The unfortunate result of Windows becoming so dominant is that certain software then was available only on PC's and the Mac became a niche product. In addition, Microsoft managed to convince the world that we would all return to the Stone Age without using Office. In effect Windows PC's became the english language of languages. Now, the phone thing may be different in that you don't yet have an Office or financial apps which only run on clones. The danger is that some app becomes absolutely dominant and only available on one platform. I'm sure Microsoft would love for Office to be that app on Windows phones.
Apple has always been in a dangerous position in this regard. Fortunately, the Samsung's of the world do not seem to produce great software. It's all about the software and, to a certain degree, price. Google has an ad based revenue model and so they can afford to have the world flooded with Android devices of all prices and quality. It's hard to imagine that this will not at some point affect Apple in a negative way much as Windows 95 really hurt the Mac. Perhaps there is some strategy that Apple can use in order to not become irrelevant as they did on the desktop ( with some niche but important exceptions). I do hope they come up with something as the Windows and Android worlds strike me as being really ugly garbage dumps.
philip
Nice post, but there's one fundamental difference between the PC market in the early-mid 90's and the mobile computing market today; PC sales primarily where to the enterprise, not consumers. It's much easier to lock corporations into huge volume licensing, then it is to lock an individual into a single device. Macs became a niche because of IBM, not Microsoft; IT departments went from IBM (DOS) to IBM-compatible (Windows). Macs didn't fit anywhere in there, they had to carve out a place for themselves in other industries. Windows dominance then grew as interest shifted from the workplace to the home.
The problem for Android is that is not a successful platform. It is a successful OS, but without a viable, cohesive platform built on top that OS, there's nothing keeping people from switching to something else, something better, or something cheaper. The massive market share numbers of Android only mean one thing, Android is used by more OEMs. That's it. There's no other advantages. OEMs have very little invested in the OS - they take all the work Google has done, tweak it for their hardware and whichever carrier it's headed for. If they remove any of Google's services, they cannot call it Android.
Today Apple is in a position they've never been in before; they have a user base that's several hundred million strong and they have a platform that is not only extremely cohesive, but also has a thriving ecosystem with many multi-billion dollar markets built around it. Android on the other hand, is basically just a semi-open source operating system used by hardware OEMs that don't know anything about software development or don't want the cost. These OEMs have to remain somewhat nimble, they have to be able to move to another OS if that's where the market heads someday.
What the article failed to report is that the sales spike was due to a "Buy 1, Get 2 Free" sale. ;-)
I would love to see the link on this sale that you are quoting.
Yes, I know you put a smiley at the end so you are being facetious but maybe your joke should have been "Buy 2 Nexus 7s for the cost of 1 iPad mini". ;-)
That includes all their divisions. CPUs, memory chips (they are the largest maker in the world), phones, laptops, printers, flat screen TVs, LCD and AMOLED displays for all kinds of devices, you name it. Any engineer knows how much suppliers like that spend on trade shows, sample parts, sales reps, etc.
I know it does. Their mobile division happens to be their largest division as well. So I'm going to guess that a majority of their marketing costs are from that division, especially since it happens to be a consumer oriented product line.
I can't really buy component marketing as being all that much, including trade shows and reps. This is a captive audience, a finite group of people. Set up a booth at a conference, throw in some reps, and hand out a few pamphlets, maybe even a few component samples. That costs what? The same as a single 30 second commercial during prime-time and that would be for that single air-time alone. How much does it cost to make the commercial?
When you have to market to consumers, it costs much more to blanket everyday life with ads and whatever to get attention.
Sure. In any business, BOGO usually results in extra sales, whether it's food or phones.
Remember Christmas 2011, when Best Buy had BOGO deals on the iPhone 4, not once, but twice?
Of course, BOGO pales in comparison to offers for free phones... including iPhones... on contract. Such deals basically work out to be GOGO. (Get One Free, Get One Free)
The unfortunate result of Windows becoming so dominant is that certain software then was available only on PC's and the Mac became a niche product. In addition, Microsoft managed to convince the world that we would all return to the Stone Age without using Office. In effect Windows PC's became the english language of languages. Now, the phone thing may be different in that you don't yet have an Office or financial apps which only run on clones. The danger is that some app becomes absolutely dominant and only available on one platform. I'm sure Microsoft would love for Office to be that app on Windows phones.
