iOS, Android reach 55% penetration with US installed base of 109M - Page 2

It does seem rather late but the iPhone 4 is still selling so maybe they had some great idea that selling these phones then would somehow make sense. Or maybe they only bought them recently at a great price from Apple or another distributor who failed to sell them before the iPhone 4S came out. I think the latter makes more sense than Best Buy having sat on this stock for 3 months.

How is that any different than going from the US to Canada? They are different countries

In Apple's case, the market share is actually correlated with profits, unlike in Android-land (in which you likely live).

You missed the point spectacularly.

Why wouldn't Apple accept returns? I thought that channel stuffing was something that Apple did not do.

When I was in elementary school, the concept of a cell phone was lost on everyone. What we had back then were some radio systems that could make phone calls, and emergency services that used those.

Even in high school, all the phones were still analog, and the "flip phone" wasn't going to fit in your purse. The smallest phone available at the time was the Motorola Startac which cost a fortune and got so hot it would burn your fingers. Text messaging did not yet exist.

I can not imagine the amount of distractions smartphones must give kids at school. The worst we had back then was the occasional person listening to a portable cd player, and the occasional gameboy. None of these things had more than 2 hours of battery power.

Current smartphones last all day, connect you to the web and basically make it so that the actual "being at school" is the redundant part and only required to satisfy child-endangerment/labor laws. I think we're less than 10 years away from lawmakers wanting to save money on education by getting rid of K-12 schools entirely and instead give guidelines on how to get into their dream career. This won't solve the social aspect, but the smartphones are quickly eroding that to begin with.

Indeed. Conversely, for such a relatively small country Australia is really saturating. However, app-wise local Australian app development isn't as developed an industry as the US and UK. I smell opportunity.

Interestingly, people draw many parallels between Canada and Australia. In this graph they seem quite far apart though:

Check this out as well... CANADA, Y U NO LIEK USE MOBIL3 PHONEZ? Note that the numbers for Malaysia and Australia are over "100". This means quite a number of people have two phones. Assuming that 100 people in the "per 100 people" is the whole population, including those too young to have a mobile (though that age threshold is surely dropping like a rock).

I think the "addressable market" in the research this thread refers to is slightly underestimated.

If Australia has ~22million people then there are 22+million mobile subscriptions. Hence the addressable market for iOS and Android is surely more than half of that?



Since moving "back" to Australia a few months ago it really feels a bit strange how this small (by population) country is in so many significant first-world metrics. I'm still not sure how they did it, and are still doing it. Looking at the figures for Malaysia, the metrics are good but the corruption in the country grossly distorts the on-the-ground experience.

Firemint is a successful Australian company responsible for Real Racing, Flight Control and a couple of others.

Cool... There's heaps more space for growth in this area in Australia though, especially QLD and WA I reckon. I suspect even in Sydney and Melbourne there's more demand than sufficiently-skilled developers. What do you think?

Edit: Edited because upon reflection we're probably about the same age/generation.

*Chuckle* Yeah, when I was in elementary school, the "mobile" phone was the size of a WW2 Radio Communications Pack. The Internet was a special room in the school only for the kids in the "Genius" classes (they had one out of 10 classes that was the "Genius" class for each year). Towards the end of high school, "Internet Porn" was a 200pixel x 200pixel GIF. Oh boy, how that could get the blood running.

Yes, kids nowadays with text messaging, sext messaging, more porn in a SINGLE WEBPAGE than 10 magazines from January 1965.

It is disturbing, but I'm only 33 and these were the same things everyone else said about our generation... "Oh, we didn't have colour TV or game-and-watch or 386PC's like you when we were kids".

The "bad kids" in my early high school years brought tape Walkmans to class. CDs hadn't really caught on just yet. Ocassionally "locker raids" would be done and they'd be "punished" for bringing them.

Back then, "piracy" was waiting hours for the radio to play your favourite song so that you could record it to tape on your Walkman or Boom Box/"Mini Stereo"/"Mini Hi-Fi". And you had to time it just right, not just on the start, but stopping it before the talking began. If you missed the stop point, you had to rewind, play, pause, etc. And if you accidentally recorded over your favourite tape, now those would be the subject of today's "Rage Comic Memes" back then.

Ah, good times, good times...

Please explain it then

He was saying you can travel a very wide distance but still be on one plan in the US. Whereas you can travel short distances in Europe and have to be on different plans. That's why in principle the Euro is very convenient. In practice, the EU... I am surprised though the EU doesn't have more unified mobile phone plans, even back before the Eurozone Crisis post-2008.

Even 10 years ago, in half a day you can go from the UK, through France, to Belgium and through to the Netherlands and Germany. And that's not even by plane! Just trains. Man, the European carriers must make a killing on roaming charges.

USA to Canada requires different plans but the USA and Canada are each massive countries by land mass.

So yes, the USA has the advantage that it is one country whereas Europe has many small countries. So it would not be too surprising that Europe has that situation.

