Wait a minute. You are talking about the one that's somewhat slower and lacks a camera or the one that you have to hold in a certain way to prevent dropped calls? ;-)
Market penetration has little relation to overall quality. Apple has always been happy with a smaller slice of a huge pie.
Macs have outsold individual PC makers since ever. In the end, though, there are so many PC makers that Macs have a small market share. The same is happening here - a dozen manufacturers agreeing on commoditizing their software and differentiating in hardware will, eventually, relegate Apple's exclusive platform to a very lucrative, but relatively small, niche.
So you think Apple would outsell Android if they licensed their OS, not a chance. If Apple customer's compared features and not style they would be out of business
Go back in time a while, and the reason that Android was absolutely doomed was that it was a fragmented collection of devices and interfaces that would only confuse and turn off the consumer, with little or no coherent branding (many consumers don't even know what Android is), whereas the iPhone is one or two simple devices that have a singler back, a very strong brand identity, you know what you'll get, etc.
MG Siegler is worse than John Gruber -- at least Gruber is seeing the writing on the wall and is starting to sing a different tune.
Really? Is this what it has come to? I bought an iPhone 3G on day one, used it until the Nexus One came out, and have recently gone back to iOS and bought an iPhone 4.
Why? Because in my opinion, the quality of the apps I use on a daily basis are simply superior on iOS as compared to Android, whether the iPhone has 1% or 99% of the smartphone market. I'll repeat that again: the quality of the iPhone and iOS4 remains the same regardless of its market share!
I love Android's openness, and I even use Google Voice as my sole telephone number (yes, even with my iPhone 4). Wasn't enough; couldn't take the glitchiness, even in Android 2.2, and other annoying features of Android.
Because I know someone will yell "provide examples," here are some superior iOS apps that have no rival on Android: Reeder for iPhone (NewsRob is okay...), Twitter (Twitter for Android is okay...), Instapaper, Simplenote (there are glitchy apps that use the Simplenote API on Android), Dropbox (can't save for local access on Android), Pastebot, Calcbot, Convertbot (all are great examples of apps that are possible on Android, but have no where near the attention to detail), BeejiveIM, Calendar (yes I know Android has a calendar app, but it's weak), Mail (for all non-Gmail accounts, Android sucks, and for Gmail accounts, I find iOS4 to be equal to Android's stock Gmail app), etc. Oh, and I forgot to include all of the games that Android lacks, but I don't really play games so I didn't miss them with my Nexus One.
Point is, not everything is zero-sum; I can enjoy my iPhone regardless of how small or large its market share is! Can't we all just get along?
"Really? Is this what it has come to? I bought an iPhone 3G on day one, used it until the Nexus One came out, and have recently gone back to iOS and bought an iPhone 4."
I think you are misreading what the "writing on the wall" is. It is not the end of the iPhone. Instead it is "the smartphone world will remain multi-polar, and the iPhone's domination is not a predetermined conclusion". Pundits like Gruber developed a cocky swagger of being on the "right", winning team, on some sort of morally justified religious campaign.
"Because I know someone will yell "provide examples," here are some superior iOS apps that have no rival on Android"
I would not at all debate that the overall app ecosystem on the iPhone is superior to Android, largely owing to its early lead, yet the gap is rapidly narrowing. Very rapidly.
However, to your specific examples, Dropzone of course allows local saving (just to prove I'm not insane, I just did it). The official twitter client is now considered the premiere version (it was developed by Google). RealCalc is a close-to-perfect calculator and conversion application (does it have a spinner? No. Do I want that in a calc/conv app? Of course not). Mail in Android 2.2 is superb, and the GMail client is unrivaled. There are hundreds of note taking apps, most of them excellent. Personally I think the Android calendaring app is excellent.
I think your examples are very weak, and most smell of being a pre-2.2 analysis. Where you are absolutely and overwhelmingly right is games, where iOS has a massive lead, owing to the wide disparity in hardware capabilities of Android devices, and many devs targeting the lowest common denominator.
