As opposed to what someone said, Apple NEEDS 50% share. They don't need to be the absolute rulers of the market, but they MUST have a big chunk of it to keep developer interest. Without it, iOS will fall down and say "Hi!" to its brother the Mac.
> The amount of browsing that those few iPads are doing is not insignificant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Newtron
What do you base that on? It seems to be the premise you rely upon, but I don't see any support.
Got any facts to prop up that crucial contention?
Facts: In a recent overview by NetMarketshare.com the iPad already has 0.27 % of the total browsing (worldwide), as opposed to the best-scoring Android version, 2.1, at 0.09 %. If you add Android 1.6 and 2.2, the combined result is 0.17 % - lower that the iPad alone.
Duh is right. Every manufacturer could like it, but that does not matter one bit.
The reason why Android is gaining market share is because consumers are buying Android devices faster and faster, certainly at a much faster rate than iOS devices. Fewer relevant consumers are buying iOS devices compared to greater numbers of relevant consumers buying Android devices.
These things are not mysterious. The rate of consumer purchases determines market share on a dynamic basis. The installed consumer base compared to competitors determines the static market share.
The reasons for market share are consumer buying habits, and not what manufacturers "like".
Quote:
Fewer relevant consumers …
\: So only zealots buy iOS devices?
Quote:
The reasons for market share are consumer buying habits, and not what manufacturers "like"
: How many iOS devices can put alongside an Android one?
I agree with this poster. If iPhone had come to Verizon a year ago, it might have put a dent in Android. BUT...it's now too little, too late. VErizon is heavily invested in Android with the biggest lineup of any carrier. The whole DROID moniker is probably almost as well known as the iPhone brand at this point. And overseas, Android is gaining like crazy. Remember through all of this: Android is now #1 in the U.S., having surpassed even Blackberry in sales, and not because of buy-one-get-one deals. There aren't many of those. And, worldwide, Android has surpassed Apple as well. My prediction is within the next few years, iPhone will be like what the Mac was 20 years ago while Android follows the path that Windows followed back then as well--niche vs. ubiquity. The iPad, however, is another story. It's too early to know how that will play out, but with Android tablets coming out within the next couple of months from multiple manufacturers on multiple carriers, it could follow the same trajectory.
Wow, there are so many factual errors and conjecture in this post, it will take too much effort to counter. Jeez.
Unless Apple licenses iOS, it has no chance of fending off Android. Android will be as ubiquitous as Windows and Apple will be at 6%, again.
It will be some time before Android is really competitive. Apple's developer SDKs and tools are much better then Googles. Apple has a significant advantage when it comes to mobile app development. It is difficult to write anything beyond simple apps that wrap around a web page (like Facebook) or OpenGL based games on an Android device. Android web surfing is probably up because that (and Google Maps which is better then on the iPhone) is all you can do well on an Android phone. iPhone users probably use applications in place of web browsing for many tasks. Android will probably be very popular among people who just want to surf the web, but may never gain traction among users who want to run apps. I think the iPhone actually lives up to the hype and Android falls short when you actually try to use their phone to run applications. As others have said, a lot of people chose an Android device on Verizon. Those same people carry an iPod touch to run applications. There is a significant conversion rate (I don't have the link handy) for Android to iPhone users. There is virtually no defection from the iPhone. Market share doesn't tell the whole story. I still find it incredible how many professionals are using OS X. These are the people really propelling the economy. Something just doesn't feel right about comparing a NetBook to a MacBook Pro. You can of course slant statistics to any point you want to prove, but I care more about use-share and dollar-share then market-share. I think that Microsoft would trade places with Apple right now if they could.
I think google should get credit for achieving this web use statistic though. It is really pretty impressive, but to be fair to Apple it is the only thing they have been focusing on. They certainly have not been focusing on Apps. For various reasons I don't think Apple has wanted to make a less expensive iPhone with more limited capabilities to compete with Android. If Android continues to increase their market share after Apple switches to Verizon, maybe they will.
