5 ms·

Android has more market share than iOS, which would seem to suggest it's moved far beyond the "technical, geeky" crowd. My hunch is that we're starting to see

Android has more market share than iOS, which would seem to suggest it's moved far beyond the "technical, geeky" crowd. My hunch is that we're starting to see a Windows/Mac differentiation here, with Android emerging as the clear winner of mobile and iOS being reserved for the trendy/artistic/quality crowd. That carries over into the apps themselves, with Android apps (like their windows counterparts) being clean and utilitarian, whereas iOS developers are devoting more time to making sure their app looks good. Edit: The "quality" comment was not intended to suggest that Android lacks it, but rather that those who buy based upon perceived quality would be more likely to be drawn to the iPhone.

grandalf 16y ago
That's a fairly optimistic view. My take is that most purchasers of Android phones are probably quite disappointed with the experience. Whether it's because of battery life, lousy app selection, annoying add-ons by the carrier, or clunky app design. Sure, slimy salespeople hired by the carriers are pushing Android phones and probably lying about features and quality just as they lie about plan details, etc. Yes they're selling a lot of (mediocre) phones to a lot of naive (or optimistic) people who trust the Google name based on their experience with search or gmail. I predict a huge backlash as more and more consumers realize they were hoodwinked and should have just gone with an iPhone. Take the Evo 4G for example... the phone shipped unable to even last a whole day on a full charge (with moderate use). This is unconscionable. Clearly nobody who was in a postion to do something about this test drove one of the phones for a few days before moving forward with all the hype and marketing. I think this will all bite Google when few people decide to upgrade to a new Android phone. The experience is so mediocre that even a few minutes playing with an iPhone, browsing the app store, or talking to the owner about battery life will cause tremendous buyers remorse.
- irons 16y ago
  I'm not sure they're disappointed, per se. The non-nerds I know who bought Android phones are generally pretty pleased to be able to make calls and use the web a bit. They're not app consumers to the slightest degree. Android represents a small value-add over the dumbphones they had before, which is fine, but they're not part of the vast army that Android partisans seem to think is coming over the next hill.
  - _frog 16y ago
    This. A lot of people are coming to Android as a step up from feature phones. In fact a lot of Android phones ship without any way to install third party apps and act as essentially glorified feature phones. I'd love to see the statistics of Android phones sold with the Android store versus iOS device sales to get a better idea of where the two platforms stand in relation to each other.
    - lloeki 16y ago
      A friend of mine bought a HTC Desire Z (of which the G2 is a variant) but while it is supposed to be in the powerhouse department (at the opposite end of the spectrum of a Galaxy Spica) its UI feels jerky, laggy and generally unwilling to respond to some user actions. My friend, despite being on the geeky side, seems not to notice it and because he seems to enjoy the phone I'm reluctant to make him notice and ruin its experience. Certainly this has to come from the fact he comes from a feature phone, so that phone is definitely an improvement.
      - bogomips 16y ago
        I don't disagree with your observations about a pre-Gingerbread device, however it is remarkable how much 2.3 has improved. It is very competitive with the iPhone now from a spit and polish perspective, even on older hardware. So imagine the shine on a device like an upcoming Galaxy S II. This segues to arguments that have a freshness dating. Android used to have crap hardware (the G1 was junk). Now it has amazing hardware. Android used to have no apps. Now it has an unbelievable number of apps, and almost all of the top tier apps. Android used to be a duct-tape clunky mess. Now (Gingerbread) it's a completely different beast: It is actually a loveable operating system. So if Android made most of its gains when it was a shadow of what it is now, what are the detractors left with?