"I think you are misreading what the "writing on the wall" is..."
iOS is still the winning team at the moment, not Android, in terms of total devices out in the wild and more importantly to developers, app sales. I wonder how much more money the App Store has made since, say, January 1st, 2010 than the Android Marketplace...
"I would not at all debate that the overall app ecosystem on the iPhone is superior to Android, largely owing to its early lead, yet the gap is rapidly narrowing. Very rapidly."
Is it? The gap in total number of apps might be narrowing, but I don't see the quality gap getting any closer.
As to "Dropzone" (I assume you mean Dropbox?) allowing local saving, yes, it does. But it saves the files to the SD card, and opening the same file in Dropbox isn't any faster than downloading it for the first time. On the iPhone, after the initial download, the file opens noticeably faster.
You can call the Android Twitter client whatever you'd like, but the UI is not (in my opinion) nearly on the same level as Twitter or Twitterrific or numerous other iOS twitter apps, and scrolling is still janky as ever (much like scrolling in the rest of Android).
RealCalc is fine, and spinner or not is a personal preference. But show me an app for Android that has the kind of attention to detail as described here: http://tapbots.com/blog/design/designing-convertbot
Mail in Android 2.2 is not superb, and not as responsive as Mail for iOS. Plus, the UI for Mail in Android makes my eyes burn. Gmail for Android is wonderful, but I find Mail for iOS just as good for use with Gmail.
Yes, there are hundreds of note taking apps for Android, but most are ugly and don't sync. Plus I'm not a big fan of the apps that do sync (AK Notepad and 3Banana), as I don't like the style of note taking encouraged by snaptic.com.
The calendar app for Android is alright, but it misses the little things. In Calendar for iOS, when I move to say February 2011 and go to create a new event, it intelligently knows that the date of the new event is likely in February 2011. Try this in Android's calendar app...
2.2 is nice, but it's very telling that most people immediately go and download LauncherPro to replace the jerky scrolling found in the default launcher. And 2.2 still doesn't reach the level of responsiveness found in iOS4 while using the iPhone 4. And yes, games on Android are pathetic, nothing more to say on that front. It may sound like I hate Android, but I actually think it's pretty decent. I did enjoy my time with the Nexus One. But it reminds me heavily of the differences between Windows and OS X; Windows is functional but not enjoyable, OS X is both.
>2.2 is nice, but it's very telling that most people immediately go and download LauncherPro
Most is quite an exaggeration.
>But it reminds me heavily of the differences between Windows and OS X; Windows is functional but not enjoyable, OS X is both.
Windows 7 is thoroughly enjoyable. I'm hardly a Microsoft booster.
It's interesting that several of the apps you mentioned, highlighting the strength of the iOS platform, to me demonstrate the weakness of it: They're chrome and gloss and not much more. If I want a conversion app, the last thing I want is a giant graphical wheel, but that seems to be the way many iOS, and OSX for that matter, apps go: Take some trivial, trivial task and provide a minimal solution, but coating it with just enough chrome that people will call it "polish", while they hoard the spit-and-rub apps that they'll never actually use.
I pray that that sort of interface hubris never migrates to Android, and if it leaves some people complaining about the lack of supposed polish, so be it.
> "Wait, So 20 Phones On 4 Carriers Outsold 1 Phone On 1 Carrier? Shocking."
But as hackers who write and sell apps for a given platform, we don't care how many devices make up a platform. We just want to write apps for the platform that has more users.
Is the iPod Touch not "mobile"? Consumers think it is. And both versions of the iPad certainly are mobile.
If you're comparing platforms, compare platforms. If OS, compare OS. If you're comparing smartphone models, compare model to model.
Don't compare a platform to a model and pretend you wrote anything to be taken seriously.
