5 ms·
The advantage of Android is that it has an army of hardware manufacturers that can churn phones of different price points. Android can be released in much more
by dannyr 17y ago
The advantage of Android is that it has an army of hardware manufacturers that can churn phones of different price points. Android can be released in much more countries quickly than the IPhone since these HW companies will be the ones making deals with carriers in different countries.
This is why I think it's a matter of time for Android to overtake the IPhone in terms of unit sales. If the 30+ Android models are actually released later this year, Android will likely surpass the IPhone early next year.
The profits crown will remain with Apple though for a very long time.
- webwright 17y agoMaybe-- isn't the iPhone $99 at this point? I guess the winner in terms of phone sales could be "free" (subsidized by carriers). Given Apple's profits with the iPhone and economies of scale, they might just be able to compete with that. Give away iPhones, make it back on app sales?
- lftl 17y agoMaybe things have changed, but I've always heard that the App Store is pretty much a break even proposition for Apple. The hardware is where they make all their money. If this becomes a race based solely on price I'm confident Apple will effectively lose (in the sense that they won't be able to command the financial success they have today).
- dagw 17y agoAndroid isn't so much competing on price point (the cheapest android phone is only slightly cheaper than the cheapest iPhone), but on feature sets. Want a large phone with a large high res screen, there's a phone for that. Want to sacrifice a bit of screen size and resolution for longer battery life, there's a phone for that. Want a phone with a keyboard, no problem. Want a slightly smaller phone with a keyboard, you can get that too. And so on and so forth.
- kalid 17y agoBut that's exactly the problem for developers. How many different devices are you willing to test on? Will your app's interface easily scale to all these different form factors? A huge advantage of the iphone is that there's a single screen resolution to optimize for.
- usaar333 17y agoThat can be checked in the emulator. Honestly, I am just glad that if I make an Android app, it won't be rejected.
- dagw 17y agoIf the rumours are to be believed then that advantage will disappear this summer. The iPhone already comes with two different CPU speeds and soon it will have two different resolutions, so any advantage on that front is rapidly disappearing.
- hockeybias 17y agoDaring Fireball points out that iPhones with double the resolution will be out soon.
- usaar333 17y agoIt is significantly cheaper when you look at unsubsidized costs. An ebay G1 is $120 versus $275+ for an iPhone.