Where is the "gone for marketshare" strategy in this? It's not there. No distribution through lots of carriers early on, no low-cost models, no pre-paid models, etc. They didn't even have deals with the largest carriers in the USA, China and Japan through most of this time span.
The past is not the future. We also have Tim Cooks statements and the clear push for China at the WWDC. Then there is the evidence of cheap iPod touches and a cheap entry level iPad. I don't know exactly was evidence you guys want.
This really is an inane comparison. You're comparing an OS which runs on a small range of premium-priced devices with an OS which runs on a vast range of phones, many of which are given away for free with moderately priced contracts. I bet many people who buy an Android phone are just buying a phone, and don't really know or care that it has Android installed.
It's like saying that Porsche is failing because it's selling fewer cars than Ford. Not everybody likes Porsches, and a Porsche isn't the right car for a large number of people - who might prefer something cheaper and more practical. Nevertheless, all Porsches are aimed at a relatively affluent market segment and turn a much higher profit margin than a Ford Focus does.
They were doing the same comparisons between Nokia and Apple for about 9 months before it was revealed to the world that Nokia was drowning in low cost phone sales and not making a profit.
Google feels it's insulated due to having 3rd parties making the phone. They won't feel that way when those 3rd parties consolidate their lines down to their high margin only options leaving Google's ad revenue channels reduced, thus impacting their bottom line.
What about when I'm on the tube/subway/airplane/road?
I never said it was perfect for every situation. But generally speaking, how often are people without connectivity these days? Your original assertion was that Europeans wouldn't take to cloud computing (Google/Microsoft's model of it..) because connectivity was expensive. I am merely suggesting that there isn't much evidence for this and there are certainly use cases where the lack of connectivity occassionally won't hinder uptake of the service as a whole. Also, I'd suggest that under moments when you are in transit, the lack of connectivity (through the mobile network with high roaming rates) could easily be overcome (wifi).
Quote:
Originally Posted by cloudgazer
Don't get me wrong I use google docs often for things that I want to share widely, like baby spreadsheets for MMOs and such. I just wouldn't want to use them for anything that I wanted reliable access to, in that instance device+cloud is superior.
and I wouldn't rely on it for business critical documents.
That's you. On the other hand there are companies, government agencies, universities, etc. migrating entirely to Google Apps or deploying Office Live and Sharepoint or using OpenOffice or approximating the same experience through services like Citrix.
You may value being able to do work on the tube with a native app. Somebody else might easily value easy access to their documents and a collaborative work environment. You shouldn't assume that your priorities are the same as somebody else's.
It's possible to pick up a Samsung Galaxy Europa Android smartphone for £40 ($60 inc. tax) off contract in the UK.
New? Wow. Do you have a link?
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL
Android may have its faults but I think it's great to see smartphones available to all members of society.
Exactly. And this is why I never understand Apple fans getting worked up into a lather over numbers like these. Apple makes premium products. iPhones wouldn't be special if every person with a pre-paid service, in every part of the world, was carrying them. Nor does Apple have any real interest in making the iPhone that ubiquitous. Or it would have seriously jacked up production rates by now. So Apple will keep doing what it will, aiming for people with the $$$. And Android will be the common man's OS. It's the new Symbian or Windows Mobile. Available anywhere in whatever form factor you like, for cheap. And this should be applauded. It's enticing people who might not ever have considered a smartphone. And that growth of the smartphone segment is good for everybody.
First he never suggested that it was competing with a desktop OS, there are for-pay embedded OSes too you know. Second he's absolutely right, a major reason that embedded linux is popular is because it's free.
In a new whitepaper on Linux in the embedded market, VDC researchers cite the following reasons for Linux's popularity:Licensing cost advantages Flexibility of source code access General familiarity Maturing ecosystem of applications and tools Growing developer experience with Linux as an embedded OS
Besides 15+ years of NeXT/OS X experience my last 12 years of Debian Linux [on a daily basis] has me questioning the value you place on all of these ideas.
Firstly, the Licensing cost advantage of what? The pervasive GPL 2 for Linux isn't as attractive as the pervasive BSD license for businesses.
Secondly, elaborate on this flexibility.
Thirdly, this maturing ecosystem doesn't remotely have the mature ABI and APIs that comes with iOS and it's 2 decades plus maturation of Cocoa APIs from which it's based.