I agree with this poster. If iPhone had come to Verizon a year ago, it might have put a dent in Android. BUT...it's now too little, too late. VErizon is heavily invested in Android with the biggest lineup of any carrier. The whole DROID moniker is probably almost as well known as the iPhone brand at this point. And overseas, Android is gaining like crazy. Remember through all of this: Android is now #1 in the U.S., having surpassed even Blackberry in sales, and not because of buy-one-get-one deals. There aren't many of those. And, worldwide, Android has surpassed Apple as well. My prediction is within the next few years, iPhone will be like what the Mac was 20 years ago while Android follows the path that Windows followed back then as well--niche vs. ubiquity. The iPad, however, is another story. It's too early to know how that will play out, but with Android tablets coming out within the next couple of months from multiple manufacturers on multiple carriers, it could follow the same trajectory.
My prediction is that Android will be the dominant OS for low end phones. The middle and high end will continue to be dominated by Apple. The Android phone just doesn't (and will take a long time to catch up) compete well with Apple. It isn't just the 2-3 year head start Apple has in the Smart Phone business. It is the 10+ year head start they had by factoring in OS X technology. Google (or their partners) will never be as motivated or have the same resources as Apple to make decent SDKs for their Apps to take off. Besides the technical problems, it doesn't make a lot of business sense for most developers to target an App Store that generally doesn't sell enough apps to be worth the effort. Android phones do not yet have Enterprise features. Enterprise customers are all rallying behind creating iOS apps for their in house development. Despite being Java-based, Android will have an uphill battle in a couple years when they are ready to really support the Enterprise. Besides they are not running the "full" Java, so it really has little relevance for enterprise customers porting existing apps. The ubiquitous hardware and top down push (push from corporate executives) strategy is working very well for Apple in the enterprise sector. If anyone follows a "Windows" trajectory it will be Apple. Despite being from one vendor, they have the only hardware I would call ubiquitous. Multi-vendor and ubiquitous are not synonyms. If anyone asks me for an Android version of an iPhone app, I say we can do a "lite" version. (By the way, if anyone knows why it is called "lite" instead of "light" I would love to know.)
As opposed to what someone said, Apple NEEDS 50% share. They don't need to be the absolute rulers of the market, but they MUST have a big chunk of it to keep developer interest. Without it, iOS will fall down and say "Hi!" to its brother the Mac.
Not true....
You forgot one very important detail when measuring what Apple needs... Users are almost worthless if a very large portion of them have never and likely will never pay for an app. I listen to lots of podcasts and those who fly the hacker flag high and proud gloat that they'd never be caught dead BUYING an APP... These same people boast how useless the iPhone is and how awsomw Android is... Perhaps someone needs to dig out a photo of what ANDRIOD looked like before the iPhone was revealed. Anyway, what developer is going to back THAT horse, an entire user base looking for free everything?
I'm sure you can cite lots of successful iPhone devs who are developing apps for android too... How long do you expect them to keep up the charity work when nobody buys their stuff? Hey it's not like everyone can be google and just give their work away for free!
In the end if Google winds up with 80% of the freeloaders and Apple ends up with the other 20% that actually reward developers work then you can only guess where the developers will side.
I agree with this poster. If iPhone had come to Verizon a year ago, it might have put a dent in Android. BUT...it's now too little, too late. VErizon is heavily invested in Android with the biggest lineup of any carrier. The whole DROID moniker is probably almost as well known as the iPhone brand at this point. And overseas, Android is gaining like crazy. Remember through all of this: Android is now #1 in the U.S., having surpassed even Blackberry in sales, and not because of buy-one-get-one deals. There aren't many of those. And, worldwide, Android has surpassed Apple as well. My prediction is within the next few years, iPhone will be like what the Mac was 20 years ago while Android follows the path that Windows followed back then as well--niche vs. ubiquity. The iPad, however, is another story. It's too early to know how that will play out, but with Android tablets coming out within the next couple of months from multiple manufacturers on multiple carriers, it could follow the same trajectory.
Please post a link showing that Android has surpassed iPhone worldwide. Everything I have read says otherwise.
Please post a link showing that Android has surpassed iPhone worldwide. Everything I have read says otherwise.
You're right, just look here. Mac OSX: 5%, iOS: 1.13%, Android (all versions combined): 0.2%.
So Android is less than one fifth of iOS in worldwide web browsing share. Even Symbian (Nokia) is bigger with 0.27% - the same number as the iPad has alone.