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      I don't think it's even slightly true that "a lot of Android phones ship without a way to install third party apps". I've heard of portable media players or Nooks that run Android but don't have app stores (though the Nook is getting one). I've heard of tablets that don't have the official Google Market, though they often have an alternative market and relatively simple steps for the user to get the Market on to them. There's even 0.4% of "Android" phones that are running OPhone and so while they can run Android apps fine, they don't come with the Google apps or Marketplace, but again they have alternatives. Do you have any links to what you mean by this?
- jarek 16y ago
  Ah yes. First it was shinier. Then it was more apps. Then it was more users. Now it's more paying users, rapidly eroding, and "lousy app selection." Chances of the huge backlash sure are looking better than ever.
- orangecat 16y ago
  My take is that most purchasers of Android phones are probably quite disappointed with the experience. From last September, 65% of Android users are "very satisfied": http://www.therealmacgenius.com/2010/10/iphone-os-or-android-os/ http://www.therealmacgenius.com/2010/10/iphone-os-or-android.... That's less than the iPhone's 74%, but a far cry from the fanboy fantasy of Android being abandoned in droves.
  - grandalf 16y ago
    I'm far from a fanboy... I got an Evo 4G and was so appalled by the battery life -- clearly nobody in their right mind would ship the product knowing how poor the battery life is -- that I did a double take and sold the 4G and bought an iPhone 4. I'm actually rooting for Google. I'd just like to see them take the overall usability and build quality a lot more seriously than they appear to be taking it. It's completely absurd that carriers are installing things like a clock with hands which prevent the phones from being instantly upgradeable when a new version of Android is released. Android gives carriers a lot of perverse incentives, most of which they appear to be following quite religiously.
    - orangecat 16y ago
      Fair enough. I also had an Evo and the battery life wasn't great, but I didn't take that as an indictment of the entire Android ecosystem. (My Nexus S can last for 3 days with moderate use). I ended up giving it to a nontechnical friend, whose immediate reactions were that the screen is gorgeous, and that Swype and the universal text-to-speech are great. It's completely absurd that carriers are installing things like a clock with hands which prevent the phones from being instantly upgradeable when a new version of Android is released. No question that the carriers are doing significant damage to Android's perception. I don't think the skins are a huge contributor to update delays, for example the G2 runs stock Android but still won't get a Gingerbread update until some vague future date. You're absolutely right about the incentive problem; as long as customers are locked into contracts via phone subsidies, there's little motivation to keep them satisfied.
- queenOfEngland 16y ago
  My take is that most purchasers of Android phones are probably quite disappointed with the experience. Whether it's because of battery life, lousy app selection, annoying add-ons by the carrier, or clunky app design In the Eclaire days, with sparse apps and a clunky, half-broken OS, you were absolutely right. Today, however, you couldn't be further off the mark. A Gingerbread phone is a delightful, delightful beast. The app selection and quality has improved at a blistering pace. I think this will all bite Google when few people decide to upgrade to a new Android phone. The experience is so mediocre that even a few minutes playing with an iPhone, browsing the app store, or talking to the owner about battery life will cause tremendous buyers remorse. You mention the Evo yet EVERY SINGLE REVIEW criticized the battery life. How could you possibly not know about that? Experience so mediocre? Your obsolete bias shows through. I would argue that a good Froyo device, or a normal Gingerbread phone, provides a far better experience to most users. This page is thinly veiled fanboyism (and, unsurprisingly, was linked by Gruber, which speaks volumes). Worse, it isn't even CORRECT -- they used both an ancient Meebo app, and an ancient Facebook app, to demonstrate their poorly-demonstrated-anyways point. I would seriously consider Marcos Arment as a suspect behind it: His desperation has grown obvious.
ryannielsen 16y ago
Or perhaps these companies are seeing more purchases/revenue from iOS users, meaning that investing more time and money into an iOS version is a better ROI than putting the same investment into an Android version. A larger user base doesn't necessarily imply that the same user base is a larger source of revenue. There's a bunch of anecdotal evidence that indicates iOS users are more likely to purchase apps than are Android users.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  Google, of all entities, has proven you don't need to charge for services to be profitable.