Finally, the growing developer experience claim is just crap. Linux has nearly 2 decades of developer experience to draw upon and though I use it daily and enjoy it immensely I won't jump to writing code for Qt or Android over Cocoa/Cocoa Touch. With the advances in iOS 5, LLVM/Clang/LLDB/GCD/OpenCL/OpenGL in a unified series of MVC/KVC Patterns and more that has 2 decades plus of true OO Design I know my future is rock solid. Sorry, but in about 9 - 12 months from now GCC will no longer be the defacto choice of a large portion of highly used projects to build your application on. Even Linus will have to address the fact that LLVM 3/3.1 and Clang will provide so much for Linux performance that he'll be recommending the Linux Kernel distributions to start compiling against it.
The advances Chris Lattner and company are bringing to compiler design infrastructure is saving people a considerable amount of time getting their projects to market and that means a higher return on investment.
Java's Garbage Collection idea is no longer the cat's meow with the advent of ARC.
Not to be ignored the JIT design is about to get a major leap forward with MC-JIT inside LLVM.
There is a reason why Nvidia, AMD, Google, Adobe, IBM, SONY, INTEL and many more are moving major projects to LLVM. It's a leap forward and is business friendly.
GCC embracing GPLv3 was the moment it bet the farm on the ``free as in beer'' crowd to hang it's Red Hat on.
Any "android" in my fridge will not be capable of much. I've heard these stories about linux before. Didnt happen. All a fridge needs is to close properly, dammit.
Not running Android with the Android Market and a bunch of apps. Think Android@Home.
Quote:
Originally Posted by asdasd
Cars, I can see. I am of the opinion, heretical here, that Apple should licence to markets they cant possibly enter themselves.
Apple would never do that. But in the meanwhile, there's Microsoft Sync and Panasonic is now designing in-flight entertainment systems using Android as its OS. In a few years time, it's entirely conceivable that most IFEs will be Android, most car infotainment systems will be Android, and all your "smart" appliances at home will run on (or be compatible with) Android.
Not running Android with the Android Market and a bunch of apps. Think Android@Home.
Apple would never do that. But in the meanwhile, there's Microsoft Sync and Panasonic is now designing in-flight entertainment systems using Android as its OS. In a few years time, it's entirely conceivable that most IFEs will be Android, most car infotainment systems will be Android, and all your "smart" appliances at home will run on (or be compatible with) Android.
Oh I wouldn't rule out Apple licencing where they are not going to compete. Steve jobs said the removal of Mac licences was a business decision not an ideological one. and android is not an OS , it's a virtual machine running in a OS - the OS is Linux. Why the Android gunk is needed for embedded devices escapes me.
True. But you are assuming Apple's goal here is "unit marketshare". It's not. It's profits and revenue. Whatever gets them there. And as is evidenct, they are already there with less than 20% of worldwide smartphone marketshare. Would they like more marketshare, of course, but the business model they are using is definitive not one to get the most marketshare.
The window to own the "smartphone" market through lower margin products is over. It's arguable and very likely that the window was never open to Apple, and they chose not to play it that way. Consider the cell phone market. The idea that Apple, a premium hardware+software solutions provider, could be the dominant player in unit share in the cell phone market was never in play. The mere fact that the market is gated by service providers supports this.
Quote:
We also have Tim Cooks statements and the clear push for China at the WWDC. Then there is the evidence of cheap iPod touches and a cheap entry level iPad. I don't know exactly was evidence you guys want.
Tim Cook's statement is about pushing for growth, and maintaining & improving their revenue and profit share. It's not about dominating marketshare.
There are any evidence of cheap iPod touches and cheap entry level iPads. iPads cost $500 minimum and have an ASP of ~$625. iPod touches range from $229 to $399. And the minimum iPod touch model increased in prices from $199 to $229 going from 3rd gen to 4th gen.
You are like a dog with a bone. The iPod touch at $229 is cheap. It is basically an iPhone without the 3G. The original iPod was $400. The next model was $500 but it had more memory. IPads are also cheap at entry level for what you get - relative to component costs. Other tablets are at best $50 cheaper. If Apple was in the same premium position with tablets as it is with the iPhone it would sell this years model at $1000.
I don't know what evidence you need. You are translating Cooks statement that they don't want to cede any market and don't want theiPhone to be exclusively for the rich into your own ideological tinted views.