Here's a more interesting pair of apples and oranges:
1. Verizon Wireless maintained its lead in the carrier market with 33 percent. Followed by AT&T with 25 percent.
2. RIM accounted for 28 percent of commercial smartphones activated in Q2 2010. iOS accounted for 22 percent.
That makes it seem 92% of commercial smartphones activated on AT&T are iOS, leaving 8% for the RIM, Android, PalmOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc. (You can make stats say almost anything...)
These stats make it seem as though people walk into an AT&T store with choice and walk out with an iPhone. What might happen if they could walk into other carriers with choice?
They most likely are. The body copy limits the discussion to "commercial smartphones" which is a subset of mobile phones which is a subset of mobile devices.
My first point is they're comparing things which are not like.
My second point is that either their stats are suspect or the other manufacturers better start paying Verizon, Sprint, et al., to keep the iPhone on AT&T.
This isn't quite accurate. Verzion vs. AT&T is total market share, including all subscribers on all phones. The smartphone market is smaller, and smartphones activated in any quarter is a small fraction of that.
This cool to see yet I am very interested per recent debate here who buys more apps. Android or iPhone users?
I created a poll if you too are interested please vote on this poll http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1571592 or heck create your own and get it to the front page. Im very interested in this data as a iPhone and a possible Android developer.
Thanks for voting. Just by the small sample thus far. We have 5 voted as frequent iPhone app buyers vs. 0 frequent Android app buyers, while 5 Android never bought an app before.
Overall this maybe way too small of a sampling, but maybe not? Appreciate the votes and continued votes. Would be great to get a huge sampling. thnx
The analogy of iPhone:Android::Mac:PC really holds on this front. Everytime I use my MBP I can't help but feel I get nickle and dimed for little necessary utility apps just to get things done (want to change the acceleration curve on your mouse? That's $20!) -- things that would normally be free in Windows land are $5-$20 in Mac land.
On my Windows XP and 7 PCs I can usually get 95% of what I need at $0. The open ecosystem simply fosters a cheaper price point, which is good in some ways for consumers (but bad in other ways) -- but not so great for entrepreneurs.
Android still doesn't have the app sales volume iOS does, no where close, both from the fragmented platform (os versions mainly), and the fact that only 13 countries participate in Google checkout at all (the primary payment vendor), only 9 as sellers.
All of these articles are similarly flawed, and equally worthless. For all practical intents and purposes, iOS is the biggest mobile market. If you want to start a company, you just can't make an Android app and expect to make half or even a quarter of the money you will make on iOS.
Here are the facts working against Android:
1) Over 230,000 iDevices sold per day, compared to less than 100K Androids
2) Huge buyer loyalty and repeat/multi device sales among Apple consumers
4) On an Android, the first app you buy will likely require entering a credit card - there goes tons of sales
5) Multiple studies say people buy way more iPhone apps than Android apps.
6) Apple owners are on average wealthier
Don't get me wrong... I like Android, I make an Android app, and I even make a few bucks doing it. But my iPhone sales are way better, and it has everything to do with the quality of the market. I really did like getting paid fast by Google, getting my app posted same day with no review... but end of the day, Android revenues sucks.
>Over 230,000 iDevices sold per day, compared to less than 100K Androids
Groan. Android was past 160K per day many months ago. It has only accelerated since.
>Multiple studies say people buy way more iPhone apps than Android apps.
Why does this matter?
>Apple owners are on average wealthier.
This one gives me a chuckle every time. Every burger flipper owns an iPhone -- It is not the status symbol it keeps getting ridiculously paraded as.
All smartphones have a net cost in the $2500 range, adding in requisite data plans. The iPhone is no big expense.
>but end of the day, Android revenues sucks.
Again, what is your angle? You seem to be saying "for people who make gimpy little micro apps and hope it's going to be their payday, distort all metrics to validate your worldview."
We make the "Topo Maps" app for the Android, which is similar to our outdoorsy iPhone apps.
I Googled around and concede that Android sales are at 160K per day, but that is still not close to the 230K Apple is putting out.