Apple has always been in a dangerous position in this regard. Fortunately, the Samsung's of the world do not seem to produce great software. It's all about the software and, to a certain degree, price. Google has an ad based revenue model and so they can afford to have the world flooded with Android devices of all prices and quality. It's hard to imagine that this will not at some point affect Apple in a negative way much as Windows 95 really hurt the Mac. Perhaps there is some strategy that Apple can use in order to not become irrelevant as they did on the desktop ( with some niche but important exceptions). I do hope they come up with something as the Windows and Android worlds strike me as being really ugly garbage dumps.
philip
Nice post, but there's one fundamental difference between the PC market in the early-mid 90's and the mobile computing market today; PC sales primarily where to the enterprise, not consumers. It's much easier to lock corporations into huge volume licensing, then it is to lock an individual into a single device. Macs became a niche because of IBM, not Microsoft; IT departments went from IBM (DOS) to IBM-compatible (Windows). Macs didn't fit anywhere in there, they had to carve out a place for themselves in other industries. Windows dominance then grew as interest shifted from the workplace to the home.
The problem for Android is that is not a successful platform. It is a successful OS, but without a viable, cohesive platform built on top that OS, there's nothing keeping people from switching to something else, something better, or something cheaper. The massive market share numbers of Android only mean one thing, Android is used by more OEMs. That's it. There's no other advantages. OEMs have very little invested in the OS - they take all the work Google has done, tweak it for their hardware and whichever carrier it's headed for. If they remove any of Google's services, they cannot call it Android.
Today Apple is in a position they've never been in before; they have a user base that's several hundred million strong and they have a platform that is not only extremely cohesive, but also has a thriving ecosystem with many multi-billion dollar markets built around it. Android on the other hand, is basically just a semi-open source operating system used by hardware OEMs that don't know anything about software development or don't want the cost. These OEMs have to remain somewhat nimble, they have to be able to move to another OS if that's where the market heads someday.
Philip's post did mention one significant piece of history in the PC vs Mac situation from the 90s: That was the perception that Office was indispensable. Today with mobile computing becoming so ubiquitous email and texting are the new norm for enterprise communications. I, for example, rarely receive any Word documents except for resumes from job seekers. For heavy duty business documents like spreadsheets, the desktop still prevails but often the presentation ends up in an email or PPT slide which still fits the mobile computing model. All devices are equal when it comes to business communication, but Android fans are still trying to discount the halo effect Apple enjoys. Well made products are easy to recognize. If they work seamlessly together all the better. The Nexus 7 to me just feels cheap. It may work fine and is less expensive but given the time to upgrade, the Nexus is worth zip where as the iPad retains much of its original value. To me you only need one good device from each category, phone, tablet, notebook and desktop. For my money, I'm all Apple.
because of course Apple does not respond to any surveys like this regarding its own direct Apple on-line and retail store sales in Japan or anywhere else. and those sales amounts are certainly very substantial, yet omitted from this report. at most (if accurate) this survey is tracking sales only at independent retailers.
i am rapidly losing respect for Apple Insider. it's "staff" should certainly be able to spot this flaw instantly. rather than just regurgitating the stupid CNET post that regurgitated the original careless Nikkei story, AI should have noted this key limitation and qualified the headline.
is AI turning into just another hit-whoring web dump?
Yes, I've noticed it too. AppleInsider basically reformats content from other sites, often with comically bad grammar and spelling errors. I mean, forget about asking them to elucidate on a topic: they seem to sound bite and rehash old conflicts in order to maximize traffic and forum trolling. It isn't a trend I support.
It's good that the financially handicapped have an opportunity to buy tablets on the cheap.
Rolls Royce had record sales in 2012.
How many cars did they sell? 3,575
Some people claim that Apple needs to be selling to the financially handicapped, and basically the entire third world market including every poor person on the planet, but I've yet to hear a single good argument as to why this would be a good idea.
Essentially Apple is doomed, unless people in mud huts can afford iPads, based on the demented and faulty reasoning of certain people.