That's not part of the 300k/day. Apple generally don't include Apple TV in the comparison because they've gone along with the definition of the market as mobile computing and Apple TV obviously isn't.
Not that it would be a material number anyway, Apple TV is by Apple's own admission 'hobbyist'.
Dammit, Scottie, that was a joke. I hate it when humor falls on serious ears.
I think they do. They do realize that losing market share (especially in a platform war) can lead to heavily reduced profits in the future.
Android just has tremendous reach, compared to the iPhone. As Asymco pointed out, the iPhone currently is inaccessible to over 90% of the addressable market (because such a large percentage is pre-paid where Apple does not compete at all, and competes for only about 50-75% of the post-paid market).
Apple's share has been relatively stable. I think we have seen the limits of their organic growth at these price levels. Android's success is a reflection of the destruction of Nokia and RIM's market shares. Once Apple starts competing at those levels (cheaper, contract free, unlocked phone), then things will really get interesting.
Where are Apple losing anything, they continue to sell more iOS devices than they sold before, growing in a growing market.
As i said, Android will be the OS of choice for the third world. Nothing wrong with that, just that it means that the Android smartphone market is going to be a cutthroat dog-eat-dog world where profits are going to be driven down to razor thin margins by no-name Chinese manufacturers and app sales will not be significant. This is not a place where Motorola will be launching its long term revitalization.
Oh I wouldn't rule out Apple licencing where they are not going to compete. Steve jobs said the removal of Mac licences was a business decision not an ideological one.
It may have started out that way but it seems to have increasingly become an ideological position to avoid licensing whole systems, and especially never to license their core TMs. Remember how much crap they caught for the ROKR? Remember the HP iPods? It would have to be something really compelling to get Apple interested in licensing an OS or co-branding a consumer product again.
Comments
Anantksundaram, I'd love to see his link.
What "link"? If you mean to RichL's post, see above. If you mean what he's referring to, ask him directly, not me. I don't/can't post on his behalf?
i think my daughter is on her third Android in a year because of hardware issues.
Well, after three tries, you'd think she'd want to move to a different platform, assuming that were possible under her current contract.
Where is the "gone for marketshare" strategy in this? It's not there. No distribution through lots of carriers early on, no low-cost models, no pre-paid models, etc. They didn't even have deals with the largest carriers in the USA, China and Japan through most of this time span.
The past is not the future. We also have Tim Cooks statements and the clear push for China at the WWDC. Then there is the evidence of cheap iPod touches and a cheap entry level iPad. I don't know exactly was evidence you guys want.
I am mistaking things?
Why don't I have RichL (the original poster to whom I was responding) address this.
Thanks for your (unneeded) input.
You aren't having a private conversation with anyone here. To do that use pm. So if you contribute anybody can reply.
This really is an inane comparison. You're comparing an OS which runs on a small range of premium-priced devices with an OS which runs on a vast range of phones, many of which are given away for free with moderately priced contracts. I bet many people who buy an Android phone are just buying a phone, and don't really know or care that it has Android installed.
It's like saying that Porsche is failing because it's selling fewer cars than Ford. Not everybody likes Porsches, and a Porsche isn't the right car for a large number of people - who might prefer something cheaper and more practical. Nevertheless, all Porsches are aimed at a relatively affluent market segment and turn a much higher profit margin than a Ford Focus does.
They were doing the same comparisons between Nokia and Apple for about 9 months before it was revealed to the world that Nokia was drowning in low cost phone sales and not making a profit.
Google feels it's insulated due to having 3rd parties making the phone. They won't feel that way when those 3rd parties consolidate their lines down to their high margin only options leaving Google's ad revenue channels reduced, thus impacting their bottom line.
i think my daughter is on her third Android in a year because of hardware issues.
Funny you mention that. The 5 people that I know that have Android phones have combined for 17 different handsets due to repeated hardware issues.
Is each one of these handsets a new activation?
You aren't having a private conversation with anyone here. To do that use pm. So if you contribute anybody can reply.
Gee. Thanks. I didn't notice.
/sarcasm
How come you couldn't bring yourself to pm me with that message? Lazy? Like to shoot your mouth off in public? Both?
A post that raises the issue of someone's inability to read or process basic information (or address snarkiness) is public-worthy, in my view.
What about when I'm on the tube/subway/airplane/road?