  - ryannielsen 16y ago
    If you're not charging, you still need customers installing and using your app. Note, I said: "Or perhaps these companies are seeing more purchases/revenue..." Revenue is revenue, whether you get it via a purchase or via eyeballs. If companies are getting less revenue from Android users vs iOS users then there's little reason for them to invest more in making their Android ports look as nice or function as well as their iOS ports.
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      The key here is to look at total revenue, rather than revenue/customer. The incremental costs of serving an additional customer are negligible, while development costs are (relatively) fixed. Thus the relative adoption rates of Android vs iOS customers becomes decreasingly important as the Android user base continues to grow. Despite the apparent swing in popularity of my original statement, I stand by it. Android is looking more and more what Windows was in the early 90s. It doesn't matter how many iOS users purchase apps; if the Android market share is significantly large it will still be the more profitable platform to develop for.
      - ryannielsen 16y ago
irons 16y ago
Android has more market share than iOS, which would seem to suggest it's moved far beyond the "technical, geeky" crowd. OS market share is the easy metric, but it's not the right metric. Read the last six paragraphs: http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/04/02/ios-versus-android-os-footprint-is-not-a-proxy-for-application-footprint/ http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/04/02/ios-versus-android-o... Applying the Windows/Mac analogy to the mobile market is like trying to cram modern geopolitics into a cold war framework. You'll ruin your mind trying to make it work. Google isn't Microsoft, Android isn't Windows, and smartphones aren't purchased or used like desktop computers. Apple is still Apple, which confuses people, I'll admit.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  Does your link realise that their first couple of graphs are for the "phone" market, not the "smartphone" market? It makes about as much sense as lumping in Apple's laptops or Samsung's TVs and the text only occasionally seems to recognize this, almost as if they drew the graphs thinking they referred to smartphones and then lightly edited the text rather than remove them when they realised their mistake. Makes them difficult to take seriously.
  - GregCox 16y ago
    Yes, his link (me) realizes that. The point of the graphs is that Apple is the only manufacturer growing significantly relative to the market, so to call them dead in water is ridiculous. Also, the share growth for all phones is relevant, because smartphones are almost certainly the largest component of that. Absent a breakdown of Samsung's growth by phone category, the most generous way to evaluate their smartphone share growth is to make the simplifying assumption that all of Samsung's growth comes from smartphones. Even then, their growth is a fraction of iPhone's growth and the point is made.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      Apple's not been growing relative to the US smartphone market though. It's been flat for a year (while Android has taken share rapidly) which, despite the ominous overtones, is what "dead in the water" means, a ship without wind not going anywhere (sales still need to rise about 60% to keep up with market growth so the analogy isn't perfect, but they rarely are). What you seem to be missing is that makers of both types of phone are losing share in dumbphones, even as they gain share in the more lucrative smartphone market. If you had numbers for smartphones only, it's likely that about 4 or 5 companies would have higher growth than Apple. Almost certainly in the case of the second graph, because Apple has a higher marketshare and the same mathmatical trick that makes them look good against the Samsung who sell 1 in 4 phones, would make them look bad against the samsung that used to have 5% of the smartphone market but are catching up to and probably overtaking Apple soon.
chicagobob 16y ago
I call BS. My neighbor is a "normal" non-geek who has an android phone and even he notices the difference in app quality and bitches about it all the time (his wife has an iPhone). Just because he isn't "trendy" doesn't mean he doesn't know what quality is. Its his work phone, when his contract is up, he's already decided he's going to lobby for an iPhone and the apps are a huge reason why.
- arethuza 16y ago