Interestingly, Steve Jobs offered Apple OSX free of charge to the OLPC association. This would surely have been a great way to increase the market-share of OSX around the world and also be excellent springboard marketing for future Mac purchases.
What if Rolls-Royce cars required their own special blend of gasoline? With that low number of sales, they would never be able to gas up their cars.
That's the situation that the iPhone could end up in if it continues to lose market share.
Please.
There are hundreds of millions of iOS devices put there. And hundreds of millions (500 last I heard) of iTunes accounts.
There's no way developers are leaving iOS. Even when Apple sales level off (and they will at some point) there will always be a huge installed base of customers. And those customers are still buying Apps, music and accessories for their devices.
The same reason every site will report this and will report that Apple CEO Tim Cook farted today
The headline would read:
"Apple shares plummet as analysts express concern that CEO Tim Cook's health is declining". They'd then go into stories about excessive gas being one of the symptoms of colon cancer. Shortly after that, they'd start the "Apple CEOs prone to cancer. No one else is likely to take the job" crap.
Well, the only problem with that is that they could decide that anybody who reads info allegedly leaked from the supply chain and then trades Apple stock is guilty of insider trading, which would mean a lot of us would have to stop reading this website if we don't want to go to jail.
Not even close to being true. If you read something in a public forum, you are not guilty of insider trading. The people who publish the information could be guilty of publishing trade secrets under some circumstances and if the person who releases the information is trading in AAPL, they could be guilty of insider trading. But people who read the article can use it to trade to their heart's content.
What if Rolls-Royce cars required their own special blend of gasoline? With that low number of sales, they would never be able to gas up their cars.
That's the situation that the iPhone could end up in if it continues to lose market share.
That's absurd.
Your analogy is ridiculous. Apple iPhones use the same electricity as everyone else. They use the same mobile networks. Just how is low market share supposed to hurt them?
The problem for Android is that is not a successful platform. It is a successful OS, but without a viable, cohesive platform built on top that OS, there's nothing keeping people from switching to something else, something better, or something cheaper. The massive market share numbers of Android only mean one thing, Android is used by more OEMs. That's it. There's no other advantages. OEMs have very little invested in the OS - they take all the work Google has done, tweak it for their hardware and whichever carrier it's headed for. If they remove any of Google's services, they cannot call it Android.
Today Apple is in a position they've never been in before; they have a user base that's several hundred million strong and they have a platform that is not only extremely cohesive, but also has a thriving ecosystem with many multi-billion dollar markets built around it. Android on the other hand, is basically just a semi-open source operating system used by hardware OEMs that don't know anything about software development or don't want the cost. These OEMs have to remain somewhat nimble, they have to be able to move to another OS if that's where the market heads someday.
As said time and time again, go look at any publicly published web statistics, the iOS devices are used 2 to 3 times as often as android devices. So where are all these Android devices?
- Replacing dumbphones - Replacing single-purpose devices (eg photo frames, ebook readers, portable dvd players, GPS units, compact point and shoot cameras) - If they're not being used on the web, chances are they're not being used for apps.
If you already have stuff purchased on iTunes, you're not going to dump it all to switch to the lack-of-software on Google Play. This problem can be laid directly at developers feet. Apps, music, movies, despite basically the same underlying hardware, aren't available on both device ecosystems.
It doesn't matter how many Android or iOS devices are sold, except to bean counters at Wall Street. The long term viability of iOS or Android depends on developer support, and so far it's falling entirely along developers political lines, not financial ones. The Apple ecosystem is less piracy ridden than Android, so that attracts the music and movie content and developers. The Apps work on ALL current devices, build once, works on all of them, even iPhone apps on iPads. That lack of fragmentation attracts developers.
Overall, using the iOS devices are the choice of people who want to make money from their content, while the Android devices are the choice of people who don't want to or can't make money from their content (eg the ad-reveneue model) the end game is different for both types of developers, and nobody really cares at all who has more market share. All that matters is how many devices are actually being used, which seems like most Android devices are not being used at all, despite shipping numbers.
Someone please figure out where all these "millions" of Android devices are, I'd sure like to know.
These short term sales figures are absolutely useless, especially in a place like Japan where they pretty much will buy anything new to the market.
