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There's a tendency in the "tech" press to focus on a very narrow idea of "share". When they say "market share" they are almost always talking about new unit sa
by nirvana 14y ago
There's a tendency in the "tech" press to focus on a very narrow idea of "share". When they say "market share" they are almost always talking about new unit sales. This is because it's a lot cheaper to just take reports from companies that issue them (as press releases) and then write up a story from that... and these companies are analyzing only the most recent sales (for the most party.)
Actual market share is something quite different, as it includes all of the previously sold, but still operating devices.
The share relevant to developers is still another matter, as it must take into account the operating system the developer is targetting and how many devices still in use are using that operating system.
So, if you're a developer for high end mobile games, you might require Android Jelly Bean and iOS 6. Thus the question of where to direct your resources would best be answered by "What is the addressable market size for these two operating systems?"
I don't know the answer to that, but too often the torrent of shallow media news talking about "Share" that only talks about the current sales is taken as some sort of relevant long term value.
It's like saying Las Vegas is cold because you took the temperature one day in January. Worse you took that temperature in a freezer, rather than out in the open air. (Eg you're not even measuring the same thing the conclusion is about.)
- dudurocha 14y agoExacly. A much better way to collect this kind of data is too see the usage of mobile browsers. If you could get this data from de 100 most visited websites, and make a medium, maybe you could get a better 'market share' number.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoEven more precisely would be to collect IMEI numbers from mobile operators. In the absence of that I've seen some guerilla work where people drive around 'fake' 3G cell sites which slurps IMEI's from phones that ping them. Totally illegal of course but if you read the article on how an RPi was turned into a cell site [1] you can get an idea of how its done. Since you're not actually taking calls you don't raise the suspicions of users. [1] http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/how-pa-shrunk-30-ft-mobile-phone-basestation-into-3in-computer/ http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/how-pa-shrunk-30-ft-m...
- rednukleus 14y agoThe share of phones sold in the quarter is of most interest to investors. The share of installed base is more interesting to developers. One major difference between the two that is often overlooked is that if someone upgrades their old phone and stops using the old one, it counts toward the former, but not toward the latter. Developers only really care about new users, and users who are switching platforms.
- cremnob 14y agoI'd like to know from some developers if their apps are monetizing better on Android with the larger install base than it is on iOS.
- rednukleus 14y agoFrom what I've heard it's about even now, because iOS users tend to buy a larger number of apps at a higher average cost.
- mtgx 14y agoBut probably not for long, since Android is growing at 5x the pace of the iPhone globally, and about 3x the pace of iOS in total.
- pyre 14y agoGlobal growth probably doesn't matter as much if your app isn't hasn't been localized to all of those places. For example, growth of Android in a country where most people don't speak English isn't going to do much for an app written for an English audience.
- fbuilesv 14y agoIf Android's growth is X times the iPhone's growth, and Android had a bigger "market share" a year ago (according to the article's chart), shouldn't iPhone's share be lower than Android's?
- 14y ago
- runaway 14y agoYou say this as if the press is using the term in a misleading or special way, but in business the term "market share" has always meant percentage of volume for a given time period, not including product still being used. People might use a term like "usage share" for that, being something completely different.
- dannyr 14y agoSo what if Blackberry launches on Feb 1 where it sold more than the IPhone 5 that day? Would you say that the Blackberry has the biggest market share?
- runaway 14y agoNot generally, because few would define a market in terms of a single day since it's not very useful. Usually a period of one year is assumed but can commonly be a quarter or a month. But technically, if you defined it that way, sure it had the biggest market share for that day.
- clarky07 14y agoThat seems unlikely :-) But sure, for that day. Nobody measures market share for a day though, as it's not a useful metric.
- diminish 14y agowhat I find abyssmal is this story getting on the front page on HN and venturebeat, when it is already few weeks old.
- jasonlingx 14y agoThis report is not measuring new unit sales. "Kantar’s panel data is generated by more than 260,000 consumer research interviews on a year basis in the U.S. alone"
- dannyr 14y agoIf that's the case, that's a big discrepancy from Comscore which pegs IPhone at 35%. http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market-share-35-percent/ http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market-share...