iphone, meet your windows

[piratePenguin]

Apple have been doing very well with their iphone 4, yet apparently, this whole time, android phones have been outselling apple, by a lot.

http://battellemedia.com/archives/2010/07/on_math_iphones_android_and_the_100k_phone_gap.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JohnBattellesSearchblog+%28John+Battelle%27s+Searchblog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

The media really, really, really loves to write about Apple and the iPhone these days. It reminds me of Google in 2004, when the media fell in love with the concept of search.

Besides the antennae story, which I find hopelessly over reported, the latest iPhone rhapsody has been how many iPhone 4s Apple has sold - apparently, 3 million as of last Friday. Friday was July 16th. The iPhone 4 launched on June 24, so that'd be 23 days to reach the 3 million mark.

3 million phones in 23 days - that's a pretty strong clip, the fastest sales of an Apple phone to date, Mashable reports. If I do the math, that's more than 130,000 phones a day.

But did anyone in the press notice Google's little announcement, the day before Apple launched its iPhone 4? This one? The one where Google said, and I quote:

"Every day 160,000 Android-powered devices are activated -- that’s nearly two devices every second."

Yep, that'd be 30K MORE phones a day than Apple. And my guess is that Android's pace is accelerating, while the iPhone 4 is probably sliding downward, given how many folks bought it at launch (Mashable reports that 1.7 million were sold in first three days, so 1.3 million the next 20 days). In fact, if you do THAT math, and divide 1.3 million by 20 days, you get 65,000 iPhone 4s sold each day, which is nearly 100,000 less, PER DAY, than Android phones.

Is that story anywhere in the press? Not that I see.

As far as I can tell, Android-based phones will far outnumber any other smart phone by year's end. Apple, meet your new Windows. It's name is Android.

Drives home how difficult googles strategy would be to beat for sales volume. When it's as cheap to buy an android as it is to buy an ipod touch (and clearly, wrt market share apple cant win), it shall be interesting to see how the app stores (one of apples most important cash cows) and respective benefits of apple/android devices turn out.

[worker201]

Does Google actually make money from Android phone sales?  I think they do for a couple models - but for others they don't even get licensing fees.  From a point-of-sale perspective, Apple probably has the wider revenue stream.  For ad potential, though, it's clearly Google's game.

[piratePenguin]

Yes indeed, google profit because people have google services in their pockets. Afaik, there isn't even a licensing fee for the phone manufacturers - or if there is - it may as well be negligible. Googles interest is in expanding its service use (this growth is important, and for just making some software, you can begin to see why this is worthwhile), and presumably in the Android Market where, if Android has significantly increasing market share in an expanding market, that is a serious cash cow if they have a similar strategy as Apple does (I don't know about this - I know very little about the android market, if they do paid apps etc).

[Lead Head]

Its kind of like console manufacturers (save Nintendo), they make very little money on the systems themselves (often loose money actually) but make it back via software sales and subscription fees for online services

[piratePenguin]

Indeed and interestingly the games market is another one Apple seems to have it's eye on, to an extent, and they may have some success here (at the moment).

Who thought five years ago that they would ever see the day, when developers are pouring into an Apple platform? Then again as I've said and said, this has happened in fact before, and the exact same competition is unraveling right before us: Android regardless of new Apple launches is still selling more units, this means it will have a bigger market place, potentially dwarfing Apple in a few years time (the future I assure you is not with the more expensive smartphone*). This attracts developers over, and Apple are on the waydown.


* I mean right now I agree that possibly most Android phones sold are trash, does this even matter to someone with 100 euro to spend on a phone? Not a hope - and that is as much money as most people should spend on a phone imo - so if Apple isn't in that range, it simply can't compete.

What Apple can do - if iAds keeps up its apparent novelty value and is successful, is hopefully cling on to the quality apps it has, hopefully keep in touch with a larger fraction of quality app devs, and keep creating a quality - if expensive - product. They will miss a major app store revenue however, if Android keeps up it's growth and developers subsequently part.

