> particularly when compared to the company’s competitors whose reliance on an increasingly fragmented Android macrocosm isn’t likely to lead to a polished, reliable experience.
I would know why he says that Android fragmentation is increasing and what he means with fragmentatoin
What percentage of the market is running Marshmellow? How many are even 5.0+? That's one serious indicator of fragmentation alone (there's a lot more), and trends don't show it improving.
Edit:
Here's a link to some numbers from Google [0]. Per their own chart, ~55% of Android users are running a 3 year old or older OS.
The average consumer doesn't know or care if there phone is on 4.0 or 4.1 or whatever. They care if their phone works well and integrates well with the services they care about. There isn't much sign that Apple is going to overtake Android in the ways that matter anytime soon, regardless of which exact version your are running.
They care when the app the want to install doesn't run and they can't upgrade their phone. I know that's been a factor for many who have switched back to iOS that I know.
Furthermore, I made ZERO claims iOS would overtake Android (very likely never will, in fact I'd bet on it never happening), I answered a question re: fragmentation. I also responded factually with a link to an unarguable source (so the down voters prove their hater mentality denying facts, but alas).
If you are stuck targeting Android API version 14 forever, that is a problem. It means Google can never introduce anything new that people can actually use without alienating a portion of the userbase.
Albeit, that was also a perceived huge issue four years ago with 2.3 and version 9, and today all those 2.3 devices are mostly gone.
But in the same way the mhz race was a limited time thing, and after that personal computer sales slowed drastically because the year over year improvements have been much more minute, Google cannot just assume that the planned obsolesce of contract phones will force users to change hardware to keep pace with the OS. A lot of the 4.x era Android devices will be "good enough" for many people in the same way Core 2 was "good enough" for most casual PC users.
And we have seen the fallout of that. Users do not care if their Windows XP is catastrophically insecure when no longer updated, they keep using it until disaster strikes. And the same is bound to happen to all these Android phones that stop getting updates.
I don't think I've ever seen greater technical debt than the accumulated mess of Android device drivers and the OEM habit of forking the kernel and violating the GPL to stick proprietary blobs in and then freeze the kernel, which means every device is on a forced obsolescence cycle whenever their kernel can no longer work with the latest Android requirements.
They won't tell you if you don't ask them directly, but they do care about security. Android's bad reputation at security partly comes from the fact that most devices in existence are completely outdated.
the iPhone will surely not go the way of the iPod. Apple’s “pocket computer” is more likely to follow the trajectory of the Macintosh: It will continue to take a significant but slowly growing share of the market, while pocketing a large share of the profits.
Apple's market share continues to slide, as his own graph shows. If he expects Apple's market share to grow he should explain why. So far all the indicators point the other way.
I think that a definitive conclusion on Apple's stand in the market calls for more elaborate analysis of the data. For example, if the majority of the growth in the overall mobile market is attributed to low cost smartphones, it'd be likely for Apple to miss on that.
AFAIK, Apple doesn't lose customers, it just doesn't gain as many as the overall market - and it still outpeforms the other mobile makers on revenues/profit by a huge margin.
1) he shows no graph depicting anything to do with market share, let alone one showing it sliding. There's two graphs, one showing a dip in sales volume, another showing a dip in overall smartphone buying.
2) he did explain why he thought that, near the end of the article
The reasons he gives for Apple's market share to increase are not new. They have been losing ground despite the conditions he describes. If we wants to argue that Apple is going to reverse this trend he needs to give new reasons.
To date, this has been offset by the fact that iOS devices have much longer average lives than Android devices, and are routinely resold one or more times.
Apple was a very successful company selling Macs, with their low market share, I personally feel the same can be said with iOS too. Apple has proven you don't need majority market share to still have a controlling position in the market.
That may be but that's not the claim made in the original article. He claimed that iOS market share would increase, which hasn't been the case for a while now, so it demands some justification.
He did offer justification. While I may not agree with it completely (and it sounds like you don't either), our disagreement doesn't negate his own personal opinion.