Edit: At the end of the day, the "point" was, the upsides, possibly, of paying higher plan fees is that you can travel a large distance on a single plan without incurring roaming fees. Unlike Europe, where in each country you get cheaper plans but the moment you go a several hundred miles from your city it can be quite inconvenient if you're staying anywhere outside your home city for more than a few days. Even more so for mobile broadband, I'm sure.

Mass market means nothing when you have profit and prestige.

But to have mass-market as well?

Fuck yeah!

Fuck, I love Gatorguy.

Presents both sides of the coin, considers arguments, open minded.

What a guy!

Both your posts remind me of a friend back in the 1980s. Harley was a mfgrs rep for electronic components (RAM, CPUs, etc.) in Silicon Valley. As such he made a lot of money and indulged himself with all the latest gadgets...

He drove a Mercedes and had it fitted with the latest/greatest radio-telephone. AIR, Harley spent over 10 grand for the hardware and installation, alone -- there was a monthly service charge and calls (incoming and outgoing) cost several $ per minute.

Harley had bragging rights!

But, frequently, he'd arrive somewhere, before a call was finished --- so he'd sit there in the car, with the motor running, gabbing at several $ per minute...

After one very expensive phone bill, Harley devised a technique to terminate a long call without sacrificing any bragging rights -- actually enhancing them.

Harley would be sitting in the car and tell the caller: "I gotta' go -- my other phone is ringing".

I'm not quite sure if the discussed 'iPhone boys are easy money' is meant as a compliment.

Heh heh. Perhaps you missed why he wanted to portray iPhone as also having BOGO deals. I saw what he did there.

That's why I pointed out its an outdated sku.

Yep, that's him alright....

Good point.

I wonder how much Gatorguy paid GTR to say those nice things about him.

But the fact that it is B1G1 means it sucks though...isn't that the idea?

BOGO means that it's supply that needs to be moved but is have problem being moved. We're not talking about any currently selling iPhone from Apple, we're talking about one they stopped selling back in October. No one is curious about vendor obsolesced models being sold, but if it's happening while the models are still part of their regular cycle then its suspect. If this was the iPhone 4S being soled as a BOGO you can guarantee I'd be shorting Apple tomorrow morning because that would be a clear indication of a problem.

You haven't said anything different, Europe is made up of lots of different countries, the USA is one country. I'm still lost as to the point.

By the same token, you can go from Niagara in the US, to Niagara in Canada and be roaming, why is that, they are just across a river from each other

[QUOTE=nvidia2008;2014297]
Even 10 years ago, in half a day you can go from the UK, through France, to Belgium and through to the Netherlands and Germany. And that's not even by plane! Just trains. Man, the European carriers must make a killing on roaming charges.
[/quote

Again, you haven't said anything else to help why I missed the point. These are small countries , some with independant operators to the other countries


Again, you haven't added anything, everyone understands the fact that USA is a large country, and unless you are damn poor at geography you would understand that Europe is made up of small countries. But by everyones statements, if you expect countries in Europe to roam without extra charges, you would also expect Canada and the USA to roam without extra charges, after all they also border each other.

Everybody whiff the shot or let something fell through cracks from time to time, so perhaps Best Buy just had one. And so what? Don't you like bargain hunting?

Unless this becomes a regular occourance everytime a now iPhone comes out, I won't get paid from my short yet. The only thing I MIGHT get money this quarter is for iPad 3 to delay. Maybe or maybe not.

Growing programmers can be like growing fruit orchards, especially durian trees. The cost of saplings are ridiculous with a faint promise of great fortune several times over. Then they took 16 YEARS to bear the first crop, provide the trees aren't dead some times along the way, then you get sqat.

Soccer players normally take 7 years from raw pupil to U-16 squad to start returning your investments. How long programming students can start returning the money? 11? 15 for PhD?

Durian orchard owners have patiences for this kind of investments. Do software companies have that?

Yes, very interesting point you make. I've seen Durian trees but never really spent much time in a Durian orchard, despite years in Malaysia. Usually I just eat it, not thinking about how it grows.

Again I simply try to draw a parallel with how web was 15 years ago. You gotta start somewhere. Web may pay the bills in the meantime, or even better, we gotta figure out how to get to get paid to learn iPad programming. In 10 years the "tablet" market will very likely become the "laptop" market. Interesting times ahead.

But as you note anyone thinking they can make a top-50 $9.99 app in 3 months is in way over their head. Unless you have some of the best talent. But that talent is probably already working on that top-50 or top-300 app.

The key is the next cycle of iPad and tablet deployment, use, and development. Not to say it's directly relevant but a porn site which targets iPad put it quite interestingly... "We Innovate, You Masturbate!". Now that's a can-do attitude right there!

Er... I think I'll only try this one more time, and let it be.

Ignore whether a country borders this or that. Think about *the total square miles you can cover* without roaming. That's what the poster was trying to say.

If the USA and Canada had a single mobile plan, that's ~13% of the entire Earth's land mass covered (excluding non-populated areas) in a single mobile plan. Even if the European Union had a single mobile plan, that's only ~3% of the entire Earth's land mass.

