the most.


Fully concur. I too find the constant accusation that Google copied iOS to be absurd. Most ex-Symbian users would. It was clear right from the start that Google wanted Android to be the next Symbian and they've largely succeeded. To any Symbian user, Android feels exactly like you describe it, a vastly improved version of S60.

And it's particularly odd that Android is considered a rip-off because of the grid of apps. That concept was there well before the iPhone. Every dumbphone has had a grid of apps. And it's such a small part of Android. Who really uses the app drawer for everything on their Android phone anyway? I can go days only using what I've place on my homescreens. That's the point of the desktop.

I stand by my assertion that the only reason so many Apple fans think Android is a copy of iOS is because this is the first smartphone platform that many of them used. Had they used something else before, Android would strike them as far closer to those other platforms than it would to iOS.

Note that you are using one specific network as an example. I got my numbers from Carphonewarehouse. They spat out O2 as the best deal. They have the iPhone 4 there for 37 pounds per month. Check for yourself. So as per my research the difference is 5 pounds per month. That would work out to 120 pounds over the two years. Not insignificant to be sure. But not likely to be that significant to anybody choosing between an SGSII and an iP4.

By the way, by your own link, the same plan (Text 500) is 35 pounds a month not 39 pounds a month. Please check your figures.


Actually, the real cost is the total cost of ownership which includes the price of acquiring the device and the plan that supports it over the monthly contract. But I will acknowledge there is a price difference. However, I dispute the fact that it's as much as some make it out to be. Especially where equivalent devices are concerned. There's bound to be a much bigger price difference for example between a dumbphone and an iPhone 4.


I never said the iPhone wasn't expensive. But Apple ][ keeps bleating on and on about "free" Androids. That argument is clearly ridiculous and you know it. If the argument is that people get Android devices because they are "free", than clearly the same could be said for iPhones. Even if the difference is 12 pounds (on a different plan, on a different network from my example), the argument cannot necessarily be absolute (people get Androids because they are cheaper). It could be relative (people get Androids because they don't think an iPhone is worth 12 pounds more a month). Or it could have nothing to with a comparative argument at all. Some people may just like the Android OS. Is it that hard for some people to fathom such an occurrence?

BS. How can you say that when Samsung's best selling phone is the SGS II?

I would suggest that this is just an urban myth in Appledom. The truth is probably somewhere in between. But I highly doubt that it's only the Kia types that are putting Android over the top. I'm willing to bet that the top of the line phones together are easily at least 60-70% of all Android sales, and probably more than iPhone sales, with the cheapos making up the difference. If you're on contract, and the difference isn't that much, why would you pick up a low end Android?

Samsung just sold 10 million SGSII in a single quarter. That one example alone is more than the "2% of the market" that "can make you the most popular".

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iAds.

You're dreaming if you don't think Apple is going to roll out location based advertising before long. They've built in geofencing alerts into iOS5. It's hardly a stretch to think they'd combine this with iAds.

And you have a double standard in this argument. Apple uses anonymized user data and Google doesnt?

They could. I don't think there'd be any brand dilution. iPhones are extremely common now. The whole idea that you have some exclusive device is quickly disappearing. However, people are still willing to pay a bit for an iPhone (though not as much as many Apple fans would like to believe). I think the risk to Apple isn't brand dilution but a reduction in their much vaunted profit margins, if more and more people switch to the cheapest version of an iPhone they can get.