And I did not say iPhone owners are wealthier, I said Apple owners are, which is certainly true. People who own iPads, iPods, iPhones, Macs, and other expensive gear are wealthy. If you don't believe me: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/ipad-owner-are-selfis...
I am happy to have a successful mobile app business, and the pay day is from iOS, not Android. I think I am in a good position to council people to do iOS first if they want to bootstrap.
Agreed. I asked this once too a few weeks ago and was pointed to a link by PG explaining the HN etiquette - downvote not only the stuff you mentioned, but also comments you simply disagree with.
I'll see if I can dig up that link and repost it here shortly. But if that's not a recipe for group think, I don't know what is.
"The Year of Linux on the Desktop" may never arrive but it looks like "The Year of Linux" might be this year, or next. Mobile phones could soon make Linux the most popular OS in the world.
"Breaking news! Android Becomes Top Mobile OS in the US!"
Apple Fan's Hasty Rebuttal, "caveat caveat caveat only if you don't consider caveat caveat caveat and you have to consider caveat caveat caveat in which case I don't even know why news about Android shows up on HN at all".
34 comments
[ 11.1 ms ] story [ 84.0 ms ] thread"Wait, So 20 Phones On 4 Carriers Outsold 1 Phone On 1 Carrier? Shocking."
Indeed. Full article: http://tcrn.ch/ccmuFj
(Also in the article :)
Macs have outsold individual PC makers since ever. In the end, though, there are so many PC makers that Macs have a small market share. The same is happening here - a dozen manufacturers agreeing on commoditizing their software and differentiating in hardware will, eventually, relegate Apple's exclusive platform to a very lucrative, but relatively small, niche.
Check why Consumer Reports rated iPhone 4 highest among all the phones tested (despite the supposed antenna problems).
Go back in time a while, and the reason that Android was absolutely doomed was that it was a fragmented collection of devices and interfaces that would only confuse and turn off the consumer, with little or no coherent branding (many consumers don't even know what Android is), whereas the iPhone is one or two simple devices that have a singler back, a very strong brand identity, you know what you'll get, etc.
MG Siegler is worse than John Gruber -- at least Gruber is seeing the writing on the wall and is starting to sing a different tune.
Really? Is this what it has come to? I bought an iPhone 3G on day one, used it until the Nexus One came out, and have recently gone back to iOS and bought an iPhone 4.
Why? Because in my opinion, the quality of the apps I use on a daily basis are simply superior on iOS as compared to Android, whether the iPhone has 1% or 99% of the smartphone market. I'll repeat that again: the quality of the iPhone and iOS4 remains the same regardless of its market share!
I love Android's openness, and I even use Google Voice as my sole telephone number (yes, even with my iPhone 4). Wasn't enough; couldn't take the glitchiness, even in Android 2.2, and other annoying features of Android.
Because I know someone will yell "provide examples," here are some superior iOS apps that have no rival on Android: Reeder for iPhone (NewsRob is okay...), Twitter (Twitter for Android is okay...), Instapaper, Simplenote (there are glitchy apps that use the Simplenote API on Android), Dropbox (can't save for local access on Android), Pastebot, Calcbot, Convertbot (all are great examples of apps that are possible on Android, but have no where near the attention to detail), BeejiveIM, Calendar (yes I know Android has a calendar app, but it's weak), Mail (for all non-Gmail accounts, Android sucks, and for Gmail accounts, I find iOS4 to be equal to Android's stock Gmail app), etc. Oh, and I forgot to include all of the games that Android lacks, but I don't really play games so I didn't miss them with my Nexus One.
Point is, not everything is zero-sum; I can enjoy my iPhone regardless of how small or large its market share is! Can't we all just get along?
I think you are misreading what the "writing on the wall" is. It is not the end of the iPhone. Instead it is "the smartphone world will remain multi-polar, and the iPhone's domination is not a predetermined conclusion". Pundits like Gruber developed a cocky swagger of being on the "right", winning team, on some sort of morally justified religious campaign.
