5 ms·

"I really, really, really wanted to like Android, but you can damn-near put an 18 month countdown on the majority of the Android phones before the manufacturer

by jerrya 15y ago

"I really, really, really wanted to like Android, but you can damn-near put an 18 month countdown on the majority of the Android phones before the manufacturer abandons it and you're stuck using XDA developers or the like for updates, patches and improvements, or just to fix the stock crap they ship. On a 24 month contract cycle, that's just unacceptable." Somewhat broad generalization ahead... About once a year, Apple comes out with ONE new phone, an iPhone. If the phone is bad, Apple goes out of business. Apple bets the company every year on that new iPhone, and to make that a reasonable bet, they spend tons and tons of marketing on design, engineering, quality, and customer support. Apples knows a bad iPhone makes WSJ / New York Times front pages. Apple knows that to make a bad iPhone loses them iPad, iPod, Macbook,... customers. And so ... by and large, Apple does not make bad iPhones. In contrast Four times a year, each, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG, Kyocera, Huawei, Sony, and others, come out with a new Android phone. This phone is one of many many products made by each of these companies. The success or failure of any of these phones means almost nothing to the company. And so, the product development and rollout of any of these phones is not a bet-the-company gamble. Accordingly, very little effort is made on design, engineering, and customer support. None of these companies have terribly loyal customers, most seem to buy a given phone based on carrier affiliation, or based on costs. Losing a customer here is bad, but does not carry the long term cost as losing a customer at Apple does. And so there is very little incentive to make anything but competitive (in all the wrong meanings) phones here. There is a race to the bottom mentality going on. "We think the phone we make is good, at least as good as the phone they make. Let's get some more marketing dollars from our partners for it and we will all be happy"

danudey 15y ago
Many years ago, I took a look at the Apple iPod website, and looked at the models. The breakdown was simple. iPod shuffle, iPod Mini, iPod. You could see one page with all prices for all sizes (two sizes for each model), and then you just had to pick a colour and you were good. I then went to look at Creative's website, and looked through their list of products. They had 16 separate models, many of which were very subtle variations (e.g. the 316 vs. the 316z). There was no breakdown page that would show you the differences or help you decide. Some of them had LCD screens, some of them played WMA, some of them had more space, some came in multiple colours, but you didn't know which had what or what it cost until you clicked on the page. Making a completely informed decision would take hours of clicking links, making notes, hitting the back button, and then clicking the next link. I marvelled that not only was Creative competing against Apple, they were competing against themselves. They produced 16 different models, which requires 16 different manufacturing processes, 16 different packagings, 16 different manuals (each in a variety of languages), 16 different QA processes. The same thing is happening here. Manufacturers are largely unwilling to challenge Apple in the high-end of the market (where the Galaxy S, Nexus S, iPhone 4, etc. all live), so they work in the smaller end. The lower prices mean lower margins and lesser quality parts. This also leads to less testing and QA, meaning a lower quality finished product. As a result of these lower margins, they need to sell more phones, which means producing more models of phones and shortening the lifetimes of the phones in order to encourage people to turn them over faster. It's becoming a race to the bottom. People compare Android and iOS to Windows and Mac, but it feels like the better comparison is Mac vs. PC hardware, not software. Apple makes very few models of computer (Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, iMac, Mac Pro), which they refresh lately. There are lots of variations, but you have four base models which are simple to understand. In comparison, if you go to Dell's website, there are a dozen models you can buy, each with subtle variations, and even with different prices depending on which business unit you buy from. Other PC manufacturers all do the same thing, and because they don't control the software they ship (other than crapware), they can only really differentiate on price. It's become a race to the bottom, trying to slash costs and increase volumes at the same time, and PC manufacturers have realized that they're fighting over a huge chunk of the market and leaving Apple to actually make the profits. Android certainly has the potential to surpass Apple in market share, but they're going to be fighting over a much smaller chunk of profits, fragmenting their efforts over multiple products and competing against other manufacturers' multiple products. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
- stretchwithme 15y ago
  You hit the nail on the head. Apple curates the array of products it offers, while its impossible to tell which Android best suits you. Google needs to create a new platform that curates as well as Apple does. Or sit and watch while Amazon builds one on top of Android.
- dman 15y ago
  Apple is one of the few companies in the world that does both software and hardware in a competent and timely fashion. If Sony / HTC / Samsung had as much software roots as Apple I believe we would see Android handsets that actually offered credible alternatives rather than being showcases for their hardware and physical design departments. Then again I guess shipping Android phones amounts to admitting that you cant do the whole stack. I really commend HP for trying to be the other company that does the whole stack.
rsynnott 15y ago
"The success or failure of any of these phones means almost nothing to the company. And so, the product development and rollout of any of these phones is not a bet-the-company gamble. Accordingly, very little effort is made on design, engineering, and customer support. None of these companies have terribly loyal customers, most seem to buy a given phone based on carrier affiliation, or based on costs." In the long run, Google needs to do something about this, or face it doing severe damage to the image of their platform.
amorphid 15y ago
Apple is great at understanding a customer's user experience. They are making the most profit per handset, too. Making a couple of bucks via bloatware might be driving unprofitability.