And it was a horrible explanation. MacBooks are functionally superior to Netbooks. That is not the same for iPhones. Phones from other manufacturers that cost significantly less do significantly more than iPhones do. That is why sales volume is shrinking in a growing market.
He says that he sees other phones acting as a gateway to iPhones but I seem to see the reverse happening. I have seen a number of users getting frustrated with the lack of options in the iPhone market and moving on to other devices more tailored to their personal needs. The "generic" iPhone is what they bought first until they found more appealing devices that suited their specific desires better. I know very few people who've gone from Android to iPhone, especially in the last couple years.
I've seen a number of the transitions he saw a couple years ago, but an almost equal number coming back now. Many I know that switched, are now coming back, realizing that "cute customizations don't offset the fact things just work better on iOS" (not looking to get in a debate, just repeating what they said).
I personally switched from an iPhone 4S to an HTC One M7 for the bigger screen size, but I switched back after less than 6 months because I couldn't get over the lack of consistency in the Android experience. There were duplicate apps with different design styles, multiple text messaging apps, etc. I found I had more choices in general on Android, but it was rare to find an option that I was completely satisfied with.
If I decide to go back to Android, I would only get a Nexus device with stock Android. That may fix the majority of my complaints with Android.
I really like my Nexus 6P (GoogleFi edition). It's a great phone all around. Better than my 6S, no, but it's definitely a very good quality phone and one I'd recommend if someone hated iOS.
The 6P is a great phone. I know Google has to walk a fine line here but I'd really like to see them putting more effort into promoting and distributing Nexus phones.
I tried the Iphone for the trial period due to its popularity once. Never again. Multi-tasking on the android is a breeze and flows more naturally vs my experience with the iphone. Plus the Iphone while once set the standard it now appears to be trailing far behind most android devices.
I recently switched my mom from the iphone to samsung s7 because it has a SD card storage. She recently lost all her pictures because the iphone died on her and there is no way to get it back . She had tears in her eyes because it had pictures of the grandkids. Keep in mind she has no internet nor computer at home she just wanted a phone wiht camara capabilities .
I had to explain to her that unlike her previous android phone that had removable SD card storage the IPHONE ecogreedness doesn't, because they want you to pay for there icloud storage.
Hence I switched her back to android with SD storage. Which makes it breeze to swap cards when they fill up and back them up without having to use craptunes.
Not saying androids are the best thing since slice bread but I don't see the hype about iphones and there closed ecosystem?
Now that paid apps are almost dead, what would Apple actually lose by opening up the platform a little? I mean the app store model mostly. It's high degree of restriction seems like it's holding the platform back and keeping it from eating more market share from desktop.
Of course maybe that's not something they want. Apple still sells laptops and desktops and a more open iOS could eat into Mac.
Paid apps are far from dead. I buy apps all the time. I bought a watch face for Pebble half hour ago. Developers need to feed their families and I see buying quality apps very similar to buying good coffee or food.
All the indie iOS devs I know gave up long ago and took regular jobs writing apps for companies that give the app away for free as part of some larger business model.
Why isn't it water proof yet? Why hasn't Apple released a wireless charging feature? Why haven't they come up with something freaking amazing..iWatch no one wants that. Apple TV with Apple cable TV service people might want that but why haven't they bought Dish who has sling TV or made similar purchases?
I couldn't agree with you more. I'm bored. The thing is I like the simplicity of iPhones and I have been using them for past 7 years as well. Now it got to a point where small incremental features were not doing anything for me.
I switched to Nexus 6P recently. It is one hell of a phone. So many features, so much customization! The access to file system (not root) is one thing that I would not be able to live without anymore. Having directories to put files and music in is so simple and similar to using a Mac/PC.
I do miss iMessage and FaceTime though. If the rumor about WWDC bringing iMessage to Android is true I don't see a reason to go back to the iPhone.
> Having directories to put files and music in is so simple
This could be the reason I finally ditch my iPhone. I want to grab a file on my Mac, push it to my phone, and not A) have to use a paid app to do it without iTunes or B) have that file be automatically sent to some stupid place on the phone (audiobooks, ibooks, etc.)