"Because I know someone will yell "provide examples," here are some superior iOS apps that have no rival on Android"
I would not at all debate that the overall app ecosystem on the iPhone is superior to Android, largely owing to its early lead, yet the gap is rapidly narrowing. Very rapidly.
However, to your specific examples, Dropzone of course allows local saving (just to prove I'm not insane, I just did it). The official twitter client is now considered the premiere version (it was developed by Google). RealCalc is a close-to-perfect calculator and conversion application (does it have a spinner? No. Do I want that in a calc/conv app? Of course not). Mail in Android 2.2 is superb, and the GMail client is unrivaled. There are hundreds of note taking apps, most of them excellent. Personally I think the Android calendaring app is excellent.
I think your examples are very weak, and most smell of being a pre-2.2 analysis. Where you are absolutely and overwhelmingly right is games, where iOS has a massive lead, owing to the wide disparity in hardware capabilities of Android devices, and many devs targeting the lowest common denominator.
iOS is still the winning team at the moment, not Android, in terms of total devices out in the wild and more importantly to developers, app sales. I wonder how much more money the App Store has made since, say, January 1st, 2010 than the Android Marketplace...
"I would not at all debate that the overall app ecosystem on the iPhone is superior to Android, largely owing to its early lead, yet the gap is rapidly narrowing. Very rapidly."
Is it? The gap in total number of apps might be narrowing, but I don't see the quality gap getting any closer.
As to "Dropzone" (I assume you mean Dropbox?) allowing local saving, yes, it does. But it saves the files to the SD card, and opening the same file in Dropbox isn't any faster than downloading it for the first time. On the iPhone, after the initial download, the file opens noticeably faster.
You can call the Android Twitter client whatever you'd like, but the UI is not (in my opinion) nearly on the same level as Twitter or Twitterrific or numerous other iOS twitter apps, and scrolling is still janky as ever (much like scrolling in the rest of Android).
RealCalc is fine, and spinner or not is a personal preference. But show me an app for Android that has the kind of attention to detail as described here: http://tapbots.com/blog/design/designing-convertbot
Mail in Android 2.2 is not superb, and not as responsive as Mail for iOS. Plus, the UI for Mail in Android makes my eyes burn. Gmail for Android is wonderful, but I find Mail for iOS just as good for use with Gmail.
Yes, there are hundreds of note taking apps for Android, but most are ugly and don't sync. Plus I'm not a big fan of the apps that do sync (AK Notepad and 3Banana), as I don't like the style of note taking encouraged by snaptic.com.
The calendar app for Android is alright, but it misses the little things. In Calendar for iOS, when I move to say February 2011 and go to create a new event, it intelligently knows that the date of the new event is likely in February 2011. Try this in Android's calendar app...
2.2 is nice, but it's very telling that most people immediately go and download LauncherPro to replace the jerky scrolling found in the default launcher. And 2.2 still doesn't reach the level of responsiveness found in iOS4 while using the iPhone 4. And yes, games on Android are pathetic, nothing more to say on that front. It may sound like I hate Android, but I actually think it's pretty decent. I did enjoy my time with the Nexus One. But it reminds me heavily of the differences between Windows and OS X; Windows is functional but not enjoyable, OS X is both.
Most is quite an exaggeration.
>But it reminds me heavily of the differences between Windows and OS X; Windows is functional but not enjoyable, OS X is both.
Windows 7 is thoroughly enjoyable. I'm hardly a Microsoft booster.
It's interesting that several of the apps you mentioned, highlighting the strength of the iOS platform, to me demonstrate the weakness of it: They're chrome and gloss and not much more. If I want a conversion app, the last thing I want is a giant graphical wheel, but that seems to be the way many iOS, and OSX for that matter, apps go: Take some trivial, trivial task and provide a minimal solution, but coating it with just enough chrome that people will call it "polish", while they hoard the spit-and-rub apps that they'll never actually use.
I pray that that sort of interface hubris never migrates to Android, and if it leaves some people complaining about the lack of supposed polish, so be it.