  I have a work iPhone, a personal iPad and I used to have a relatively dumb personal phone. I "upgraded" the personal phone to a low end Android phone (a Samsung Galaxy Europa) and I've been really disappointed with it. Of course, what people now tell me is "but that's a bad phone" - and I think that's the problem that Android faces - the actual end user experience is largely determined by the quality of the hardware and this varies a lot.
  - rsynnott 16y ago
    It would be most interesting to see what percentage of Android phones sold are these sorts of super-cheap devices (in this country, a Galaxy Europa is about 80 euro on pre-paid; they won't even sell it to you on contract. By contrast, a Galaxy S is about 550 on prepaid or 150 on contract), versus the high-end devices which we hear so much more about.
- jff 16y ago
  Most of my co-workers seem to be moving from iPhones to Android phones. I get the "Nexus S on AT&T" update from one of them every day... he can't wait to ditch his iPhone for a Nexus S. Of course, we're all scientists, engineers, programmers who recently took a course in Android programming, so my experience probably isn't standard :)
actf 16y ago
I've never really understood the Windows/Mac analogy here. I think the main reason many people end up using Windows over OSX, or any other OS, has always been the availability of software. People use Windows because there is a lot of really good software that just isn't available on other platforms. Granted this is slowly becoming less of an issue now that OSX is gaining some ground, but it is still an issue for a lot of people. If you compare iOS to Android, I think you see the same pattern. One of the reasons the iPhone is so popular is because of the apps, many of which just aren't available on Android. Even when an app is available for Android it often feels like a second class citizen, or an after thought - just as it often does on the Mac. When I look at the mobile world in this light it seems like we should be comparing iOS to Windows and Android to OSX, but then again maybe I'm just reading into the analogy too much.
- Derbasti 16y ago
  Do you really think that? I used to be a Windows user, then switched to Mac by way of Linux a few years ago. Now I have to use Windows at work and I have a really hard time finding good Windows programs besides Office. The Mac selection frankly feels way better and bigger to me. I would go even further and claim that the main advantage of OSX over Windows is the app selection in both quality and quantity!
  - lloeki 16y ago
    By citing the parent comment and modifying the emphasized part I can correct it: "I think the main reason many people end up using Windows over OSX, or any other OS, has always been the knowledge of software." Like how to do X in software Y, or what software can one obtain to do task Z. Probably the Mac App Store changes that, and certainly the perception of it. Also even timid users are much more inclined to go and ask stuff on the Internet, and not solely rely on their inner circle. Canonical knew that even before the App Store singularity and tried to design a simple user-centric application finder in Ubuntu, alongside the very technical Synaptics package manager. Also they tried to push users to ask questions on forums on the very first page Firefox displays.
  - actf 16y ago
danssig 16y ago
>Android has more market share than iOS Is this even true? There are more adroid devices than iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad)?
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  As of Q4 2010 the global sales were equal (10 million iPod Touches and 7 Million iPads and 16 million iPhone vs. 33 million Android phones). The Android sales were growing faster up to this crossover point, but while that means they'll have higher sales in the future, it also means that Apple currently have a higher installed base, which should last a few more months.
sdh 16y ago
"Android has more market share than iOS" Where are they? I read this statement all the time, but I barely know anyone who has an android phone. Not a scientific measurement, but still ... "Android emerging as the clear winner of mobile and iOS being reserved for the trendy/artistic/quality crowd" I really disagree with this statement. First, you can't generalize iOS buyers like this, but more importantly, how do you define winner? Market share? Phones with Android installed on them? How many of these Android users are buying apps? As a developer, the only measurement I care about is how many of potential buyers of my app are there. Android might have more installed OSes, but iOS has more app buyers. That's the real reason you see companies focused on iPhone app development and not Android app development.

