I made a comment about this in another thread, and with that guy's comment (which is now deleted ), I'll repeat because I think he proves my point: Android users have an unnatural obsession with technical specifications. When I bought my iPhone, I wasn't buying it for the hardware, I was buying it for the software. Android users are the exact opposite. They always buy based on hardware, even with the emergence of OEM UI skins now becoming a point of differentiation for devices.
I don't think that is true for the average Android user anymore. The early adopters were obsessed with technical specs and tech websites today remain obsessed; but smart phones have gone mainstream. I can't remember if smartphones are now 50% of all new phone sales but if it isn't it is certainly getting close. Smartphones (iOS, Android, or RIM) are now bought by normal people who have no idea what "rooting" or any of the other technical jargon. For most people the most important question is does it have Facebook?
I think any survey between android and iPhone is usually unfair... When you talk about Android, youre talking about the hundreds of Android phones out there. When you talk about iPhones, especially the iPhone 4, you're talking about one model by one company. For more accurate survey, I believe one person already said this, the survey should be between iOS and Google Android, or iPhone 4 vs one Android phone. I believe iPhone is the most sold phone and that no other one Android model broke the record (this is to my knowledge; please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Yes, Apple products may be and most are expensive compared to it's competitors. But you should know, Apple product do last very long time as they are quality products. The sophistication and simplicity of Apple's design is really worth the price. This is my opinion, of course, and some others might dislike Apple's design theory, and that's perfectly fine. But to compare Android phones to iPhones, it has to be fair, model to model or OS to OS, not OS to one single phone.
certainly not the iPhone 4. it's so delicate! but beautiful. they really need to do away with the glass back. how many cracked and shattered iPhone 4's do we need?
Android is cornering the market, iOS is still growing slowly and standing strong, RIM is bleeding market share faster than a kosher animal after slaughter, and still no one cares about WP7. Is ANYONE surprised by ANY of this?
i care! look..it's still in its infancy but i think it's a cool start. i like the live tiles and the metro ui. but it certainly doesn't have nearly all of the features that android and iOS have. it would be good to have 3 dominant mobile os's to keep everyone on their toes and keep the innovation coming. competition is great in the technology sector.
With only two versions of the iPhone and dozens of Android phones of course Android is going to sell more. In the end Apple probably still makes more money due to the hardware of the iPhone being sold too. In addition what percentage of Android phones are up to par with the iPhone 1/4? 1/2? at most?
In addition what percentage of Android phones are up to par with the iPhone 1/4? 1/2? at most?
The other way of looking at this is Apple is missing a low end model to compete with these low end Androids.
Outside of the US, BlackBerry is growing fast because people want a phone for messaging. Blackberry Messenger is included in the BlackBerry Services and therefore doesn't use your data plan. An iPhone+data plan is simply too expense for many people especially teens. Apple needs a cheap version of the iPhone with iMessenger included for free that doesn't require an expensive data plan to compete for these users.
Skewed statistics. iOS is 1 phone (disregarding successive generations). Android is multiple phones (again disregarding successive generations). Take the largest selling Android phone compared to the iPhone and I think you'll find these statistics paint a much different picture. Not going to say one is better than the other. Competition is good for the consumer so both sides win in my opinion. In fact Apple themselves welcomed the competition from day one, openly. So why even bother trying to determine which is the better platform? If we truly succeed in accomplishing this and shutting out either OS, we will only be hurting ourselves.
Which is really nigh useless from many contexts because largely we're talking about small portable device ecosystem here.
So one might be prompted to wonder why Apple has a lion's share of the app market with Google is leading US sales until they are informed that iOS' reach extends significantly beyond the Smartphone.
Lets see we have on one side one manufacturer who produces one new phone per year under one banner
Then we have every man, his dog and it's fleas producing many new phones each, each year, under another banner. . .
The one manufacturer has 26% nearly 27% of the market whilst the "market leader" can only manage 38.1% with all the diverse phones and manufacturers . . . I wonder who is the looser here . . .
Lets see we have on one side one manufacturer who produces one new phone per year under one banner
Then we have every man, his dog and it's fleas producing many new phones each, each year, under another banner. . .
The one manufacturer has 26% nearly 27% of the market whilst the "market leader" can only manage 38.1% with all the diverse phones and manufacturers . . . I wonder who is the looser here . . .
Nuff Said
And why has to be a looser?