I never said it was perfect for every situation. But generally speaking, how often are people without connectivity these days? Your original assertion was that Europeans wouldn't take to cloud computing (Google/Microsoft's model of it..) because connectivity was expensive. I am merely suggesting that there isn't much evidence for this and there are certainly use cases where the lack of connectivity occassionally won't hinder uptake of the service as a whole. Also, I'd suggest that under moments when you are in transit, the lack of connectivity (through the mobile network with high roaming rates) could easily be overcome (wifi).
Don't get me wrong I use google docs often for things that I want to share widely, like baby spreadsheets for MMOs and such. I just wouldn't want to use them for anything that I wanted reliable access to, in that instance device+cloud is superior.
and I wouldn't rely on it for business critical documents.
That's you. On the other hand there are companies, government agencies, universities, etc. migrating entirely to Google Apps or deploying Office Live and Sharepoint or using OpenOffice or approximating the same experience through services like Citrix.
You may value being able to do work on the tube with a native app. Somebody else might easily value easy access to their documents and a collaborative work environment. You shouldn't assume that your priorities are the same as somebody else's.
It's possible to pick up a Samsung Galaxy Europa Android smartphone for £40 ($60 inc. tax) off contract in the UK.
New? Wow. Do you have a link?
Android may have its faults but I think it's great to see smartphones available to all members of society.
Exactly. And this is why I never understand Apple fans getting worked up into a lather over numbers like these. Apple makes premium products. iPhones wouldn't be special if every person with a pre-paid service, in every part of the world, was carrying them. Nor does Apple have any real interest in making the iPhone that ubiquitous. Or it would have seriously jacked up production rates by now. So Apple will keep doing what it will, aiming for people with the $$$. And Android will be the common man's OS. It's the new Symbian or Windows Mobile. Available anywhere in whatever form factor you like, for cheap. And this should be applauded. It's enticing people who might not ever have considered a smartphone. And that growth of the smartphone segment is good for everybody.
First he never suggested that it was competing with a desktop OS, there are for-pay embedded OSes too you know. Second he's absolutely right, a major reason that embedded linux is popular is because it's free.
In a new whitepaper on Linux in the embedded market, VDC researchers cite the following reasons for Linux's popularity:Licensing cost advantages
Flexibility of source code access
General familiarity
Maturing ecosystem of applications and tools
Growing developer experience with Linux as an embedded OS
Source: http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/N...p-embedded-OS/
Besides 15+ years of NeXT/OS X experience my last 12 years of Debian Linux [on a daily basis] has me questioning the value you place on all of these ideas.
- Firstly, the Licensing cost advantage of what? The pervasive GPL 2 for Linux isn't as attractive as the pervasive BSD license for businesses.
- Secondly, elaborate on this flexibility.
- Thirdly, this maturing ecosystem doesn't remotely have the mature ABI and APIs that comes with iOS and it's 2 decades plus maturation of Cocoa APIs from which it's based.
- Finally, the growing developer experience claim is just crap. Linux has nearly 2 decades of developer experience to draw upon and though I use it daily and enjoy it immensely I won't jump to writing code for Qt or Android over Cocoa/Cocoa Touch. With the advances in iOS 5, LLVM/Clang/LLDB/GCD/OpenCL/OpenGL in a unified series of MVC/KVC Patterns and more that has 2 decades plus of true OO Design I know my future is rock solid. Sorry, but in about 9 - 12 months from now GCC will no longer be the defacto choice of a large portion of highly used projects to build your application on. Even Linus will have to address the fact that LLVM 3/3.1 and Clang will provide so much for Linux performance that he'll be recommending the Linux Kernel distributions to start compiling against it.
The advances Chris Lattner and company are bringing to compiler design infrastructure is saving people a considerable amount of time getting their projects to market and that means a higher return on investment.Java's Garbage Collection idea is no longer the cat's meow with the advent of ARC.
Not to be ignored the JIT design is about to get a major leap forward with MC-JIT inside LLVM.
There is a reason why Nvidia, AMD, Google, Adobe, IBM, SONY, INTEL and many more are moving major projects to LLVM. It's a leap forward and is business friendly.
GCC embracing GPLv3 was the moment it bet the farm on the ``free as in beer'' crowd to hang it's Red Hat on.
New? Wow. Do you have a link?
http://shop.o2.co.uk/mobile_phone/pa...alaxy%20Europa
That must be a loss leader.