I have yet to see an Android device break the 40% retention rate while Apple has nearly a 90% retention rate. What this means is these Android users jump from 1 brand to the other desperately in search of an Android that actually works like an iPhone. Eventually they get fed up with Android & break down buying an iPhone. We see it a lot where I work, people who absolutely refuse to get an iPhone coming in with their Androids all the time frustrated at various quirks it keeps having. It never fails, after about 6 months to a year they come in all excited because they finally broke down & got an iPhone, then we rarely see them ever again.
Bells & whistles draw people in but in the end all anyone really wants is for their stuff to just work. If Android can't get to at least a 60-70% retention rate it's doomed to sort of fumble along on hype until the next revolutionary non-iOS alternative comes along & then it's syonara. Look at Microsoft, they've been fumbling the PhoneOS ball for years. As big as they are they have an insurmountable uphill battle because they tarnished their name in the mobile market by pushing out crap software for years.
I'm not saying Android will go the way of BlackBerry but in the long run it isn't likely to overcome the iPhone until it can get away from Google's everything is beta mentality.
I'd put my house on their figures being total BS. Yet another unknown 'analyst' firm that claims to have done an Apple sales estimate from a 'survey'...
A survey that, as always, cannot include Apple's sales through it's online store and it's own stores. And cannot include the single biggest sales channel for the Nexus 7 either - the Google Play online store! Apple sell only a small percentage of their non-iPhone gear via the sort of traditional retailers these guys can survey, most are sold in Apple stores and Apple online, so any figures that don't include these channels are totally useless when it comes to estimating total sales.
... and nobody really cares at all who has more market share. All that matters is how many devices are actually being used, which seems like most Android devices are not being used at all, despite shipping numbers.
Someone please figure out where all these "millions" of Android devices are, I'd sure like to know.
There are tons of Android phones manufactured by "other" all across the globe... cheap phones that are basically used as feature phones. I'm guessing those people are not spending a lot of money on apps either.
And who knows if those phones even have access to the Google Play Store. Most Chinese Android phones do NOT... I'm not sure about the rest of the planet.
I'd also like to know how many credit cards Google Play has stored. Apple has always touted the number of iTunes accounts and credit cards... seems like that was a dark horse all along.
I feel like Android's market share is somewhat of a false trophy. Yeah... it's a big number... but what does it actually mean to developers, accessory makers... or even Google?
Android has 75% smartphone market share across the globe... compared to Apple's 15%.
But developers and accessory makers still prefer iOS. That speaks volumes about the strength of the platform.
What percentage of the total sales does Apple do in the "electronic stores", compared to their own Stores or the Premium Stores? At least in Italy, iPads are non-existent in electronic stores, and the mini did not reach Premium Stores if not in demo numbers.
If the research is only based on those sales, I would say that Apple did a lot better than the Nexus. But this is the kind of news that will be read by many as: "Apple is doomed! doomed!"
There are tons of Android phones manufactured by "other" all across the globe... cheap phones that are basically used as feature phones. I'm guessing those people are not spending a lot of money on apps either.
And who knows if those phones even have access to the Google Play Store. Most Chinese Android phones do NOT... I'm not sure about the rest of the planet.
I'd also like to know how many credit cards Google Play has stored. Apple has always touted the number of iTunes accounts and credit cards... seems like that was a dark horse all along.
I feel like Android's market share is somewhat of a false trophy. Yeah... it's a big number... but what does it actually mean to developers, accessory makers... or even Google?
Android has 75% smartphone market share across the globe... compared to Apple's 15%.
But developers and accessory makers still prefer iOS. That speaks volumes about the strength of the platform.
All Android has to do is double that to get the developers to jump ship. Once they have 150% of the market they'll be sitting pretty¡
Comments
Originally Posted by KDarling
That is done by the carriers.
It's allowed by the manufacturers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pmcd
The unfortunate result of Windows becoming so dominant is that certain software then was available only on PC's and the Mac became a niche product. In addition, Microsoft managed to convince the world that we would all return to the Stone Age without using Office. In effect Windows PC's became the english language of languages. Now, the phone thing may be different in that you don't yet have an Office or financial apps which only run on clones. The danger is that some app becomes absolutely dominant and only available on one platform. I'm sure Microsoft would love for Office to be that app on Windows phones.