by jerrya 15y ago

danudey 15y ago

Many years ago, I took a look at the Apple iPod website, and looked at the models. The breakdown was simple. iPod shuffle, iPod Mini, iPod. You could see one page with all prices for all sizes (two sizes for each model), and then you just had to pick a colour and you were good. I then went to look at Creative's website, and looked through their list of products. They had 16 separate models, many of which were very subtle variations (e.g. the 316 vs. the 316z). There was no breakdown page that would show you the differences or help you decide. Some of them had LCD screens, some of them played WMA, some of them had more space, some came in multiple colours, but you didn't know which had what or what it cost until you clicked on the page. Making a completely informed decision would take hours of clicking links, making notes, hitting the back button, and then clicking the next link. I marvelled that not only was Creative competing against Apple, they were competing against themselves. They produced 16 different models, which requires 16 different manufacturing processes, 16 different packagings, 16 different manuals (each in a variety of languages), 16 different QA processes. The same thing is happening here. Manufacturers are largely unwilling to challenge Apple in the high-end of the market (where the Galaxy S, Nexus S, iPhone 4, etc. all live), so they work in the smaller end. The lower prices mean lower margins and lesser quality parts. This also leads to less testing and QA, meaning a lower quality finished product. As a result of these lower margins, they need to sell more phones, which means producing more models of phones and shortening the lifetimes of the phones in order to encourage people to turn them over faster. It's becoming a race to the bottom. People compare Android and iOS to Windows and Mac, but it feels like the better comparison is Mac vs. PC hardware, not software. Apple makes very few models of computer (Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, iMac, Mac Pro), which they refresh lately. There are lots of variations, but you have four base models which are simple to understand. In comparison, if you go to Dell's website, there are a dozen models you can buy, each with subtle variations, and even with different prices depending on which business unit you buy from. Other PC manufacturers all do the same thing, and because they don't control the software they ship (other than crapware), they can only really differentiate on price. It's become a race to the bottom, trying to slash costs and increase volumes at the same time, and PC manufacturers have realized that they're fighting over a huge chunk of the market and leaving Apple to actually make the profits. Android certainly has the potential to surpass Apple in market share, but they're going to be fighting over a much smaller chunk of profits, fragmenting their efforts over multiple products and competing against other manufacturers' multiple products. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

stretchwithme 15y ago
You hit the nail on the head. Apple curates the array of products it offers, while its impossible to tell which Android best suits you. Google needs to create a new platform that curates as well as Apple does. Or sit and watch while Amazon builds one on top of Android.
dman 15y ago
Apple is one of the few companies in the world that does both software and hardware in a competent and timely fashion. If Sony / HTC / Samsung had as much software roots as Apple I believe we would see Android handsets that actually offered credible alternatives rather than being showcases for their hardware and physical design departments. Then again I guess shipping Android phones amounts to admitting that you cant do the whole stack. I really commend HP for trying to be the other company that does the whole stack.

rsynnott 15y ago

"The success or failure of any of these phones means almost nothing to the company. And so, the product development and rollout of any of these phones is not a bet-the-company gamble. Accordingly, very little effort is made on design, engineering, and customer support. None of these companies have terribly loyal customers, most seem to buy a given phone based on carrier affiliation, or based on costs." In the long run, Google needs to do something about this, or face it doing severe damage to the image of their platform.

amorphid 15y ago

Apple is great at understanding a customer's user experience. They are making the most profit per handset, too. Making a couple of bucks via bloatware might be driving unprofitability.