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If Apple remains tied to AT&T, then Android might very well become the dominant platform by gobbling up marketshare from WinMo, Symbian, and BlackBerry. Androi

If Apple remains tied to AT&T, then Android might very well become the dominant platform by gobbling up marketshare from WinMo, Symbian, and BlackBerry. Android will probably also gain share by moving down-market into "feature phones". As successful as the iPhone is, it's still a miniscule fraction of overall phone sales. This battle feels hauntingly familiar. Back in the 1980s, Apple made a boatload of money by pushing an elegant, easy-to-use 'sealed box' platform. They eventually got clobbered by cheaper hardware running more open software. If Apple isn't careful, that's going to play out all over again.

unalone 17y ago
It's not a competition. The iPhone offers things Android does not and can not offer. It will always have a market. Meanwhile, Android is appearing on dozens of phones, none of which individually will rival the iPhone. They both have a spot in the market. This isn't the same as the PC market was back then. Apple's in a much more dominant position, it's making more money than any of its competitors, it's got the world's most renowned design team, it's the most trusted brand on the planet in key demographics as of 2009. It's got no competition in its particular field, which isn't necessarily that of "phone".
- megaduck 17y ago
  I'm sorry, but you just described Apple in 1985. Thanks to the Mac and the Apple II, they were making money hand-over-fist. They also had the best designers, and were an incredibly trusted brand with both professionals and the education market. To top it all off, they had a giant technology lead over any of their competitors (except Commodore). The Mac was considered far more than a "computer" at the time. The IBM PC never matched the Macintosh for sales. However, the combined fleet of clones reached such a high volume that the PC clone market became the primary target for developers. Android has similar potential. You're probably right that the iPhone will stick around indefinitely. The Macintosh, in a similar position, has increased its total unit sales, year over year, every year since the initial release. However, it would be hard to argue that Apple was competitive during the 1990s for mindshare or developers. The real risk to Apple is not that they'll crash and burn and go out of business. The risk is that they'll lose their current lead in developer mindshare, and that's a real risk indeed. *For historical marketshare context, check out http://www.jeremyreimer.com/total_share.html http://www.jeremyreimer.com/total_share.html .
  - demallien 17y ago
    Hmmm, there are several very significant differences between the two situations though: - open hardware was critical to the success of the PC platform, allowing functionality such as ethernet, better video, changing disk drive configurations etc. In the mobile phone world, the hardware is locked down for all players. - computer interface devices (screens, keyboards, mice, touchpads) have all been designed to optimise for ease of use. In the case of mobile phones, the interface devices have been optimised for small size. Concretely this means that both input and output are difficult - writing useable software that runs on two screens with different aspect ratios is a momentous task on a mobile phone, having to allow for the existance or not of a physical keyboard or multitouch screen, same thing. What this means is that a diffuse hardware platform, such as Android is offering, is going to be very difficult to develop high quality apps on. Unless hardware manufacturers can agree on a common platform, this problem is only going to increase. Of course, such a common hardware platform doesn't seem terribly likely to me, as the example of the PC industry shows that this approach quickly reduces manufacturers to commodity providers, with razor thin margins. I suspect that the Samsungs and Motarolas of the world are in no hurry to go there.. - Apple never had the dominance in the computer market that they currently have in the smartphone market - they never got over about 14% of the market with the Mac (although if it continues