Apple has always been in a dangerous position in this regard. Fortunately, the Samsung's of the world do not seem to produce great software. It's all about the software and, to a certain degree, price. Google has an ad based revenue model and so they can afford to have the world flooded with Android devices of all prices and quality. It's hard to imagine that this will not at some point affect Apple in a negative way much as Windows 95 really hurt the Mac. Perhaps there is some strategy that Apple can use in order to not become irrelevant as they did on the desktop ( with some niche but important exceptions). I do hope they come up with something as the Windows and Android worlds strike me as being really ugly garbage dumps.
philip
Nice post, but there's one fundamental difference between the PC market in the early-mid 90's and the mobile computing market today; PC sales primarily where to the enterprise, not consumers. It's much easier to lock corporations into huge volume licensing, then it is to lock an individual into a single device. Macs became a niche because of IBM, not Microsoft; IT departments went from IBM (DOS) to IBM-compatible (Windows). Macs didn't fit anywhere in there, they had to carve out a place for themselves in other industries. Windows dominance then grew as interest shifted from the workplace to the home.
The problem for Android is that is not a successful platform. It is a successful OS, but without a viable, cohesive platform built on top that OS, there's nothing keeping people from switching to something else, something better, or something cheaper. The massive market share numbers of Android only mean one thing, Android is used by more OEMs. That's it. There's no other advantages. OEMs have very little invested in the OS - they take all the work Google has done, tweak it for their hardware and whichever carrier it's headed for. If they remove any of Google's services, they cannot call it Android.
Today Apple is in a position they've never been in before; they have a user base that's several hundred million strong and they have a platform that is not only extremely cohesive, but also has a thriving ecosystem with many multi-billion dollar markets built around it. Android on the other hand, is basically just a semi-open source operating system used by hardware OEMs that don't know anything about software development or don't want the cost. These OEMs have to remain somewhat nimble, they have to be able to move to another OS if that's where the market heads someday.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Galley
What the article failed to report is that the sales spike was due to a "Buy 1, Get 2 Free" sale. ;-)
I would love to see the link on this sale that you are quoting.
Yes, I know you put a smiley at the end so you are being facetious but maybe your joke should have been "Buy 2 Nexus 7s for the cost of 1 iPad mini". ;-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by KDarling
That includes all their divisions. CPUs, memory chips (they are the largest maker in the world), phones, laptops, printers, flat screen TVs, LCD and AMOLED displays for all kinds of devices, you name it. Any engineer knows how much suppliers like that spend on trade shows, sample parts, sales reps, etc.
I know it does. Their mobile division happens to be their largest division as well. So I'm going to guess that a majority of their marketing costs are from that division, especially since it happens to be a consumer oriented product line.
I can't really buy component marketing as being all that much, including trade shows and reps. This is a captive audience, a finite group of people. Set up a booth at a conference, throw in some reps, and hand out a few pamphlets, maybe even a few component samples. That costs what? The same as a single 30 second commercial during prime-time and that would be for that single air-time alone. How much does it cost to make the commercial?
When you have to market to consumers, it costs much more to blanket everyday life with ads and whatever to get attention.
http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/29/the-cost-of-selling-galaxies/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
It's allowed by the manufacturers.
Sure. In any business, BOGO usually results in extra sales, whether it's food or phones.
Remember Christmas 2011, when Best Buy had BOGO deals on the iPhone 4, not once, but twice?
Of course, BOGO pales in comparison to offers for free phones... including iPhones... on contract. Such deals basically work out to be GOGO. (Get One Free, Get One Free)
>Rolls Royce had record sales in 2012.
>How many cars did they sell? 3,575
[/quote]
What if Rolls-Royce cars required their own special blend of gasoline? With that low number of sales, they would never be able to gas up their cars.
That's the situation that the iPhone could end up in if it continues to lose market share.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mjtomlin
Quote:
Originally Posted by pmcd
The unfortunate result of Windows becoming so dominant is that certain software then was available only on PC's and the Mac became a niche product. In addition, Microsoft managed to convince the world that we would all return to the Stone Age without using Office. In effect Windows PC's became the english language of languages. Now, the phone thing may be different in that you don't yet have an Office or financial apps which only run on clones. The danger is that some app becomes absolutely dominant and only available on one platform. I'm sure Microsoft would love for Office to be that app on Windows phones.