Also, Android market share outside the US (where in most countries there are other carriers) is 1/10 of Apple's
The truly last market to explode is China. Apple is making huge increases in China and will continue to expand with the iPad, not to forget Japan and South Korea.
If Apple wants to make the same inroads into India, it will.
This is probably a useful study for somebody in the business, but it is only a partial look at the market. It doesn't include net usage by apps which is growing quite a bit.
The amount of browsing that those few iPads are doing is not insignificant. Here i am typing this on my iPad. I have also happily been watching BBC iPlayer on it for hours at a time. This is not so good on Android -- DaringFireball just posted about an article that said there have been 6000 BBC programmes streamed from Android devices (all of them), while there have been over 5,000,000 for iOS devices. The BBC has a great website optimised for the iPad.
So, I reckon the studies can show that millions more Android devices are ACCESSING the web. Maybe they go by IP addresses or something. And maybe they are accessing the web more individual times: ie., likelly those Android devices are set to check their email like every five minutes and sync with their calendars, etc.
But I highly doubt Android users are spending any serious time online browsing the web in any kind of comfort. I bet they can't wait to get back to their desktops. On the contrary, iOS users are eschewing their desktops in favour of browsing the web on their mobile devices!
You do realize that the BBC iplayer only works on android 2.2 with flash right?
Not many phones have been upgraded yet.
And tell me what makes browsing on ios so much better that you assume android users cant wait to get back to their desktops?
In the computer market as a whole, Macs are not important.
In the niche markets you identify, the Mac sells well.
By that logic then there is no PC maker that is "important" since none have a monopoly of the PC market, but you are very wrong. Macs are important and a huge issue for all big name PC makers who can't make a decent buck on higher-end HW sales. And regarding the "market as a whole" Macs have the largest marketshare in terms of profits, the only thing thing that concerns a good company.
Quote:
Originally Posted by demitri
You do realize that the BBC iplayer only works on android 2.2 with flash right?
Not many phones have been upgraded yet.
And tell me what makes browsing on ios so much better that you assume android users cant wait to get back to their desktops?
I have never seen an Android phone in the wild in the UK yet, everybody I meet has an iOS device.
This argument is full of android zealots. Nevertheless I want to correct some assumptions, and misleading facts.
1) Apple outgrew the market in the 2nd quarter, which will be it's weakest quarter this year. Androids "catchup" was confined to the US - where it went ahead, but the US figures played into the world figures. One quarter of catchup is not the same as an installed base.
2) The iPhone i4 and 3GS 8MB are selling like hotcakes. Apple clearly said in the 2Q conference call that their YoY run rate was an increase of 90% until they announced the iPhone 4. Even factoring in the 1.7 million sold in the last 3 days their final year on year increase was 60%. So sales dropped off a cliff for a month. Hard figures, not speculation. So people who were unaware of the iP4 until the announcement held off from then, and the people who were aware of it were holding off all year ( like me, for instance). This quarter I expect a sequential increase on 100% or more.
3) People who buy Android in the US wanted an iPhone like device but not AT&T. That will change next year.
4) Please include the iPod Touch ( and now the iPad) in all quarterly comparisons. That matters to developers. Every holiday quarter Apple sells about 20M iPods, otherwise 10M. About half are touches, this will probably increase this year. Conservatively expect 15M iPod touches to come out to December. All running 4.X. Developers rejoice.
5) Steve announced 230K new activations a day. That is iPhone or iPad 3g only, and excludes iPod touches. It runs to 7M a month or 21M a quarter. It includes iPad 3Gs but it does not include upgrades ( i.e. sales to old customers, which must be 50%). The maths is simple here, the iOS is pulling ahead of Android this quarter rather sharply. Sales could be 40M.
To those of you who think that this is a re-run of the Mac - Windows market please learn about some other markets. The PC market is anomalous in being a dual platform. The Mobile market was multi-platform before the iPhone, it was after the Android, and it will be post Windows 7 - which will also be licensed ( so why do the licensing will always win brigade ignore Windows 7?) . Windows 7 will attract that portion of the Apple hating Windows loving crowd who now go to Android. It will be Windows 10%, Android 20%, iOS ( all devices) 40-50%. Sold apps will be far higher on the App Store, and will attract more developers.