grandalf 16y ago

That's a fairly optimistic view. My take is that most purchasers of Android phones are probably quite disappointed with the experience. Whether it's because of battery life, lousy app selection, annoying add-ons by the carrier, or clunky app design. Sure, slimy salespeople hired by the carriers are pushing Android phones and probably lying about features and quality just as they lie about plan details, etc. Yes they're selling a lot of (mediocre) phones to a lot of naive (or optimistic) people who trust the Google name based on their experience with search or gmail. I predict a huge backlash as more and more consumers realize they were hoodwinked and should have just gone with an iPhone. Take the Evo 4G for example... the phone shipped unable to even last a whole day on a full charge (with moderate use). This is unconscionable. Clearly nobody who was in a postion to do something about this test drove one of the phones for a few days before moving forward with all the hype and marketing. I think this will all bite Google when few people decide to upgrade to a new Android phone. The experience is so mediocre that even a few minutes playing with an iPhone, browsing the app store, or talking to the owner about battery life will cause tremendous buyers remorse.

irons 16y ago
I'm not sure they're disappointed, per se. The non-nerds I know who bought Android phones are generally pretty pleased to be able to make calls and use the web a bit. They're not app consumers to the slightest degree. Android represents a small value-add over the dumbphones they had before, which is fine, but they're not part of the vast army that Android partisans seem to think is coming over the next hill.
- _frog 16y ago
  This. A lot of people are coming to Android as a step up from feature phones. In fact a lot of Android phones ship without any way to install third party apps and act as essentially glorified feature phones. I'd love to see the statistics of Android phones sold with the Android store versus iOS device sales to get a better idea of where the two platforms stand in relation to each other.
  - lloeki 16y ago
    A friend of mine bought a HTC Desire Z (of which the G2 is a variant) but while it is supposed to be in the powerhouse department (at the opposite end of the spectrum of a Galaxy Spica) its UI feels jerky, laggy and generally unwilling to respond to some user actions. My friend, despite being on the geeky side, seems not to notice it and because he seems to enjoy the phone I'm reluctant to make him notice and ruin its experience. Certainly this has to come from the fact he comes from a feature phone, so that phone is definitely an improvement.
    - bogomips 16y ago
      I don't disagree with your observations about a pre-Gingerbread device, however it is remarkable how much 2.3 has improved. It is very competitive with the iPhone now from a spit and polish perspective, even on older hardware. So imagine the shine on a device like an upcoming Galaxy S II. This segues to arguments that have a freshness dating. Android used to have crap hardware (the G1 was junk). Now it has amazing hardware. Android used to have no apps. Now it has an unbelievable number of apps, and almost all of the top tier apps. Android used to be a duct-tape clunky mess. Now (Gingerbread) it's a completely different beast: It is actually a loveable operating system. So if Android made most of its gains when it was a shadow of what it is now, what are the detractors left with?
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    I don't think it's even slightly true that "a lot of Android phones ship without a way to install third party apps". I've heard of portable media players or Nooks that run Android but don't have app stores (though the Nook is getting one). I've heard of tablets that don't have the official Google Market, though they often have an alternative market and relatively simple steps for the user to get the Market on to them. There's even 0.4% of "Android" phones that are running OPhone and so while they can run Android apps fine, they don't come with the Google apps or Marketplace, but again they have alternatives. Do you have any links to what you mean by this?
jarek 16y ago
Ah yes. First it was shinier. Then it was more apps. Then it was more users. Now it's more paying users, rapidly eroding, and "lousy app selection." Chances of the huge backlash sure are looking better than ever.
orangecat 16y ago
My take is that most purchasers of Android phones are probably quite disappointed with the experience. From last September, 65% of Android users are "very satisfied": http://www.therealmacgenius.com/2010/10/iphone-os-or-android-os/ http://www.therealmacgenius.com/2010/10/iphone-os-or-android.... That's less than the iPhone's 74%, but a far cry from the fanboy fantasy of Android being abandoned in droves.
- grandalf 16y ago
  I'm far from a fanboy... I got an Evo 4G and was so appalled by the battery life -- clearly nobody in their right mind would ship the product knowing how poor the battery life is -- that I did a double take and sold the 4G and bought an iPhone 4. I'm actually rooting for Google. I'd just like to see them take the overall usability and build quality a lot more seriously than they appear to be taking it. It's completely absurd that carriers are installing things like a clock with hands which prevent the phones from being instantly upgradeable when a new version of Android is released. Android gives carriers a lot of perverse incentives, most of which they appear to be following quite religiously.
  - orangecat 16y ago
    Fair enough. I also had an Evo and the battery life wasn't great, but I didn't take that as an indictment of the entire Android ecosystem. (My Nexus S can last for 3 days with moderate use). I ended up giving it to a nontechnical friend, whose immediate reactions were that the screen is gorgeous, and that Swype and the universal text-to-speech are great. It's completely absurd that carriers are installing things like a clock with hands which prevent the phones from being instantly upgradeable when a new version of Android is released. No question that the carriers are doing significant damage to Android's perception. I don't think the skins are a huge contributor to update delays, for example the G2 runs stock Android but still won't get a Gingerbread update until some vague future date. You're absolutely right about the incentive problem; as long as customers are locked into contracts via phone subsidies, there's little motivation to keep them satisfied.
queenOfEngland 16y ago
My take is that most purchasers of Android phones are probably quite disappointed with the experience. Whether it's because of battery life, lousy app selection, annoying add-ons by the carrier, or clunky app design In the Eclaire days, with sparse apps and a clunky, half-broken OS, you were absolutely right. Today, however, you couldn't be further off the mark. A Gingerbread phone is a delightful, delightful beast. The app selection and quality has improved at a blistering pace. I think this will all bite Google when few people decide to upgrade to a new Android phone. The experience is so mediocre that even a few minutes playing with an iPhone, browsing the app store, or talking to the owner about battery life will cause tremendous buyers remorse. You mention the Evo yet EVERY SINGLE REVIEW criticized the battery life. How could you possibly not know about that? Experience so mediocre? Your obsolete bias shows through. I would argue that a good Froyo device, or a normal Gingerbread phone, provides a far better experience to most users. This page is thinly veiled fanboyism (and, unsurprisingly, was linked by Gruber, which speaks volumes). Worse, it isn't even CORRECT -- they used both an ancient Meebo app, and an ancient Facebook app, to demonstrate their poorly-demonstrated-anyways point. I would seriously consider Marcos Arment as a suspect behind it: His desperation has grown obvious.