Apple has always been in a dangerous position in this regard. Fortunately, the Samsung's of the world do not seem to produce great software. It's all about the software and, to a certain degree, price. Google has an ad based revenue model and so they can afford to have the world flooded with Android devices of all prices and quality. It's hard to imagine that this will not at some point affect Apple in a negative way much as Windows 95 really hurt the Mac. Perhaps there is some strategy that Apple can use in order to not become irrelevant as they did on the desktop ( with some niche but important exceptions). I do hope they come up with something as the Windows and Android worlds strike me as being really ugly garbage dumps.
philip
Nice post, but there's one fundamental difference between the PC market in the early-mid 90's and the mobile computing market today; PC sales primarily where to the enterprise, not consumers. It's much easier to lock corporations into huge volume licensing, then it is to lock an individual into a single device. Macs became a niche because of IBM, not Microsoft; IT departments went from IBM (DOS) to IBM-compatible (Windows). Macs didn't fit anywhere in there, they had to carve out a place for themselves in other industries. Windows dominance then grew as interest shifted from the workplace to the home.
The problem for Android is that is not a successful platform. It is a successful OS, but without a viable, cohesive platform built on top that OS, there's nothing keeping people from switching to something else, something better, or something cheaper. The massive market share numbers of Android only mean one thing, Android is used by more OEMs. That's it. There's no other advantages. OEMs have very little invested in the OS - they take all the work Google has done, tweak it for their hardware and whichever carrier it's headed for. If they remove any of Google's services, they cannot call it Android.
Today Apple is in a position they've never been in before; they have a user base that's several hundred million strong and they have a platform that is not only extremely cohesive, but also has a thriving ecosystem with many multi-billion dollar markets built around it. Android on the other hand, is basically just a semi-open source operating system used by hardware OEMs that don't know anything about software development or don't want the cost. These OEMs have to remain somewhat nimble, they have to be able to move to another OS if that's where the market heads someday.
Philip's post did mention one significant piece of history in the PC vs Mac situation from the 90s: That was the perception that Office was indispensable. Today with mobile computing becoming so ubiquitous email and texting are the new norm for enterprise communications. I, for example, rarely receive any Word documents except for resumes from job seekers. For heavy duty business documents like spreadsheets, the desktop still prevails but often the presentation ends up in an email or PPT slide which still fits the mobile computing model. All devices are equal when it comes to business communication, but Android fans are still trying to discount the halo effect Apple enjoys. Well made products are easy to recognize. If they work seamlessly together all the better. The Nexus 7 to me just feels cheap. It may work fine and is less expensive but given the time to upgrade, the Nexus is worth zip where as the iPad retains much of its original value. To me you only need one good device from each category, phone, tablet, notebook and desktop. For my money, I'm all Apple.
Yes, I've noticed it too. AppleInsider basically reformats content from other sites, often with comically bad grammar and spelling errors. I mean, forget about asking them to elucidate on a topic: they seem to sound bite and rehash old conflicts in order to maximize traffic and forum trolling. It isn't a trend I support.
http://paralleldivergence.com/2007/02/17/olpc-the-revolution-begins/
There are hundreds of millions of iOS devices put there. And hundreds of millions (500 last I heard) of iTunes accounts.
There's no way developers are leaving iOS. Even when Apple sales level off (and they will at some point) there will always be a huge installed base of customers. And those customers are still buying Apps, music and accessories for their devices.
The headline would read:
"Apple shares plummet as analysts express concern that CEO Tim Cook's health is declining". They'd then go into stories about excessive gas being one of the symptoms of colon cancer. Shortly after that, they'd start the "Apple CEOs prone to cancer. No one else is likely to take the job" crap.
Not even close to being true. If you read something in a public forum, you are not guilty of insider trading. The people who publish the information could be guilty of publishing trade secrets under some circumstances and if the person who releases the information is trading in AAPL, they could be guilty of insider trading. But people who read the article can use it to trade to their heart's content.
That's absurd.