[Kintaro]

What is this phone thing I keep hearing about? A netbook that doesn't sleep when shut in my backpack, a bluetooth headset, and a 3G modem does the job and I get Skype's call prices.

[hm_murdock]

I've got an iPhone 3GS and my girlfriend has a Droid Eris with Android 2.1.

The difference in the app stores is honestly night and day. Apple's App Store is full of richly-designed and functional software. Unfortunately you also end up paying $3.99 for a halfass paint program that can't even save. Sure it's "elegantly designed" but so fucking what?

Most stuff on the Apple App store is well-done yeah, but so much of it is corporate stuff. Lots of $5 games that still nickle and dime you for extra levels, "free trials," and the like.

Don't get me started on jailbreaking. I tried it. The software available is of notably inferior quality.

Updating is semi-manual. I kinda like that because it means that you won't end up with an update getting pushed out to you that removes features from an app. Believe me, a lot of app developers are in love with intentional regression bugs. At least in updating you can look through each app and read the changelog. Appler requires the changelog be posted so users can see it. if you don't want it, don't update. If you want all of them, you can select "Update All."

Android Market on the other hand sorely lacks anything of value that I can see. The user experience for the apps is a hodgepodge of decent through to downright awful. Most of the software is free, but it's patently useless, sometimes not even functioning properly.

Updating is even worse. It'll inform you of updates via a tiny icon in the status bar at the top which you have to grab and pull down like a drawer. Then you have to update each app individually, waiting for each one to finish before going to the next.

I guess in the end the analogy continues.

iPhones, like Macintosh have some high quality software that you won't get away without paying $50 for. Want a simple word processor? $49. Want some graphics software? $89. Want whatever? Well, odds are it won't be freeware. You do get what you pay for though. The money you pay gets you a higher quality app than the scores of freeware available for Windows.

The truth is that in 2010, Windows is actually pretty good from a speed/stability standpoint. Windows software I think will always be garbage though. Developers just don't seem like they could care less about UI design, testing, QA, or even quality coding. It really seems like a great deal of the software on the Android Market is this way. Google doesn't do any checking, so someone could just put a half-finished app up there that segfaults every time you tap the button to make it do something and it would stay there.

Disgraceful really :p

[piratePenguin]

I couldn't buy an iphone for the same reasons I couldn't buy a mac, and more. I can't even run my own software on an iphone and I certainly can't send it to friends without going through the app store and paying appropriate fees. Insane that a phone I buy, I can't even program. ** It's not that I have a particular interest in this, but I'm sure you see where I'm coming from - this isn't the spirit Apple had in the 80s, this is insane. (this attitude can be defended on security grounds (still not necessarily the reason apple are doing this imo), but it could also be called a security cop out)

The other reasons I won't buy an iphone are like-minded, but also I expect in 6 months time when I could splash out on a good phone, that the android competition will be beginning (or finishing) to level the iphone on power, price, and market share - which will of course bring with it two things: increased security concerns (success/failure on this front I've always believed is determined as much by the attitudes of respective software developers than their market share), and increased android market activity - which you would expect to lead to better quality apps, especially those paid ones.

Your observations about the quality of the app stores are indeed what I hear (and believe). The analogy is pretty comprehensive imo, and it's pretty realistic to suggest Apple will keep quality apps and android "Windows" apps are more kludgey - but it has been proved that this isn't important to the majority of people even in computers nevermind phones (where people walk into stores everyday and walk out 5 minutes later with a new one)

But Apple will keep biting their "form is all" pill and hoping to hold on to a lot of market share. This is a last think that pisses me off about them (but they're clearly not targeting people like me). I respect their products as quality things, but their practices and attitudes can be damn unsettling.

** edit: I mentioned a bunch of philosophical things here but the side effects on users are not invisible:  for example Apple's app store have a rule that disallows apps that mimic functionality already found on the phone. This for example makes it impossible for potentially the most important apps to be approved, real life examples are Google Voice and Fennec (mobile Firefox). This is a serious encroachment on what I expect to be allowed to do with my phone!