You can, as of iOS 9. Drag the files to iCloud Drive on your Mac (which is a full filesystem), and either access them from an iOS app that can open files directly from iCloud Drive, or enable the iCloud Drive iOS app in the settings and use the share sheet to get the files into the app you want.
Kind of true. You get 5 GB for free, which is enough to back up contacts, etc. But you can get 50 GB for $1/mo, which, if you can afford a smartphone, probably won't be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Its not about money, its about options and a closed ecosystem obviously designed to make you dependent on their system. Its just to blatant to be ignored.
With android I have the option to get sd card to backup my pics.
With android I have options to easily map the OS as a hdd on my PC or linux and not be forced to used there crappy software to backup files ,music,videos etc in their proprietor format.
I understand its not only crApple that is pushing for the golden egg cloud monthly subscriptions but atleast with android I still have other easy options to choose from.
They even lock you into their ecosystem as a developer. I have to purchase a mac if I want to develop iOS apps. You can't even legally use virtualization as they force you to buy both their hardware and and software license.
I just don't like their lack of confidence on their products that their marketing efforts is based on locking you into buying their products and services vs you wanting to buy them because of their awesomeness.
You don't actually have to use iCloud for what I described. I mentioned iCloud Drive because it's built in to iOS and OS X, but any app can register as a document provider, which allows it to be accessed from document pickers (what I meant when I said "can open files directly from iCloud Drive" - it's not only for iCloud Drive) and to be an icon on share sheets. For example, Dropbox does so. This is an iOS 8 feature, for the record; it's just the iCloud Drive standalone app that was new in iOS 9.
You do have to use iCloud for some other things, such as full system backup, integration with the builtin photos app, etc.
I can't figure out why Apple has neglected their stock keyboard for so long. They finally added autosuggestions but their keyboard still lags far behind third party offerings in speed, feature set, and flexibility. And third party keyboards are still so buggy on iOS as to be almost unusable. About 90% of my use of a smart phone is messaging in some form so this is a big deal.
And iMessage is buggy enough that I long ago switched to WhatsApp and haven't looked back. Apple makes great hardware but their software is increasingly falling behind the competition.
On the other hand, iOS is the only platform which has a default keyboard that lets me use typographically appropriate characters, such as actual smart quotes (“” ’), real ellipsis (…), and the correct hyphens (- – —).
Access to the file system is one of the major reasons I have seen people move to Android from iphone and then stay on it.
I was always an Android guy but have seen in the last few years many iphone users moving to Android and then staying on it. The people that have stayed with iphone are mostly that just use the iphone for messaging, email and Facebook.
Yep. I'm honestly not sure how important it is that the iPhone is exciting, but it still needs to be making meaningful progress for people to keep upgrading
Waterproofing and wireless charging are tried and tested on Android. Meanwhile no one I know uses force touch and most have turned off live photos. TouchID was probably the last truly great iPhone innovation.
Meanwhile things core to the user experience like iMessage, the stock keyboard, Photos, iCloud Drive, Mail etc are buggy and unreliable and/or lagging far behind the competition. The base model is still has an absurdly stingy 16GB of storage.
But at least we can look forward to an even thinner phone with bad battery life and buy expensive lighting audio adapters so we can accommodate their fetish for removing ports.
I'm not even bored, but disappointed. The iOS 9 upgrade made me unable to access music on my device, photo backups are sorted into hundreds of subdirectories, re-authenticating iCloud automatically re-enables iCloud Backup and iMessage, and I need a third-party calendar app because they removed the month view that gives me a truncated title for each event. There are some other small annoyances, like being unable to permanently leave the phone in Low Power Mode, while only two phone models support Apple's battery case.
I'm just not convinced that Android won't have an equal number of strange problems.
It is kind of a cliche by now but so are the questions we have been asking Apple and demands we have been making to the company over the years.
