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"Android has been a pretty epic failure" How did this reach the front page? Android has around 1.3 MILLION activations per day. To blatantly call this an "epic

"Android has been a pretty epic failure" How did this reach the front page? Android has around 1.3 MILLION activations per day. To blatantly call this an "epic failure" is astounding. Furthermore I don't know how the acquisition of a cell phone manufacturing company can be linked to Android. Motorola makes more than just Android devices, and even if they didn't the stated linked is hard to make.

tptacek 14y ago
This was a tiny article --- that's what Matt Yglesias, Slate's econ columnist, writes --- and you didn't even read it; the whole article is about how Android can simultaneously be a market success and a business failure. Next time, read first, then comment.
- jug6ernaut 14y ago
  Full quote then. "And it's pretty clear that when you account for the costs of the Motorola purchase, Android has been a pretty epic failure. And yet as a product it's an enormous success—the most popular smartphone OS on the planet and even more than that a huge driver of smartphone adoption." This does not change what I said in my previous comment. Even if you relate it JUST a business aspect and ignore that you can't do that. Lets look at googles stock breakdown. http://www.trefis.com/company?hm=GOOG.trefis&from=home%3AcompanyRelated#/GOOG/n-0003?from=sankey http://www.trefis.com/company?hm=GOOG.trefis&from=home%3... Motorola makes up 2% of googles worth, where Mobile Ads make up 34%. Granted this can be assumed to not be completely Android, even if we assume that only 25% of that is from android devices, thats 8.5%. So 8x Motorolas worth and about 21Billion based on Googles 245B market cap. So a worth of 21 Billion in worth is an "epic failure"? Ok...
  - Locke1689 14y ago
    It seems pretty clear that you're not a native English speaker. Could you try rephrasing your argument here? I can't understand your post, sometimes in a raw English semantics sense.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    And yet as a product it's an enormous success—the most popular smartphone OS on the planet and even more than that a huge driver of smartphone adoption.
ceejayoz 14y ago
The very next sentence says exactly what you're saying: > And yet as a product it's an enormous success—the most popular smartphone OS on the planet and even more than that a huge driver of smartphone adoption. The title refers to Android being a business failure, not a market share / number of activations failure.
arscan 14y ago
To be fair, the author does call it a product success (# of activations per day could be used as a metric to support that). But then he/she attempts to call it a business failure because of these Motorola losses. That's WAY off the mark. Android is a strategic product intended to protect their real business (advertising) in the mobile space.
erichocean 14y ago
Well, anyone looks stupid when you misquote them: "And it's pretty clear that when you account for the costs of the Motorola purchase, Android has been a pretty epic failure." IOW, Google has failed (so far) to profit from Android, and it doesn't appear likely to any time soon...

tptacek 14y ago

This was a tiny article --- that's what Matt Yglesias, Slate's econ columnist, writes --- and you didn't even read it; the whole article is about how Android can simultaneously be a market success and a business failure. Next time, read first, then comment.

jug6ernaut 14y ago
Full quote then. "And it's pretty clear that when you account for the costs of the Motorola purchase, Android has been a pretty epic failure. And yet as a product it's an enormous success—the most popular smartphone OS on the planet and even more than that a huge driver of smartphone adoption." This does not change what I said in my previous comment. Even if you relate it JUST a business aspect and ignore that you can't do that. Lets look at googles stock breakdown. http://www.trefis.com/company?hm=GOOG.trefis&from=home%3AcompanyRelated#/GOOG/n-0003?from=sankey http://www.trefis.com/company?hm=GOOG.trefis&from=home%3... Motorola makes up 2% of googles worth, where Mobile Ads make up 34%. Granted this can be assumed to not be completely Android, even if we assume that only 25% of that is from android devices, thats 8.5%. So 8x Motorolas worth and about 21Billion based on Googles 245B market cap. So a worth of 21 Billion in worth is an "epic failure"? Ok...
- Locke1689 14y ago
  It seems pretty clear that you're not a native English speaker. Could you try rephrasing your argument here? I can't understand your post, sometimes in a raw English semantics sense.
- tptacek 14y ago
  And yet as a product it's an enormous success—the most popular smartphone OS on the planet and even more than that a huge driver of smartphone adoption.

ceejayoz 14y ago

The very next sentence says exactly what you're saying: > And yet as a product it's an enormous success—the most popular smartphone OS on the planet and even more than that a huge driver of smartphone adoption. The title refers to Android being a business failure, not a market share / number of activations failure.

arscan 14y ago

To be fair, the author does call it a product success (# of activations per day could be used as a metric to support that). But then he/she attempts to call it a business failure because of these Motorola losses. That's WAY off the mark. Android is a strategic product intended to protect their real business (advertising) in the mobile space.

erichocean 14y ago

Well, anyone looks stupid when you misquote them: "And it's pretty clear that when you account for the costs of the Motorola purchase, Android has been a pretty epic failure." IOW, Google has failed (so far) to profit from Android, and it doesn't appear likely to any time soon...