I don't really understand this religious wars and this "or with me or against me"
As a regular reader of the usual Apple sites (being an Apple fanboy myself), one regularly gets to read gleeful stories about how "RIM CEOs didn't see X coming", "Ballmer didn't see Y coming", etc., and then some triumphalist account of the victory of the iPod, iPad, etc. I think it is time someone wrote an honest article about how Jobs didn't see the success of Android coming: the OS went from 0 to market leader in 2 years in the smartphone market... Here is a competitor who, with a much inferior, but cheaper and universally licensed OS, is overtaking Apple in leaps and bounds. Anyone been around in the 90s, sound familiar? I keep hearing the argument that "market share is for vanity, profits are what really counts, smartphone OS is not the same as desktop OS, etc. etc.", and I'm not convinced. What almost killed Apple in the 90s was that they dramatically lost market share, and I'm not sure that the same won't happen again, in the long run, in the phone market. We're still in the equivalent of the 80s, here, when the Macintosh just came out, and it looked like Apple would rule the world until kingdom come. But they're repeating the same mistakes again.
Worthless baseless information. Surveys are tools to create FUD and manipulate market values. Results will favour the party who paid for it.
Actual sales figures are the are the only ones which are of any interest.
I think you may be mistaken about a basic feature of the research market. The ComScore survey, like the Nielsen survey, isn't anything like a Gartner report. It's not being paid for by a single party and then distributed for free as a form of advertorial - it's paid for by subscription by those firms who want insight into the market. What we get access to is the free press release slice off the top, there's more data below that.
This report probably has some genuine flaws related to normalization of sample, but it won't have an a priori bias from being sponsored by one of the subjects.
Skewed statistics. iOS is 1 phone (disregarding successive generations). Android is multiple phones (again disregarding successive generations). Take the largest selling Android phone compared to the iPhone and I think you'll find these statistics paint a much different picture. Not going to say one is better than the other.
It should be evident that the two can't be directly compared if you're looking for a single smartphone sales champ. If there were only one Android OS phone and one Blackberry and one WM7, then go for it. Or if there were 25+ models running licensed iOS versions. But there isn't. Of course if there's only one phone available from Apple it would be expected to outsell (for the foreseeable future) any other specific single phone running any of the other OS's.
The one manufacturer has 26% nearly 27% of the market whilst the "market leader" can only manage 38.1% with all the diverse phones and manufacturers . . . I wonder who is the looser here . . .
Nuff Said
I believe the word you are trying to use is "loser"
What I would like to see are numbers giving sales figures. I mean sales, not "sales" as in free with contract, or buy one get one. How many handsets were actually exchanged for cash in addition to a contract? The reason I ask is because two of my friends use Android smartphones ONLY because they came "free" with the contract.
Android is capturing so much of the market with handsets and little of app sales because most Android users don't want to pay for anything they don't have to. Neither of my friends leave on their 3G service because they chose the lowest data plan. They don't buy any apps either.
I can't see that the Android "giveaway" can be sustained. I'm probably wrong though.
Comments
I made a comment about this in another thread, and with that guy's comment (which is now deleted ), I'll repeat because I think he proves my point: Android users have an unnatural obsession with technical specifications. When I bought my iPhone, I wasn't buying it for the hardware, I was buying it for the software. Android users are the exact opposite. They always buy based on hardware, even with the emergence of OEM UI skins now becoming a point of differentiation for devices.
I don't think that is true for the average Android user anymore. The early adopters were obsessed with technical specs and tech websites today remain obsessed; but smart phones have gone mainstream. I can't remember if smartphones are now 50% of all new phone sales but if it isn't it is certainly getting close. Smartphones (iOS, Android, or RIM) are now bought by normal people who have no idea what "rooting" or any of the other technical jargon. For most people the most important question is does it have Facebook?
I think any survey between android and iPhone is usually unfair... When you talk about Android, youre talking about the hundreds of Android phones out there. When you talk about iPhones, especially the iPhone 4, you're talking about one model by one company. For more accurate survey, I believe one person already said this, the survey should be between iOS and Google Android, or iPhone 4 vs one Android phone. I believe iPhone is the most sold phone and that no other one Android model broke the record (this is to my knowledge; please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Yes, Apple products may be and most are expensive compared to it's competitors. But you should know, Apple product do last very long time as they are quality products. The sophistication and simplicity of Apple's design is really worth the price. This is my opinion, of course, and some others might dislike Apple's design theory, and that's perfectly fine. But to compare Android phones to iPhones, it has to be fair, model to model or OS to OS, not OS to one single phone.
certainly not the iPhone 4. it's so delicate! but beautiful. they really need to do away with the glass back. how many cracked and shattered iPhone 4's do we need?
Android is cornering the market, iOS is still growing slowly and standing strong, RIM is bleeding market share faster than a kosher animal after slaughter, and still no one cares about WP7. Is ANYONE surprised by ANY of this?
i care! look..it's still in its infancy but i think it's a cool start. i like the live tiles and the metro ui. but it certainly doesn't have nearly all of the features that android and iOS have. it would be good to have 3 dominant mobile os's to keep everyone on their toes and keep the innovation coming. competition is great in the technology sector.