it's current trajectory, we may see this level beaten in the not too distant future). In the smartphone market however, they are well above this level of marketshare already, and still rising. If you add in iPod Touch sales, the platform is massacring everybody out there. - At the time when Apple lost market share, home computers were only a small part of the market compared to office computers. Purchasing departments have a strong preference for cheap over quality, provided that a minimum level has been achieved. Consumers are far more discerning. In the mobile world, personal sales are more important than business sales, or to say it another way, you are more likely to have a personal mobile phone than a work phone. All of this acts to reduce one avenue of attack on the iPhone platform - you probably aren't going to be able to win just by doing things cheaper - you're going to have to do things better too. - phones are far more mission-critical than PCs. If your computer breaks/starts functioning weirdly, you aren't too badly affected. If your phone goes down these days, it's a disaster. There is going to be a premium on reliability, and it remains to be seen as to whether the Android platform can deliver that reliability when there are numerous hardware manufacturers, and a large uncontrolled application base. There are other differences, but I think these are the important ones. Globally I find these differences big enough that I'm dubious as to the validity of using the PC experience as a guide to the future of the smartphone market.
- andrew1 17y ago
  Just out of interest, what things does the iPhone offer that an Android phone could never do?
  - vetinari 17y ago
    Monoculture, Apple branding and Apple control. I'm not that these things missing on Android are bad thing, though.
  - unalone 17y ago
    The iPhone's got Apple's ridiculous attention to detail. It does small things right that are thoughtful beyond any level of attention Google can afford Android, not just because Google's never been capable of matching Apple in design quality but because Apple, unlike Google, controls their hardware. What that means is that Apple's allowed to get away with certain things. They can create programs reliant on certain hardware features in the iPhone because they know it'll be there on every phone. They can rely on a high-quality multitouch screen, a certain virtual keyboard set-up that works very well, and a particular screen size that never changes. What that means is developers don't have to hedge bets. They can go all-out with their designs, knowing that what they see designing is going to be what every iPhone user gets. They can create a design perfectly suited to the iPhone's dimensions and processes, ignoring any possibility that that screen size will be any different or that the phone's functionality will be lacking certain features or a certain high quality. So you have a lot of apps that blow Android applications away, because the developers are so free to be wild. The one that I think about the most is Weightbot, which has a custom UI that mimics a hard steel door, has a single narrow band that scrolls through days/weight, and which, when rotated, "opens" the door at its seams to reveal what's behind it. That's a design that requires the iPhone, because you'd have to be insane to make a narrow band that requires ultrafluid touch controls on an OS where you don't know how good the touch controls on every phone will be. You couldn't possibly design the app to fit the screen so well, to use the law of thirds like it does to position every control pixel-perfect, to have a major feature rely on tilt-control, or even to have that sliding-out graphic, which takes a knowledge of how it will look on the screen. You could make an application similar to Weightbot on Android. It wouldn't work as well, it wouldn't look as good, and it would have to compromise its elegance to make sure it worked correctly across all phones. You'd spend a lot more time hunting for bugs. You wouldn't have access to the gorgeous interface design that Apple gives developers out-of-the-box to make apps look iPhone-y. You miss out on a lot of elegance, in other words, because unlike iPhone, Android is not designed to be an elegant product.