I am no sales and marketing expert but at some basic level, it comes to me that Apple probably doesn't innovate (in a way - relatively; esp. when compared with innovations in Android phone market and in ridiculously low cost phones at that) because it doesn't have to. Apple knows that it has a userbase that would keep buying its phones (in some cases as long as close to 7 years) even though it was so lacking in innovation and still kept charging the awe-tax.
No, I am sure you are not the only bored iPhone user. I have a friend who has owned every iPhone (one from each release - he had a 6s but still bought SE and then sold it) since the first iPhone and never stopped whining about it but still says, when I ask why he keeps buying, "because it's an iPhone and it has a 'feel'".
I switched back from Android for the 6s because I was tired of fragmentation and terrible battery life. I gave up a lot, customizations, amazing tweaks, workflows, etc. I miss Android. There are so many things I can't do on iOS and it frustrates me.
Siri is no comparison to Google now. (You make some sacrifices here)
Using iTunes to manage everything from apps to music is a buzzkill.
Homekit is a bag of hurt.
You are stuck with the default apps. Want to use Gmail or Outlook? Chrome? Google Maps or Nokia Maps? Too bad.
I'm putting up with these compromises because at the time the 810 wasn't performing well and on Android smaller screens means lower performance.
"I switched back from Android for the 6s because I was tired of fragmentation and terrible battery life. "
I can relate. I had some many fragmentation problems with android that I said I'm done with it, then I tried Iphone. However, I returned my iphone before my trial period expired. I just couldn't sacrifice the android UI flow, multitasking ease of use, and a open ecosystem.
So I ended up getting the Note 3 when it first came out . That was like 3 years ago and I still have the same phone without any issues. My batters is now finally starting to give out and is only lasting about 6-8 hrs with use. However a new battery is only like 7 bucks on amazon.
I think 2 things happened that improved my fragmentation issue with android. Android itself has matured but more importantly I stopped all the automatic updates from my carrier and apps.
I observed with my previous android devices that once a new phone came out all the sudden my phone became slow as molasses . I'm under the opinion with nothing to back it up with, other than my observations is that the carrier (atleast ATT) updates the phone and purposely degrades performances with newer apps and updates to get you to buy a new one.
I don't think this is possible on the iphones because I don't believe that the carrier is allowed to bastardize it like android but I could be wrong? However that has been my observation and the one advantage I see for ios.
>After letting Samsung and others take the lead in large screen smartphones (5.5” or larger phablets), Apple Finally introduced its own large iPhone 6 Plus in September 2014.
What an ignorant comment. Samsung pioneered the large screen smartphone. They took the risk when everyone was mocking the size of their phones as if they were jokes. Once the market proved them correct everyone else rushed in - including Apple. To belittle this accomplishment speaks to this person's bias towards Apple.
Apple never let Samsung take the lead in large screen smartphones - instead they did what they usually do - wait for another player to create the market and then move in on it.
I think your description of what happened is exactly what is meant by "letting Samsung and others take the lead" -- Apple let itself be surpassed, in that it could have done otherwise, but didn't.
After a series of Android devices, my first iPhone was the 6 Plus. The main reasons for me switching over were:
1. Ridiculously reliable battery. (People who have used both platforms will mostly agree, I think.)
2. 6 Plus was the first iPhone that did not seem tiny to me.
3. I really wanted to use it myself for a while and form my own opinions.
A year and a half of use later, my thoughts:
1. Totally awesome battery experience.
2. It's good, stable, reliable but it gets so... boring.
My next phone, whenever it is, is probably going to be the largest Nexus device available.
On a side note, it is so great to read a series of comments about iOS and Android that does not degenerate into a trolling competition.
60 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadI would know why he says that Android fragmentation is increasing and what he means with fragmentatoin
Edit:
Here's a link to some numbers from Google [0]. Per their own chart, ~55% of Android users are running a 3 year old or older OS.
[0] https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html#Pl...
Furthermore, I made ZERO claims iOS would overtake Android (very likely never will, in fact I'd bet on it never happening), I answered a question re: fragmentation. I also responded factually with a link to an unarguable source (so the down voters prove their hater mentality denying facts, but alas).
http://www.statista.com/statistics/271774/
Albeit, that was also a perceived huge issue four years ago with 2.3 and version 9, and today all those 2.3 devices are mostly gone.