Lastly Apple dont care about profits. They dont give their shareholders any money. Unless the company is losing money they dont look at it. They could, after all, make money from an Apple branded Windows machine.
Steve is a founder CEO, which is quite a different beast from a MBA CEO. He wants to win. Look at the prices of iPods. They want that in the Phone market too.
For those of you who think it is about money, not market share, when has Steve every mentioned the Apple Stock. Has he ever crowed about becoming the biggest company in the US? he belittled the idea at D8.
No, he comes on an talks about sales, and market share, and apps, and numbers of downloads and so on.
They want to win the Phone OS war,because they believe their OS is better, and they will because the OS is better.
( Android lovers will probably come back on that one, but trust me as a developer, it is night and day. Android is vile, ugly, restrictive, iOS is desktop quality SDK, and to us the SDK is the OS).
Duh is right. Every manufacturer could like it, but that does not matter one bit.
The reason why Android is gaining market share is because consumers are buying Android devices faster and faster, certainly at a much faster rate than iOS devices. Fewer relevant consumers are buying iOS devices compared to greater numbers of relevant consumers buying Android devices.
These things are not mysterious. The rate of consumer purchases determines market share on a dynamic basis. The installed consumer base compared to competitors determines the static market share.
The reasons for market share are consumer buying habits, and not what manufacturers "like".
You couldn't be more wrong. The fact is, what we have here is "the chicken and egg" oddity. Do you think, even for a minute, that if for any reason at all, say for instance, the hardware manufacturers actually being forced into an exorbitant licensing fee for Android, that they would still like it so much? Not on your life. ..... Let's face it , the reason that Android is seemingly so popular has nothing whatsoever to do with quality and everything to do with availablility. BTW, just for my curiosity, wtf is a relevant consumer?
Comments
> The amount of browsing that those few iPads are doing is not insignificant.
What do you base that on? It seems to be the premise you rely upon, but I don't see any support.
Got any facts to prop up that crucial contention?
Facts: In a recent overview by NetMarketshare.com the iPad already has 0.27 % of the total browsing (worldwide), as opposed to the best-scoring Android version, 2.1, at 0.09 %. If you add Android 1.6 and 2.2, the combined result is 0.17 % - lower that the iPad alone.
The numbers are here.
Indeed!
Duh is right. Every manufacturer could like it, but that does not matter one bit.
The reason why Android is gaining market share is because consumers are buying Android devices faster and faster, certainly at a much faster rate than iOS devices. Fewer relevant consumers are buying iOS devices compared to greater numbers of relevant consumers buying Android devices.
These things are not mysterious. The rate of consumer purchases determines market share on a dynamic basis. The installed consumer base compared to competitors determines the static market share.
The reasons for market share are consumer buying habits, and not what manufacturers "like".
Fewer relevant consumers …
The reasons for market share are consumer buying habits, and not what manufacturers "like"
Android is everywhere!
IOS devices are not.
I agree with this poster. If iPhone had come to Verizon a year ago, it might have put a dent in Android. BUT...it's now too little, too late. VErizon is heavily invested in Android with the biggest lineup of any carrier. The whole DROID moniker is probably almost as well known as the iPhone brand at this point. And overseas, Android is gaining like crazy. Remember through all of this: Android is now #1 in the U.S., having surpassed even Blackberry in sales, and not because of buy-one-get-one deals. There aren't many of those. And, worldwide, Android has surpassed Apple as well. My prediction is within the next few years, iPhone will be like what the Mac was 20 years ago while Android follows the path that Windows followed back then as well--niche vs. ubiquity. The iPad, however, is another story. It's too early to know how that will play out, but with Android tablets coming out within the next couple of months from multiple manufacturers on multiple carriers, it could follow the same trajectory.
Wow, there are so many factual errors and conjecture in this post, it will take too much effort to counter. Jeez.
Unless Apple licenses iOS, it has no chance of fending off Android. Android will be as ubiquitous as Windows and Apple will be at 6%, again.