In addition what percentage of Android phones are up to par with the iPhone 1/4? 1/2? at most?
The other way of looking at this is Apple is missing a low end model to compete with these low end Androids.
Outside of the US, BlackBerry is growing fast because people want a phone for messaging. Blackberry Messenger is included in the BlackBerry Services and therefore doesn't use your data plan. An iPhone+data plan is simply too expense for many people especially teens. Apple needs a cheap version of the iPhone with iMessenger included for free that doesn't require an expensive data plan to compete for these users.
b. Not including iPads and iPod Touch into the equation means Android vs iOS data cannot compared.
Why? The report is comparing smartphones
Why? The report is comparing smartphones
Which is really nigh useless from many contexts because largely we're talking about small portable device ecosystem here.
So one might be prompted to wonder why Apple has a lion's share of the app market with Google is leading US sales until they are informed that iOS' reach extends significantly beyond the Smartphone.
Actual sales figures are the are the only ones which are of any interest.
Which is really nigh useless from many contexts because largely we're talking about small portable device ecosystem here.
No, they're talking about SMARTPHONE market, so it's not useless
Worthless baseless information. Surveys are tools to create FUD and manipulate market values. Results will favour the party who paid for it.
Yap, while reports where positive they weren't spreading FUD and weren't paid by anybody
Actual sales figures are the are the only ones which are of any interest.
Yap, those figures say the same that that report
Then we have every man, his dog and it's fleas producing many new phones each, each year, under another banner. . .
The one manufacturer has 26% nearly 27% of the market whilst the "market leader" can only manage 38.1% with all the diverse phones and manufacturers . . . I wonder who is the looser here . . .
Nuff Said
Lets see we have on one side one manufacturer who produces one new phone per year under one banner
Then we have every man, his dog and it's fleas producing many new phones each, each year, under another banner. . .
The one manufacturer has 26% nearly 27% of the market whilst the "market leader" can only manage 38.1% with all the diverse phones and manufacturers . . . I wonder who is the looser here . . .
Nuff Said
And why has to be a looser?
I don't really understand this religious wars and this "or with me or against me"
Oh look! The OS on MULTIPLE pieces of hardware is outselling the OS on ONE bit of hardware! SHOCK HORROR
How about you include tablets and iPods into the equation, eh lads?
Well this is a pointless article.
Oh look! The OS on MULTIPLE pieces of hardware is outselling the OS on ONE bit of hardware! SHOCK HORROR
TWO bits of hardware.
Worthless baseless information. Surveys are tools to create FUD and manipulate market values. Results will favour the party who paid for it.
Actual sales figures are the are the only ones which are of any interest.
I think you may be mistaken about a basic feature of the research market. The ComScore survey, like the Nielsen survey, isn't anything like a Gartner report. It's not being paid for by a single party and then distributed for free as a form of advertorial - it's paid for by subscription by those firms who want insight into the market. What we get access to is the free press release slice off the top, there's more data below that.
This report probably has some genuine flaws related to normalization of sample, but it won't have an a priori bias from being sponsored by one of the subjects.
Skewed statistics. iOS is 1 phone (disregarding successive generations). Android is multiple phones (again disregarding successive generations). Take the largest selling Android phone compared to the iPhone and I think you'll find these statistics paint a much different picture. Not going to say one is better than the other.
It should be evident that the two can't be directly compared if you're looking for a single smartphone sales champ. If there were only one Android OS phone and one Blackberry and one WM7, then go for it. Or if there were 25+ models running licensed iOS versions. But there isn't. Of course if there's only one phone available from Apple it would be expected to outsell (for the foreseeable future) any other specific single phone running any of the other OS's.
It's really a silly argument.
The one manufacturer has 26% nearly 27% of the market whilst the "market leader" can only manage 38.1% with all the diverse phones and manufacturers . . . I wonder who is the looser here . . .
Nuff Said
I believe the word you are trying to use is "loser"
Android is capturing so much of the market with handsets and little of app sales because most Android users don't want to pay for anything they don't have to. Neither of my friends leave on their 3G service because they chose the lowest data plan. They don't buy any apps either.
I can't see that the Android "giveaway" can be sustained. I'm probably wrong though.
producing dozens and dozens of models, whereas Apple has 1, if you don't account for color,
memory or carrier. I've had a "rooted" Nook Color, allowing me to use the Android Marketplace,
and their selection sucks compared to Apple's App Store. Love Android all you want. It still sucks.