But in the same way the mhz race was a limited time thing, and after that personal computer sales slowed drastically because the year over year improvements have been much more minute, Google cannot just assume that the planned obsolesce of contract phones will force users to change hardware to keep pace with the OS. A lot of the 4.x era Android devices will be "good enough" for many people in the same way Core 2 was "good enough" for most casual PC users.
And we have seen the fallout of that. Users do not care if their Windows XP is catastrophically insecure when no longer updated, they keep using it until disaster strikes. And the same is bound to happen to all these Android phones that stop getting updates.
I don't think I've ever seen greater technical debt than the accumulated mess of Android device drivers and the OEM habit of forking the kernel and violating the GPL to stick proprietary blobs in and then freeze the kernel, which means every device is on a forced obsolescence cycle whenever their kernel can no longer work with the latest Android requirements.
Do you have any figure about that or it is just an impression?
Apple's market share continues to slide, as his own graph shows. If he expects Apple's market share to grow he should explain why. So far all the indicators point the other way.
AFAIK, Apple doesn't lose customers, it just doesn't gain as many as the overall market - and it still outpeforms the other mobile makers on revenues/profit by a huge margin.
1) he shows no graph depicting anything to do with market share, let alone one showing it sliding. There's two graphs, one showing a dip in sales volume, another showing a dip in overall smartphone buying.
2) he did explain why he thought that, near the end of the article
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/02/meeker-2016-internet-tre...
So market share is declining.
The reasons he gives for Apple's market share to increase are not new. They have been losing ground despite the conditions he describes. If we wants to argue that Apple is going to reverse this trend he needs to give new reasons.
I think we need to be careful with these kinds of stories.
If I decide to go back to Android, I would only get a Nexus device with stock Android. That may fix the majority of my complaints with Android.
I recently switched my mom from the iphone to samsung s7 because it has a SD card storage. She recently lost all her pictures because the iphone died on her and there is no way to get it back . She had tears in her eyes because it had pictures of the grandkids. Keep in mind she has no internet nor computer at home she just wanted a phone wiht camara capabilities .
I had to explain to her that unlike her previous android phone that had removable SD card storage the IPHONE ecogreedness doesn't, because they want you to pay for there icloud storage.
Hence I switched her back to android with SD storage. Which makes it breeze to swap cards when they fill up and back them up without having to use craptunes.
Not saying androids are the best thing since slice bread but I don't see the hype about iphones and there closed ecosystem?
Of course maybe that's not something they want. Apple still sells laptops and desktops and a more open iOS could eat into Mac.
Its reputation for being mostly malware-free, for starters.
http://www.recode.net/2016/6/8/11883518/app-boom-over-snapch...
All the indie iOS devs I know gave up long ago and took regular jobs writing apps for companies that give the app away for free as part of some larger business model.
Why isn't it water proof yet? Why hasn't Apple released a wireless charging feature? Why haven't they come up with something freaking amazing..iWatch no one wants that. Apple TV with Apple cable TV service people might want that but why haven't they bought Dish who has sling TV or made similar purchases?
I don't think I'm the only bored iPhone owner?
This could be the reason I finally ditch my iPhone. I want to grab a file on my Mac, push it to my phone, and not A) have to use a paid app to do it without iTunes or B) have that file be automatically sent to some stupid place on the phone (audiobooks, ibooks, etc.)
I don't have to use crappy proprietary sofware like itunes or be locked into their ecosystem and pay monthly subscriptions to use icloud.
very true
pay monthly subscriptions to use icloud
Kind of true. You get 5 GB for free, which is enough to back up contacts, etc. But you can get 50 GB for $1/mo, which, if you can afford a smartphone, probably won't be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
With android I have the option to get sd card to backup my pics.
With android I have options to easily map the OS as a hdd on my PC or linux and not be forced to used there crappy software to backup files ,music,videos etc in their proprietor format.