ryannielsen 16y ago

Or perhaps these companies are seeing more purchases/revenue from iOS users, meaning that investing more time and money into an iOS version is a better ROI than putting the same investment into an Android version. A larger user base doesn't necessarily imply that the same user base is a larger source of revenue. There's a bunch of anecdotal evidence that indicates iOS users are more likely to purchase apps than are Android users.

redthrowaway 16y ago
Google, of all entities, has proven you don't need to charge for services to be profitable.
- ryannielsen 16y ago
  If you're not charging, you still need customers installing and using your app. Note, I said: "Or perhaps these companies are seeing more purchases/revenue..." Revenue is revenue, whether you get it via a purchase or via eyeballs. If companies are getting less revenue from Android users vs iOS users then there's little reason for them to invest more in making their Android ports look as nice or function as well as their iOS ports.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    The key here is to look at total revenue, rather than revenue/customer. The incremental costs of serving an additional customer are negligible, while development costs are (relatively) fixed. Thus the relative adoption rates of Android vs iOS customers becomes decreasingly important as the Android user base continues to grow. Despite the apparent swing in popularity of my original statement, I stand by it. Android is looking more and more what Windows was in the early 90s. It doesn't matter how many iOS users purchase apps; if the Android market share is significantly large it will still be the more profitable platform to develop for.
    - ryannielsen 16y ago

irons 16y ago

Android has more market share than iOS, which would seem to suggest it's moved far beyond the "technical, geeky" crowd. OS market share is the easy metric, but it's not the right metric. Read the last six paragraphs: http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/04/02/ios-versus-android-os-footprint-is-not-a-proxy-for-application-footprint/ http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/04/02/ios-versus-android-o... Applying the Windows/Mac analogy to the mobile market is like trying to cram modern geopolitics into a cold war framework. You'll ruin your mind trying to make it work. Google isn't Microsoft, Android isn't Windows, and smartphones aren't purchased or used like desktop computers. Apple is still Apple, which confuses people, I'll admit.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
Does your link realise that their first couple of graphs are for the "phone" market, not the "smartphone" market? It makes about as much sense as lumping in Apple's laptops or Samsung's TVs and the text only occasionally seems to recognize this, almost as if they drew the graphs thinking they referred to smartphones and then lightly edited the text rather than remove them when they realised their mistake. Makes them difficult to take seriously.
- GregCox 16y ago
  Yes, his link (me) realizes that. The point of the graphs is that Apple is the only manufacturer growing significantly relative to the market, so to call them dead in water is ridiculous. Also, the share growth for all phones is relevant, because smartphones are almost certainly the largest component of that. Absent a breakdown of Samsung's growth by phone category, the most generous way to evaluate their smartphone share growth is to make the simplifying assumption that all of Samsung's growth comes from smartphones. Even then, their growth is a fraction of iPhone's growth and the point is made.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    Apple's not been growing relative to the US smartphone market though. It's been flat for a year (while Android has taken share rapidly) which, despite the ominous overtones, is what "dead in the water" means, a ship without wind not going anywhere (sales still need to rise about 60% to keep up with market growth so the analogy isn't perfect, but they rarely are). What you seem to be missing is that makers of both types of phone are losing share in dumbphones, even as they gain share in the more lucrative smartphone market. If you had numbers for smartphones only, it's likely that about 4 or 5 companies would have higher growth than Apple. Almost certainly in the case of the second graph, because Apple has a higher marketshare and the same mathmatical trick that makes them look good against the Samsung who sell 1 in 4 phones, would make them look bad against the samsung that used to have 5% of the smartphone market but are catching up to and probably overtaking Apple soon.