But as hackers who write and sell apps for a given platform, we don't care how many devices make up a platform. We just want to write apps for the platform that has more users.
Is the iPod Touch not "mobile"? Consumers think it is. And both versions of the iPad certainly are mobile.
If you're comparing platforms, compare platforms. If OS, compare OS. If you're comparing smartphone models, compare model to model.
Don't compare a platform to a model and pretend you wrote anything to be taken seriously.
Here's a more interesting pair of apples and oranges:
1. Verizon Wireless maintained its lead in the carrier market with 33 percent. Followed by AT&T with 25 percent.
2. RIM accounted for 28 percent of commercial smartphones activated in Q2 2010. iOS accounted for 22 percent.
That makes it seem 92% of commercial smartphones activated on AT&T are iOS, leaving 8% for the RIM, Android, PalmOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc. (You can make stats say almost anything...)
These stats make it seem as though people walk into an AT&T store with choice and walk out with an iPhone. What might happen if they could walk into other carriers with choice?
My first point is they're comparing things which are not like.
My second point is that either their stats are suspect or the other manufacturers better start paying Verizon, Sprint, et al., to keep the iPhone on AT&T.
Total market share != smartphone market share != smartphone activation share.
So Android beat RIM's OS when not factoring in most of RIM's market.
I created a poll if you too are interested please vote on this poll http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1571592 or heck create your own and get it to the front page. Im very interested in this data as a iPhone and a possible Android developer.
Overall this maybe way too small of a sampling, but maybe not? Appreciate the votes and continued votes. Would be great to get a huge sampling. thnx
On my Windows XP and 7 PCs I can usually get 95% of what I need at $0. The open ecosystem simply fosters a cheaper price point, which is good in some ways for consumers (but bad in other ways) -- but not so great for entrepreneurs.
Here are the facts working against Android:
1) Over 230,000 iDevices sold per day, compared to less than 100K Androids
2) Huge buyer loyalty and repeat/multi device sales among Apple consumers
4) On an Android, the first app you buy will likely require entering a credit card - there goes tons of sales
5) Multiple studies say people buy way more iPhone apps than Android apps.
6) Apple owners are on average wealthier
Don't get me wrong... I like Android, I make an Android app, and I even make a few bucks doing it. But my iPhone sales are way better, and it has everything to do with the quality of the market. I really did like getting paid fast by Google, getting my app posted same day with no review... but end of the day, Android revenues sucks.
What app?
>Over 230,000 iDevices sold per day, compared to less than 100K Androids
Groan. Android was past 160K per day many months ago. It has only accelerated since.
>Multiple studies say people buy way more iPhone apps than Android apps.
Why does this matter?
>Apple owners are on average wealthier.
This one gives me a chuckle every time. Every burger flipper owns an iPhone -- It is not the status symbol it keeps getting ridiculously paraded as.
All smartphones have a net cost in the $2500 range, adding in requisite data plans. The iPhone is no big expense.
>but end of the day, Android revenues sucks.
Again, what is your angle? You seem to be saying "for people who make gimpy little micro apps and hope it's going to be their payday, distort all metrics to validate your worldview."
I Googled around and concede that Android sales are at 160K per day, but that is still not close to the 230K Apple is putting out.
And I did not say iPhone owners are wealthier, I said Apple owners are, which is certainly true. People who own iPads, iPods, iPhones, Macs, and other expensive gear are wealthy. If you don't believe me: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/ipad-owner-are-selfis...
I am happy to have a successful mobile app business, and the pay day is from iOS, not Android. I think I am in a good position to council people to do iOS first if they want to bootstrap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6khBlUZ-Dp4
I'll see if I can dig up that link and repost it here shortly. But if that's not a recipe for group think, I don't know what is.
Apple Fan's Hasty Rebuttal, "caveat caveat caveat only if you don't consider caveat caveat caveat and you have to consider caveat caveat caveat in which case I don't even know why news about Android shows up on HN at all".