I understand its not only crApple that is pushing for the golden egg cloud monthly subscriptions but atleast with android I still have other easy options to choose from.
They even lock you into their ecosystem as a developer. I have to purchase a mac if I want to develop iOS apps. You can't even legally use virtualization as they force you to buy both their hardware and and software license.
I just don't like their lack of confidence on their products that their marketing efforts is based on locking you into buying their products and services vs you wanting to buy them because of their awesomeness.
You do have to use iCloud for some other things, such as full system backup, integration with the builtin photos app, etc.
And iMessage is buggy enough that I long ago switched to WhatsApp and haven't looked back. Apple makes great hardware but their software is increasingly falling behind the competition.
This has been true since at least iOS 5.
(I'm using "exciting" to mean the opposite of boring)
I love finding new uses for this pocket computer: http://i.imgur.com/SNody25.jpg
Waterproofing and wireless charging are tried and tested on Android. Meanwhile no one I know uses force touch and most have turned off live photos. TouchID was probably the last truly great iPhone innovation.
But at least we can look forward to an even thinner phone with bad battery life and buy expensive lighting audio adapters so we can accommodate their fetish for removing ports.
I'm just not convinced that Android won't have an equal number of strange problems.
I am no sales and marketing expert but at some basic level, it comes to me that Apple probably doesn't innovate (in a way - relatively; esp. when compared with innovations in Android phone market and in ridiculously low cost phones at that) because it doesn't have to. Apple knows that it has a userbase that would keep buying its phones (in some cases as long as close to 7 years) even though it was so lacking in innovation and still kept charging the awe-tax.
No, I am sure you are not the only bored iPhone user. I have a friend who has owned every iPhone (one from each release - he had a 6s but still bought SE and then sold it) since the first iPhone and never stopped whining about it but still says, when I ask why he keeps buying, "because it's an iPhone and it has a 'feel'".
Siri is no comparison to Google now. (You make some sacrifices here)
Using iTunes to manage everything from apps to music is a buzzkill.
Homekit is a bag of hurt.
You are stuck with the default apps. Want to use Gmail or Outlook? Chrome? Google Maps or Nokia Maps? Too bad.
I'm putting up with these compromises because at the time the 810 wasn't performing well and on Android smaller screens means lower performance.
I'm confused. What do you mean by this?
Tap a URL and it opens Safari every time.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-app-search-made-just/...
I can relate. I had some many fragmentation problems with android that I said I'm done with it, then I tried Iphone. However, I returned my iphone before my trial period expired. I just couldn't sacrifice the android UI flow, multitasking ease of use, and a open ecosystem.
So I ended up getting the Note 3 when it first came out . That was like 3 years ago and I still have the same phone without any issues. My batters is now finally starting to give out and is only lasting about 6-8 hrs with use. However a new battery is only like 7 bucks on amazon.
I think 2 things happened that improved my fragmentation issue with android. Android itself has matured but more importantly I stopped all the automatic updates from my carrier and apps.
I observed with my previous android devices that once a new phone came out all the sudden my phone became slow as molasses . I'm under the opinion with nothing to back it up with, other than my observations is that the carrier (atleast ATT) updates the phone and purposely degrades performances with newer apps and updates to get you to buy a new one.
I don't think this is possible on the iphones because I don't believe that the carrier is allowed to bastardize it like android but I could be wrong? However that has been my observation and the one advantage I see for ios.
What an ignorant comment. Samsung pioneered the large screen smartphone. They took the risk when everyone was mocking the size of their phones as if they were jokes. Once the market proved them correct everyone else rushed in - including Apple. To belittle this accomplishment speaks to this person's bias towards Apple.
Apple never let Samsung take the lead in large screen smartphones - instead they did what they usually do - wait for another player to create the market and then move in on it.
A year and a half of use later, my thoughts: 1. Totally awesome battery experience. 2. It's good, stable, reliable but it gets so... boring.
My next phone, whenever it is, is probably going to be the largest Nexus device available.
On a side note, it is so great to read a series of comments about iOS and Android that does not degenerate into a trolling competition.