My understanding is that that rate does not exceed the overall growth of the market, though. So Android activations are growing in absolute numbers, but their portion of "all smartphones sold" is not.
An activation corresponds to either the first activation after a sale, or the activation following a "Reset to factory settings" of an Android device. How activations are split between these two is anyone's guess.
The difference between the titles is very interesting: "Apple up, Android flat in smartphone growth" vs the original "_In US_, Smartphones Now Majority of New Cellphone Purchases". Yes, the US market is big, but not the only one.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/06/andy-rubin-500000-and...
The big story, IMO, looking at the charts is that smartphone growth all-up stalled (flat between Q1 and Q2). Maybe the first Q2Q stall in growth in years.
I'd like to know why people aren't getting smartphones? Is the cost of the data plans? If so, I think we may see growth in this market segment slow down a lot faster than some people expect.
I think that's because they are selling them as pocket computers, and a lot of people don't care about having another computer. Those who did already got them.
A number of people (at least in my circle) have also realized that those touchscreen devices are inferior for their primary purpose; being a phone. I know quite a few who "downgraded" their iphones to old fashioned devices with a real keypad (mostly nokias) after the novelty had worn off.
Actually, my experience is that a lot of people are getting smartphones that hate their computer and rarely use it, and just want a good phone.
My mother got an iPhone, not because she wanted lots of apps, but because the user interface was simple enough to understand and use for making phone calls, and because she never figured out the T9 stuff. I was quite surprised when I discovered that she'd figured out how to use Safari on her own.
Some other friends got an iPhone after buying and iPod touch for watching videos and listening to music while commuting, and gradually discovered that it was pointless carrying around two devices.
So the potential market is very big IMO, and only limited to how far down the price can be pushed. Of course, there will always be a big market for "non"-smartphones, as these will get cheaper as well and reach even more people.
It's what's stopping me. $60/month for both lines -> $720/year, and given how much I'm in front of computers and in range of free-to-me WiFi that's a terrible, terrible deal. I've got a "feature phone" and I'm not really feeling the pain.
If you're in the US, try Virgin Mobile. They've got the LG Optimus V (a reasonably capable Androidy sort of thing) for $200 on prepaid, then you pay $25 a month for unlimited data + unlimited text + (I think) 300 minutes of voice.
It's cheaper than any other option to a ridiculous degree.
My girlfriend, brother, and his fiance have been using Virgin Mobile's $25/month Beyond Talk service for a year or so. They're all using LG Optimus V phones now. They're satisfied customers.
Because they are expensive, they have very little battery life, they break easily (expensive again), they may get stolen (I can leave my 10€ phone anywhere, I wouldn't do that with my 600€ one), they do everything computers do, only at a tiny impractical screen, there is a notion of more radiation from smartphones, they make it much more attractive to waste time, they are much slower to boot up = people don't want their smartphones do be always on/standby, they are more unreliable in terms of glitches / connectivity issues / bugs.
Yeah - the market is huge, but when it comes to adoption rate one should really look into Norway, Sweden and Denmark, where adoption rate of smart phones make other countries look dumb.
i like Android. Sprint and T-Mobile are already swamped with Android phones. There's no room for growth there. the iPhone is already the best selling smartphone on Verizon after only 4-5 months.
http://allthingsd.com/20110622/whats-the-top-selling-phone-a...
Well of course it's the best selling phone. Apple bets the entire platform on a single phone; Android has a panoply of options competing against each other. If the iPhone were being consistently outsold by any one of the various Android models, that would be a sign that something was going seriously wrong for Apple.
That article merely demonstrates that statistics will tell you anything.
Nielson's analysis is equally bad. FTA, "Android share of recent acquirers flattened in 2011; Apple is now driving smartphone growth." This is simply not true. Android is still grabbing the largest portion of new smartphone users.
The analysis and wording are misleading, but I find it hard to believe that no one identifies the Verizon iPhone launch as a motivator for these numbers. There's a clear stall in new smartphone user iPhone purchases that starts right after WSJ announced the Verizon iPhone launch. There's also a clear spike when the Verizon iPhone launch occurred.