It will be some time before Android is really competitive. Apple's developer SDKs and tools are much better then Googles. Apple has a significant advantage when it comes to mobile app development. It is difficult to write anything beyond simple apps that wrap around a web page (like Facebook) or OpenGL based games on an Android device. Android web surfing is probably up because that (and Google Maps which is better then on the iPhone) is all you can do well on an Android phone. iPhone users probably use applications in place of web browsing for many tasks. Android will probably be very popular among people who just want to surf the web, but may never gain traction among users who want to run apps. I think the iPhone actually lives up to the hype and Android falls short when you actually try to use their phone to run applications. As others have said, a lot of people chose an Android device on Verizon. Those same people carry an iPod touch to run applications. There is a significant conversion rate (I don't have the link handy) for Android to iPhone users. There is virtually no defection from the iPhone. Market share doesn't tell the whole story. I still find it incredible how many professionals are using OS X. These are the people really propelling the economy. Something just doesn't feel right about comparing a NetBook to a MacBook Pro. You can of course slant statistics to any point you want to prove, but I care more about use-share and dollar-share then market-share. I think that Microsoft would trade places with Apple right now if they could.
I think google should get credit for achieving this web use statistic though. It is really pretty impressive, but to be fair to Apple it is the only thing they have been focusing on. They certainly have not been focusing on Apps. For various reasons I don't think Apple has wanted to make a less expensive iPhone with more limited capabilities to compete with Android. If Android continues to increase their market share after Apple switches to Verizon, maybe they will.
I agree with this poster. If iPhone had come to Verizon a year ago, it might have put a dent in Android. BUT...it's now too little, too late. VErizon is heavily invested in Android with the biggest lineup of any carrier. The whole DROID moniker is probably almost as well known as the iPhone brand at this point. And overseas, Android is gaining like crazy. Remember through all of this: Android is now #1 in the U.S., having surpassed even Blackberry in sales, and not because of buy-one-get-one deals. There aren't many of those. And, worldwide, Android has surpassed Apple as well. My prediction is within the next few years, iPhone will be like what the Mac was 20 years ago while Android follows the path that Windows followed back then as well--niche vs. ubiquity. The iPad, however, is another story. It's too early to know how that will play out, but with Android tablets coming out within the next couple of months from multiple manufacturers on multiple carriers, it could follow the same trajectory.
My prediction is that Android will be the dominant OS for low end phones. The middle and high end will continue to be dominated by Apple. The Android phone just doesn't (and will take a long time to catch up) compete well with Apple. It isn't just the 2-3 year head start Apple has in the Smart Phone business. It is the 10+ year head start they had by factoring in OS X technology. Google (or their partners) will never be as motivated or have the same resources as Apple to make decent SDKs for their Apps to take off. Besides the technical problems, it doesn't make a lot of business sense for most developers to target an App Store that generally doesn't sell enough apps to be worth the effort. Android phones do not yet have Enterprise features. Enterprise customers are all rallying behind creating iOS apps for their in house development. Despite being Java-based, Android will have an uphill battle in a couple years when they are ready to really support the Enterprise. Besides they are not running the "full" Java, so it really has little relevance for enterprise customers porting existing apps. The ubiquitous hardware and top down push (push from corporate executives) strategy is working very well for Apple in the enterprise sector. If anyone follows a "Windows" trajectory it will be Apple. Despite being from one vendor, they have the only hardware I would call ubiquitous. Multi-vendor and ubiquitous are not synonyms. If anyone asks me for an Android version of an iPhone app, I say we can do a "lite" version. (By the way, if anyone knows why it is called "lite" instead of "light" I would love to know.)
As opposed to what someone said, Apple NEEDS 50% share. They don't need to be the absolute rulers of the market, but they MUST have a big chunk of it to keep developer interest. Without it, iOS will fall down and say "Hi!" to its brother the Mac.
Not true....
You forgot one very important detail when measuring what Apple needs... Users are almost worthless if a very large portion of them have never and likely will never pay for an app. I listen to lots of podcasts and those who fly the hacker flag high and proud gloat that they'd never be caught dead BUYING an APP... These same people boast how useless the iPhone is and how awsomw Android is... Perhaps someone needs to dig out a photo of what ANDRIOD looked like before the iPhone was revealed. Anyway, what developer is going to back THAT horse, an entire user base looking for free everything?