Any "android" in my fridge will not be capable of much. I've heard these stories about linux before. Didnt happen. All a fridge needs is to close properly, dammit.
Not running Android with the Android Market and a bunch of apps. Think Android@Home.
Cars, I can see. I am of the opinion, heretical here, that Apple should licence to markets they cant possibly enter themselves.
Apple would never do that. But in the meanwhile, there's Microsoft Sync and Panasonic is now designing in-flight entertainment systems using Android as its OS. In a few years time, it's entirely conceivable that most IFEs will be Android, most car infotainment systems will be Android, and all your "smart" appliances at home will run on (or be compatible with) Android.
Not running Android with the Android Market and a bunch of apps. Think Android@Home.
Apple would never do that. But in the meanwhile, there's Microsoft Sync and Panasonic is now designing in-flight entertainment systems using Android as its OS. In a few years time, it's entirely conceivable that most IFEs will be Android, most car infotainment systems will be Android, and all your "smart" appliances at home will run on (or be compatible with) Android.
Oh I wouldn't rule out Apple licencing where they are not going to compete. Steve jobs said the removal of Mac licences was a business decision not an ideological one. and android is not an OS , it's a virtual machine running in a OS - the OS is Linux. Why the Android gunk is needed for embedded devices escapes me.
The past is not the future.
True. But you are assuming Apple's goal here is "unit marketshare". It's not. It's profits and revenue. Whatever gets them there. And as is evidenct, they are already there with less than 20% of worldwide smartphone marketshare. Would they like more marketshare, of course, but the business model they are using is definitive not one to get the most marketshare.
The window to own the "smartphone" market through lower margin products is over. It's arguable and very likely that the window was never open to Apple, and they chose not to play it that way. Consider the cell phone market. The idea that Apple, a premium hardware+software solutions provider, could be the dominant player in unit share in the cell phone market was never in play. The mere fact that the market is gated by service providers supports this.
We also have Tim Cooks statements and the clear push for China at the WWDC. Then there is the evidence of cheap iPod touches and a cheap entry level iPad. I don't know exactly was evidence you guys want.
Tim Cook's statement is about pushing for growth, and maintaining & improving their revenue and profit share. It's not about dominating marketshare.
There are any evidence of cheap iPod touches and cheap entry level iPads. iPads cost $500 minimum and have an ASP of ~$625. iPod touches range from $229 to $399. And the minimum iPod touch model increased in prices from $199 to $229 going from 3rd gen to 4th gen.
I don't know what evidence you need. You are translating Cooks statement that they don't want to cede any market and don't want theiPhone to be exclusively for the rich into your own ideological tinted views.
That's not part of the 300k/day. Apple generally don't include Apple TV in the comparison because they've gone along with the definition of the market as mobile computing and Apple TV obviously isn't.
Not that it would be a material number anyway, Apple TV is by Apple's own admission 'hobbyist'.
Dammit, Scottie, that was a joke. I hate it when humor falls on serious ears.
Tim Cook's statement is about pushing for growth, and maintaining & improving their revenue and profit share. It's not about dominating marketshare.
That settles it. If someone here can read Tim Cook's mind, how can the rest of you argue?
I think they do. They do realize that losing market share (especially in a platform war) can lead to heavily reduced profits in the future.
Android just has tremendous reach, compared to the iPhone. As Asymco pointed out, the iPhone currently is inaccessible to over 90% of the addressable market (because such a large percentage is pre-paid where Apple does not compete at all, and competes for only about 50-75% of the post-paid market).
Apple's share has been relatively stable. I think we have seen the limits of their organic growth at these price levels. Android's success is a reflection of the destruction of Nokia and RIM's market shares. Once Apple starts competing at those levels (cheaper, contract free, unlocked phone), then things will really get interesting.
Where are Apple losing anything, they continue to sell more iOS devices than they sold before, growing in a growing market.
Oh I wouldn't rule out Apple licencing where they are not going to compete. Steve jobs said the removal of Mac licences was a business decision not an ideological one.
It may have started out that way but it seems to have increasingly become an ideological position to avoid licensing whole systems, and especially never to license their core TMs. Remember how much crap they caught for the ROKR? Remember the HP iPods? It would have to be something really compelling to get Apple interested in licensing an OS or co-branding a consumer product again.