chicagobob 16y ago

I call BS. My neighbor is a "normal" non-geek who has an android phone and even he notices the difference in app quality and bitches about it all the time (his wife has an iPhone). Just because he isn't "trendy" doesn't mean he doesn't know what quality is. Its his work phone, when his contract is up, he's already decided he's going to lobby for an iPhone and the apps are a huge reason why.

arethuza 16y ago
I have a work iPhone, a personal iPad and I used to have a relatively dumb personal phone. I "upgraded" the personal phone to a low end Android phone (a Samsung Galaxy Europa) and I've been really disappointed with it. Of course, what people now tell me is "but that's a bad phone" - and I think that's the problem that Android faces - the actual end user experience is largely determined by the quality of the hardware and this varies a lot.
- rsynnott 16y ago
  It would be most interesting to see what percentage of Android phones sold are these sorts of super-cheap devices (in this country, a Galaxy Europa is about 80 euro on pre-paid; they won't even sell it to you on contract. By contrast, a Galaxy S is about 550 on prepaid or 150 on contract), versus the high-end devices which we hear so much more about.
jff 16y ago
Most of my co-workers seem to be moving from iPhones to Android phones. I get the "Nexus S on AT&T" update from one of them every day... he can't wait to ditch his iPhone for a Nexus S. Of course, we're all scientists, engineers, programmers who recently took a course in Android programming, so my experience probably isn't standard :)

actf 16y ago

I've never really understood the Windows/Mac analogy here. I think the main reason many people end up using Windows over OSX, or any other OS, has always been the availability of software. People use Windows because there is a lot of really good software that just isn't available on other platforms. Granted this is slowly becoming less of an issue now that OSX is gaining some ground, but it is still an issue for a lot of people. If you compare iOS to Android, I think you see the same pattern. One of the reasons the iPhone is so popular is because of the apps, many of which just aren't available on Android. Even when an app is available for Android it often feels like a second class citizen, or an after thought - just as it often does on the Mac. When I look at the mobile world in this light it seems like we should be comparing iOS to Windows and Android to OSX, but then again maybe I'm just reading into the analogy too much.

Derbasti 16y ago
Do you really think that? I used to be a Windows user, then switched to Mac by way of Linux a few years ago. Now I have to use Windows at work and I have a really hard time finding good Windows programs besides Office. The Mac selection frankly feels way better and bigger to me. I would go even further and claim that the main advantage of OSX over Windows is the app selection in both quality and quantity!
- lloeki 16y ago
  By citing the parent comment and modifying the emphasized part I can correct it: "I think the main reason many people end up using Windows over OSX, or any other OS, has always been the knowledge of software." Like how to do X in software Y, or what software can one obtain to do task Z. Probably the Mac App Store changes that, and certainly the perception of it. Also even timid users are much more inclined to go and ask stuff on the Internet, and not solely rely on their inner circle. Canonical knew that even before the App Store singularity and tried to design a simple user-centric application finder in Ubuntu, alongside the very technical Synaptics package manager. Also they tried to push users to ask questions on forums on the very first page Firefox displays.
- actf 16y ago

danssig 16y ago

>Android has more market share than iOS Is this even true? There are more adroid devices than iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad)?

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
As of Q4 2010 the global sales were equal (10 million iPod Touches and 7 Million iPads and 16 million iPhone vs. 33 million Android phones). The Android sales were growing faster up to this crossover point, but while that means they'll have higher sales in the future, it also means that Apple currently have a higher installed base, which should last a few more months.

sdh 16y ago

"Android has more market share than iOS" Where are they? I read this statement all the time, but I barely know anyone who has an android phone. Not a scientific measurement, but still ... "Android emerging as the clear winner of mobile and iOS being reserved for the trendy/artistic/quality crowd" I really disagree with this statement. First, you can't generalize iOS buyers like this, but more importantly, how do you define winner? Market share? Phones with Android installed on them? How many of these Android users are buying apps? As a developer, the only measurement I care about is how many of potential buyers of my app are there. Android might have more installed OSes, but iOS has more app buyers. That's the real reason you see companies focused on iPhone app development and not Android app development.