I'm sure you can cite lots of successful iPhone devs who are developing apps for android too... How long do you expect them to keep up the charity work when nobody buys their stuff? Hey it's not like everyone can be google and just give their work away for free!
In the end if Google winds up with 80% of the freeloaders and Apple ends up with the other 20% that actually reward developers work then you can only guess where the developers will side.
I agree with this poster. If iPhone had come to Verizon a year ago, it might have put a dent in Android. BUT...it's now too little, too late. VErizon is heavily invested in Android with the biggest lineup of any carrier. The whole DROID moniker is probably almost as well known as the iPhone brand at this point. And overseas, Android is gaining like crazy. Remember through all of this: Android is now #1 in the U.S., having surpassed even Blackberry in sales, and not because of buy-one-get-one deals. There aren't many of those. And, worldwide, Android has surpassed Apple as well. My prediction is within the next few years, iPhone will be like what the Mac was 20 years ago while Android follows the path that Windows followed back then as well--niche vs. ubiquity. The iPad, however, is another story. It's too early to know how that will play out, but with Android tablets coming out within the next couple of months from multiple manufacturers on multiple carriers, it could follow the same trajectory.
Please post a link showing that Android has surpassed iPhone worldwide. Everything I have read says otherwise.
Please post a link showing that Android has surpassed iPhone worldwide. Everything I have read says otherwise.
You're right, just look here. Mac OSX: 5%, iOS: 1.13%, Android (all versions combined): 0.2%.
So Android is less than one fifth of iOS in worldwide web browsing share. Even Symbian (Nokia) is bigger with 0.27% - the same number as the iPad has alone.
Yes, look at what has happened to the iPod!
Also, Android market share outside the US (where in most countries there are other carriers) is 1/10 of Apple's
The truly last market to explode is China. Apple is making huge increases in China and will continue to expand with the iPad, not to forget Japan and South Korea.
If Apple wants to make the same inroads into India, it will.
ATT only represents about 1/3 of the US mobile market. That gives Android a 3-to-1 addressable customer base advantage over iPhone.
math: if ATT has 1/3rd of carriers, and Android gets the other 2/3rds [meaning ATT has ONE and Android has TWO, what is the ratio?
math: if ATT has 1/3rd of carriers, and Android gets the other 2/3rds [meaning ATT has ONE and Android has TWO, what is the ratio?
I think you are forgetting that Android can address the all US carriers, whig makes it 3/3.
The amount of browsing that those few iPads are doing is not insignificant. Here i am typing this on my iPad. I have also happily been watching BBC iPlayer on it for hours at a time. This is not so good on Android -- DaringFireball just posted about an article that said there have been 6000 BBC programmes streamed from Android devices (all of them), while there have been over 5,000,000 for iOS devices. The BBC has a great website optimised for the iPad.
So, I reckon the studies can show that millions more Android devices are ACCESSING the web. Maybe they go by IP addresses or something. And maybe they are accessing the web more individual times: ie., likelly those Android devices are set to check their email like every five minutes and sync with their calendars, etc.
But I highly doubt Android users are spending any serious time online browsing the web in any kind of comfort. I bet they can't wait to get back to their desktops. On the contrary, iOS users are eschewing their desktops in favour of browsing the web on their mobile devices!
You do realize that the BBC iplayer only works on android 2.2 with flash right?
Not many phones have been upgraded yet.
And tell me what makes browsing on ios so much better that you assume android users cant wait to get back to their desktops?
In the computer market as a whole, Macs are not important.
In the niche markets you identify, the Mac sells well.
By that logic then there is no PC maker that is "important" since none have a monopoly of the PC market, but you are very wrong. Macs are important and a huge issue for all big name PC makers who can't make a decent buck on higher-end HW sales. And regarding the "market as a whole" Macs have the largest marketshare in terms of profits, the only thing thing that concerns a good company.
You do realize that the BBC iplayer only works on android 2.2 with flash right?
Not many phones have been upgraded yet.
And tell me what makes browsing on ios so much better that you assume android users cant wait to get back to their desktops?