I guess you could say Apple's departments handling marketing and Verizon launch details are driving smartphone adoption.
It will be interesting to see what happens on the next iPhone refresh. AT&T is offering the 3gs for "free" with a 2 year contract. If Apple has a replacement that can fit that slot for both AT&T and Verizon, then it will probably do some significant things to the iPhone market share (and seriously accelerate the iPod lines decreasing numbers).
Yes, that's definitely the sweet spot. It's hard for Android to sell "cheaper than free". ("free" is far from "free", but it sounds good).
In Canada where the rule is 3 year contracts (and thus free is even more expensive than in the States), I've seen low-end Androids for $0 with 3 year contract, no data plan required and 2 phones + a PS3 for 2 three year contracts.
> In Canada where the rule is 3 year contracts (and thus free is even more expensive than in the States), I've seen low-end Androids for $0 with 3 year contract, no data plan required and 2 phones + a PS3 for 2 three year contracts.
True, but Canada has a strangely high iOS adoption rate and carriers are just doing whatever the hell they can to increase that existing 9% of Canadian smartphone users that own Androids. I think it's because they can negotiate better with the individual Android device makers than they can negotiate with Apple or even RIM.
I can't watch to ditch this android for iphone... I tried to talk a few people out of androids here at work, but they didn't listen until about a week after using it; Finally they realized I was telling the truth and returned their phones for iphones!
Smartphone statistics are pretty unhelpful when it comes to evaluating iOS because they don't factor in the 100+ million iPads & iPod touches out there. It helps to remember this when reading arguments about the App Store & the Android Market, because it's often forgotten or dismissed.
The number I care about (which I haven't been able to find, not that I looked very hard) is how many unique (per user) app installations there were per month for each platform. The number of users is only useful if users of all platforms install apps at the same rate, which my intuition says is not true.
Many android phones are sold as "the nice phone that you can get with your 2-year contract" as opposed to an item that the owner sought out explicitly, so they're less likely to explore the full potential of the device.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 75.7 ms ] threadIs a lot more helpful. There's still a lot of market to cover, so it's not like iOS and Android are cannibalizing each others sales yet.
I'd like to know why people aren't getting smartphones? Is the cost of the data plans? If so, I think we may see growth in this market segment slow down a lot faster than some people expect.
My mother got an iPhone, not because she wanted lots of apps, but because the user interface was simple enough to understand and use for making phone calls, and because she never figured out the T9 stuff. I was quite surprised when I discovered that she'd figured out how to use Safari on her own.
Some other friends got an iPhone after buying and iPod touch for watching videos and listening to music while commuting, and gradually discovered that it was pointless carrying around two devices.
So the potential market is very big IMO, and only limited to how far down the price can be pushed. Of course, there will always be a big market for "non"-smartphones, as these will get cheaper as well and reach even more people.
It's what's stopping me. $60/month for both lines -> $720/year, and given how much I'm in front of computers and in range of free-to-me WiFi that's a terrible, terrible deal. I've got a "feature phone" and I'm not really feeling the pain.
It's cheaper than any other option to a ridiculous degree.
Android should go after AT&T fast.
That article merely demonstrates that statistics will tell you anything.
Nielson's analysis is equally bad. FTA, "Android share of recent acquirers flattened in 2011; Apple is now driving smartphone growth." This is simply not true. Android is still grabbing the largest portion of new smartphone users.
I guess you could say Apple's departments handling marketing and Verizon launch details are driving smartphone adoption.
In Canada where the rule is 3 year contracts (and thus free is even more expensive than in the States), I've seen low-end Androids for $0 with 3 year contract, no data plan required and 2 phones + a PS3 for 2 three year contracts.
True, but Canada has a strangely high iOS adoption rate and carriers are just doing whatever the hell they can to increase that existing 9% of Canadian smartphone users that own Androids. I think it's because they can negotiate better with the individual Android device makers than they can negotiate with Apple or even RIM.
Many android phones are sold as "the nice phone that you can get with your 2-year contract" as opposed to an item that the owner sought out explicitly, so they're less likely to explore the full potential of the device.