unalone 17y ago

It's not a competition. The iPhone offers things Android does not and can not offer. It will always have a market. Meanwhile, Android is appearing on dozens of phones, none of which individually will rival the iPhone. They both have a spot in the market. This isn't the same as the PC market was back then. Apple's in a much more dominant position, it's making more money than any of its competitors, it's got the world's most renowned design team, it's the most trusted brand on the planet in key demographics as of 2009. It's got no competition in its particular field, which isn't necessarily that of "phone".

megaduck 17y ago
I'm sorry, but you just described Apple in 1985. Thanks to the Mac and the Apple II, they were making money hand-over-fist. They also had the best designers, and were an incredibly trusted brand with both professionals and the education market. To top it all off, they had a giant technology lead over any of their competitors (except Commodore). The Mac was considered far more than a "computer" at the time. The IBM PC never matched the Macintosh for sales. However, the combined fleet of clones reached such a high volume that the PC clone market became the primary target for developers. Android has similar potential. You're probably right that the iPhone will stick around indefinitely. The Macintosh, in a similar position, has increased its total unit sales, year over year, every year since the initial release. However, it would be hard to argue that Apple was competitive during the 1990s for mindshare or developers. The real risk to Apple is not that they'll crash and burn and go out of business. The risk is that they'll lose their current lead in developer mindshare, and that's a real risk indeed. *For historical marketshare context, check out http://www.jeremyreimer.com/total_share.html http://www.jeremyreimer.com/total_share.html .
- demallien 17y ago
  Hmmm, there are several very significant differences between the two situations though: - open hardware was critical to the success of the PC platform, allowing functionality such as ethernet, better video, changing disk drive configurations etc. In the mobile phone world, the hardware is locked down for all players. - computer interface devices (screens, keyboards, mice, touchpads) have all been designed to optimise for ease of use. In the case of mobile phones, the interface devices have been optimised for small size. Concretely this means that both input and output are difficult - writing useable software that runs on two screens with different aspect ratios is a momentous task on a mobile phone, having to allow for the existance or not of a physical keyboard or multitouch screen, same thing. What this means is that a diffuse hardware platform, such as Android is offering, is going to be very difficult to develop high quality apps on. Unless hardware manufacturers can agree on a common platform, this problem is only going to increase. Of course, such a common hardware platform doesn't seem terribly likely to me, as the example of the PC industry shows that this approach quickly reduces manufacturers to commodity providers, with razor thin margins. I suspect that the Samsungs and Motarolas of the world are in no hurry to go there.. - Apple never had the dominance in the computer market that they currently have in the smartphone market - they never got over about 14% of the market with the Mac (although if it continues it's current trajectory, we may see this level beaten in the not too distant future). In the smartphone market however, they are well above this level of marketshare already, and still rising. If you add in iPod Touch sales, the platform is massacring everybody out there. - At the time when Apple lost market share, home computers were only a small part of the market compared to office computers. Purchasing departments have a strong preference for cheap over quality, provided that a minimum level has been achieved. Consumers are far more discerning. In the mobile world, personal sales are more important than business sales, or to say it another way, you are more likely to have a personal mobile phone than a work phone. All of this acts to reduce one avenue of attack on the iPhone platform - you probably aren't going to be able to win just by doing things cheaper - you're going to have to do things better too. - phones are far more mission-critical than PCs. If your computer breaks/starts functioning weirdly, you aren't too badly affected. If your phone goes down these days, it's a disaster. There is going to be a premium on reliability, and it remains to be seen as to whether the Android platform can deliver that reliability when there are numerous hardware manufacturers, and a large uncontrolled application base. There are other differences, but I think these are the important ones. Globally I find these differences big enough that I'm dubious as to the validity of using the PC experience as a guide to the future of the smartphone market.
andrew1 17y ago
Just out of interest, what things does the iPhone offer that an Android phone could never do?
- vetinari 17y ago
  Monoculture, Apple branding and Apple control. I'm not that these things missing on Android are bad thing, though.
- unalone 17y ago
  The iPhone's got Apple's ridiculous attention to detail. It does small things right that are thoughtful beyond any level of attention Google can afford Android, not just because Google's never been capable of matching Apple in design quality but because Apple, unlike Google, controls their hardware. What that means is that Apple's allowed to get away with certain things. They can create programs reliant on certain hardware features in the iPhone because they know it'll be there on every phone. They can rely on a high-quality multitouch screen, a certain virtual keyboard set-up that works very well, and a particular screen size that never changes. What that means is developers don't have to hedge bets. They can go all-out with their designs, knowing that what they see designing is going to be what every iPhone user gets. They can create a design perfectly suited to the iPhone's dimensions and processes, ignoring any possibility that that screen size will be any different or that the phone's functionality will be lacking certain features or a certain high quality. So you have a lot of apps that blow Android applications away, because the developers are so free to be wild. The one that I think about the most is Weightbot, which has a custom UI that mimics a hard steel door, has a single narrow band that scrolls through days/weight, and which, when rotated, "opens" the door at its seams to reveal what's behind it. That's a design that requires the iPhone, because you'd have to be insane to make a narrow band that requires ultrafluid touch controls on an OS where you don't know how good the touch controls on every phone will be. You couldn't possibly design the app to fit the screen so well, to use the law of thirds like it does to position every control pixel-perfect, to have a major feature rely on tilt-control, or even to have that sliding-out graphic, which takes a knowledge of how it will look on the screen. You could make an application similar to Weightbot on Android. It wouldn't work as well, it wouldn't look as good, and it would have to compromise its elegance to make sure it worked correctly across all phones. You'd spend a lot more time hunting for bugs. You wouldn't have access to the gorgeous interface design that Apple gives developers out-of-the-box to make apps look iPhone-y. You miss out on a lot of elegance, in other words, because unlike iPhone, Android is not designed to be an elegant product.