Yes, a certain poster may have been purposefully portraying iPhone 4 as a BOGO deal so as to reduce its premium (perceived or real) status to become that of Samsung and other phones.

I don't know about others, but for me, iPhone4 16GB or 32GB BOGO is a phenomenal value and opportunity, and nowhere near the realm of other kinds of smartphone BOGO deals.

I thought I might be doing some a favor by relaying the MacRumors note on the Best Buy deal, also mentioned elsewhere. They likely considered it the same way as you, a great deal worthy of mentioning. Should it have been treated as a secret instead?

I personally don't see why it would be perceived as an insult to Apple, but whatever. I'm sure it won't be the last "special offer" for an Apple product. There doesn't always have to be a hidden meaning.

In the U.S. probably no. Canada or Mexico, not sure. For everywhere else, carriers might use iPhone to pull something drastic.

On such stunt did happened in Thailand back in September. Basically dtac, our 2nd biggest carrier threw out iPhone 4 at 40% discount so they could upstage the upcoming Mobile Expo and introduced their 3G service. The New York-size queue formed for two days and ended with a large fistfights when 1,500 handsets alloted were run out.

No matter, dtac ate their losses but the iPhone 4 they threw out did the job. Now they are the first in data customer ahead of SingTel.

Check YouTube for 'dtac queue Siam Paragon'. It should still be there.

Will someone out there try to pull similar stunt; using their iPhone stock as a loss leader to get people in the door and triple your customer numbers almost overnight?

Reality is that the number of operators per country in EU is higher. Hence more competition on pricing and technology. The US took ages to get 3G when EU had it (hence original iPhone did very badly in EU). US is storming ahead on 4G now though

A little off topic but isn't it funny that this type of article even needs to be published? I've never seen anything like this published in a countrywide/worldwide news source for the benefit of iPhone users. The Apple support site, yes, but not in mainstream media.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/product...ips/52226890/1

When you consider that twice as many people buy Android phones compared to iPhones, it makes sense that news about Android phones is more mainstream.

Look at the number of tips and tricks printed about Windows, compared to the Mac.

It makes sense to me that publishers talk about the dominant platform, rather than the Third-Place runner-up.

You can say it all you want, the USA is one country, Europe is multiple countries, it doesn't matter about the land mass as much as you want it too be, it will be a damn long time before the EU can get non-existent companies to offer a single plan across multiple countries (including some that aren't even in the union)

It's not hard to figure out why. Android market share far surpasses iOS. It only makes sense to produce articles for the more popular platform. This has not changed since Feb 2011.

Besides the comment being all about marketshare (which as we all know is the definitive principle of success for any device - lol!), and in an Apple fan forum, and there is the convenient undertow of poor battery performance that is legendary among Android users, being ignored as well.

I just wish you were a better apologist for the Android platform.

Back on Topic, this would seem to indicate that the important segments of the adoption population (innovators/early adopters/early majority=50% of adopting population according to the Rogers adoption theory) are already onboard, which means that the growth curve will begin flattening out (late adopters and laggards - the other 50% of the adoption population - are proven highly resistant and adopt at a much slower rate when they do) and the market will be effectively saturated for growth. The market adjustments then begin to take place.

So while Android was fastest growth in the market, it will be the first to show signs of slowing down, and then as Windows Phone, iOS and any other platforms impact, Android will begin surrendering their early gains. Remember, Android has a much lower retention rate than iOS, iOS has a significantly higher loyalty rating, and much less fragmentation (perceived or otherwise). If Microsoft can make a credible case for WinPhone 7 to the market at a good price, Android will feel the first pinch from that platform.

Since Android was so quick to claim market share and push the platform to the handset makers, this presents a problem for those handset makers riding the Android bandwagon. Since they need to be able to differentiate between themselves as Android phones, they will need to change physical and interface options more often in order to drive share against the other Android phones. TouchWiz et al are going to become defining, heightening the perception of fragmentation and Google will have to become either more restrictive about hardware, or support a greater variety of hardware, both of which further the whole fragmentation issue.

Since Google did their job well, the exponential growth characteristic of this phase of the diffusion into the marketplace has compressed (especially here in the US) that part of the S-curve and resulted in faster plateauing at the top. Google will undoubtably push the handset makers to build even lower priced Android-driven handsets for the more economically challenged markets remaining, as well as giving a cursory nod to the low-end handset makers now blurring the difference between functionally feature phones and functionally smart phones. The nice thing is that they will be able to use the entire range of Android OS - allowing for cheaper, much more limited function handsets to sport the name, but not the latest feature sets. While this will expand Android "marketshare", it will in fact water-down the perception of Android as a smartphone OS, and create still further issues for Android user loyalty and retention. It will also have a direct impact on the perceived profitability of Android as well, reducing the overall profitability significantly, and forcing handset makers to either race to the bottom, or turn to Windows, or some other as yet to be determined alternate smartphone OS, to regain profitability.

And as I mentioned in another thread, this gradually turns Android into the gateway device for the iOS devices. Whether this is what Google intended, or what they have planned for the operating system - it is the inevitable result of their approach to driving Android.