Your analogy is ridiculous. Apple iPhones use the same electricity as everyone else. They use the same mobile networks. Just how is low market share supposed to hurt them?
Not really, iPhone apps can run on the iPad and touch. So if I want market share, u gotta compare OSs.
Originally Posted by EricTheHalfBee
Even when Apple sales level off (and they will at some point) there will always be a huge installed base of customers.
When sales growth levels off, you mean. Right?
Nice post!
- Replacing dumbphones
- Replacing single-purpose devices (eg photo frames, ebook readers, portable dvd players, GPS units, compact point and shoot cameras)
- If they're not being used on the web, chances are they're not being used for apps.
If you already have stuff purchased on iTunes, you're not going to dump it all to switch to the lack-of-software on Google Play. This problem can be laid directly at developers feet. Apps, music, movies, despite basically the same underlying hardware, aren't available on both device ecosystems.
It doesn't matter how many Android or iOS devices are sold, except to bean counters at Wall Street. The long term viability of iOS or Android depends on developer support, and so far it's falling entirely along developers political lines, not financial ones. The Apple ecosystem is less piracy ridden than Android, so that attracts the music and movie content and developers. The Apps work on ALL current devices, build once, works on all of them, even iPhone apps on iPads. That lack of fragmentation attracts developers.
Overall, using the iOS devices are the choice of people who want to make money from their content, while the Android devices are the choice of people who don't want to or can't make money from their content (eg the ad-reveneue model) the end game is different for both types of developers, and nobody really cares at all who has more market share. All that matters is how many devices are actually being used, which seems like most Android devices are not being used at all, despite shipping numbers.
Someone please figure out where all these "millions" of Android devices are, I'd sure like to know.
These short term sales figures are absolutely useless, especially in a place like Japan where they pretty much will buy anything new to the market.
I have yet to see an Android device break the 40% retention rate while Apple has nearly a 90% retention rate. What this means is these Android users jump from 1 brand to the other desperately in search of an Android that actually works like an iPhone. Eventually they get fed up with Android & break down buying an iPhone. We see it a lot where I work, people who absolutely refuse to get an iPhone coming in with their Androids all the time frustrated at various quirks it keeps having. It never fails, after about 6 months to a year they come in all excited because they finally broke down & got an iPhone, then we rarely see them ever again.
Bells & whistles draw people in but in the end all anyone really wants is for their stuff to just work. If Android can't get to at least a 60-70% retention rate it's doomed to sort of fumble along on hype until the next revolutionary non-iOS alternative comes along & then it's syonara. Look at Microsoft, they've been fumbling the PhoneOS ball for years. As big as they are they have an insurmountable uphill battle because they tarnished their name in the mobile market by pushing out crap software for years.
I'm not saying Android will go the way of BlackBerry but in the long run it isn't likely to overcome the iPhone until it can get away from Google's everything is beta mentality.
A survey that, as always, cannot include Apple's sales through it's online store and it's own stores. And cannot include the single biggest sales channel for the Nexus 7 either - the Google Play online store! Apple sell only a small percentage of their non-iPhone gear via the sort of traditional retailers these guys can survey, most are sold in Apple stores and Apple online, so any figures that don't include these channels are totally useless when it comes to estimating total sales.
There are tons of Android phones manufactured by "other" all across the globe... cheap phones that are basically used as feature phones. I'm guessing those people are not spending a lot of money on apps either.
And who knows if those phones even have access to the Google Play Store. Most Chinese Android phones do NOT... I'm not sure about the rest of the planet.
I'd also like to know how many credit cards Google Play has stored. Apple has always touted the number of iTunes accounts and credit cards... seems like that was a dark horse all along.
I feel like Android's market share is somewhat of a false trophy. Yeah... it's a big number... but what does it actually mean to developers, accessory makers... or even Google?
Android has 75% smartphone market share across the globe... compared to Apple's 15%.
But developers and accessory makers still prefer iOS. That speaks volumes about the strength of the platform.
If the research is only based on those sales, I would say that Apple did a lot better than the Nexus. But this is the kind of news that will be read by many as: "Apple is doomed! doomed!"
All Android has to do is double that to get the developers to jump ship. Once they have 150% of the market they'll be sitting pretty¡