You just made Gruber's point regarding Flash.
math: if ATT has 1/3rd of carriers, and Android gets the other 2/3rds [meaning ATT has ONE and Android has TWO, what is the ratio?
You do the math with the facts, the ratio is 3 to 1 because Android is on ATT.
Android is everywhere!
IOS devices are not.
I have never seen an Android phone in the wild in the UK yet, everybody I meet has an iOS device.
This argument is full of android zealots. Nevertheless I want to correct some assumptions, and misleading facts.
1) Apple outgrew the market in the 2nd quarter, which will be it's weakest quarter this year. Androids "catchup" was confined to the US - where it went ahead, but the US figures played into the world figures. One quarter of catchup is not the same as an installed base.
2) The iPhone i4 and 3GS 8MB are selling like hotcakes. Apple clearly said in the 2Q conference call that their YoY run rate was an increase of 90% until they announced the iPhone 4. Even factoring in the 1.7 million sold in the last 3 days their final year on year increase was 60%. So sales dropped off a cliff for a month. Hard figures, not speculation. So people who were unaware of the iP4 until the announcement held off from then, and the people who were aware of it were holding off all year ( like me, for instance). This quarter I expect a sequential increase on 100% or more.
3) People who buy Android in the US wanted an iPhone like device but not AT&T. That will change next year.
4) Please include the iPod Touch ( and now the iPad) in all quarterly comparisons. That matters to developers. Every holiday quarter Apple sells about 20M iPods, otherwise 10M. About half are touches, this will probably increase this year. Conservatively expect 15M iPod touches to come out to December. All running 4.X. Developers rejoice.
5) Steve announced 230K new activations a day. That is iPhone or iPad 3g only, and excludes iPod touches. It runs to 7M a month or 21M a quarter. It includes iPad 3Gs but it does not include upgrades ( i.e. sales to old customers, which must be 50%). The maths is simple here, the iOS is pulling ahead of Android this quarter rather sharply. Sales could be 40M.
To those of you who think that this is a re-run of the Mac - Windows market please learn about some other markets. The PC market is anomalous in being a dual platform. The Mobile market was multi-platform before the iPhone, it was after the Android, and it will be post Windows 7 - which will also be licensed ( so why do the licensing will always win brigade ignore Windows 7?) . Windows 7 will attract that portion of the Apple hating Windows loving crowd who now go to Android. It will be Windows 10%, Android 20%, iOS ( all devices) 40-50%. Sold apps will be far higher on the App Store, and will attract more developers.
Lastly Apple dont care about profits. They dont give their shareholders any money. Unless the company is losing money they dont look at it. They could, after all, make money from an Apple branded Windows machine.
Steve is a founder CEO, which is quite a different beast from a MBA CEO. He wants to win. Look at the prices of iPods. They want that in the Phone market too.
For those of you who think it is about money, not market share, when has Steve every mentioned the Apple Stock. Has he ever crowed about becoming the biggest company in the US? he belittled the idea at D8.
No, he comes on an talks about sales, and market share, and apps, and numbers of downloads and so on.
They want to win the Phone OS war,because they believe their OS is better, and they will because the OS is better.
( Android lovers will probably come back on that one, but trust me as a developer, it is night and day. Android is vile, ugly, restrictive, iOS is desktop quality SDK, and to us the SDK is the OS).
Duh is right. Every manufacturer could like it, but that does not matter one bit.
The reason why Android is gaining market share is because consumers are buying Android devices faster and faster, certainly at a much faster rate than iOS devices. Fewer relevant consumers are buying iOS devices compared to greater numbers of relevant consumers buying Android devices.
These things are not mysterious. The rate of consumer purchases determines market share on a dynamic basis. The installed consumer base compared to competitors determines the static market share.
The reasons for market share are consumer buying habits, and not what manufacturers "like".
You couldn't be more wrong. The fact is, what we have here is "the chicken and egg" oddity. Do you think, even for a minute, that if for any reason at all, say for instance, the hardware manufacturers actually being forced into an exorbitant licensing fee for Android, that they would still like it so much? Not on your life. ..... Let's face it , the reason that Android is seemingly so popular has nothing whatsoever to do with quality and everything to do with availablility. BTW, just for my curiosity, wtf is a relevant consumer?