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Android to Surpass iPhone in Market Share by 2012?
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Thank you for your reasonable post.
If you make more models of something, you will most certainly have more market share.
Just like Mac OS X would gain market share if you could install it on any PC.
I have no clue if this is true, BUT, this is what Apple needs to deal with. Cell phones are cut-throat, and certain areas demand certain features. If you are going to compete globally and long term, you need to be ready to play ball.
Which means, looking at what is coming from your competitors and matching them with features, not relying on the user experience. And a year is huge in phone life cycle.
Otherwise, give up on the PHONE and concentrate on the Touch... let the phone follow it. A Touch with a phone if you want it.
I don't think we are going to see a drop in data charges anywhere though.... even if it comes to Verizon in the US. Everyone charges mostly the same thing...
And of those 85k apps how many of them are not crap...
I think saying 1k is being very generous. Most of the apps are pretty crappy and useless.
And yes I am calling what most of the devs are turing out crap.
I read reports that over 60% of all apps turn into apple are getting rejected with little help on why. Apple closes overly closes system will be its downfall in the end.
A lot of the best apps for the iPhone out there are currently only available for Jail broken phones only. That should tell you something. A lot of the best apps and devs are saying "I am done with apple" and going to make apps Jail broken only.
Go look at the jail broken app store. Some great stuff is in there. The approval process to get in that store is a matter of turning your app in and it is put up.
Ridiculous? The majority of people with developer/programming skills are more familiar with Windows or Linux than Mac OS. The need of first buying a Mac and then learning how to use it, the SDK and Objective-C will stop too many great developers from giving it a try. I suppose Apple could solve this by allowing Mac OS to run on a virtual machine, e.g. VirtualBox, including the SDK. But they don't.
All I have to say is EAT IT MICROSOFT! Windows Mobile SUCKS lol
I love seeing the way things are going for Microsoft. It is like watching a giant passing out about to SLAM and hit the ground collapsed. Always too little too late!
I hope my sarcasm meter is broken.
If it is not, comments like this are exactly what is wrong with this forum.
What does Microsoft has to do with topic?
And the same can be said vice versa. Anyone that wants to program for Windows will need to use .Net and a Windows Box. What is this "because I'm a PC I will complain I can't dev for iPhone" crap?
I'm not starting a PC vs MAC war I'm just stating that it's fairly obvious that 99% of the time you will have to be developing on the operating system that you're developing for. iPhone OS is a limited version of Mac OS X and it's really no surprise it requires you to use XCode which is Mac Only.
Oh and you CAN dev iPhone apps on windows. If you really REALLY want to you can set up all the compiler settings and command line tools to do it. It's just not worth the time.
agree.
i have had an iphone since Nov 07 and if Android were to find a better hardware device, even i might consider a switch.
although the ability for another manufacturer to make hardware better than the iphone and actually work on improving development over time is extremely unlikely.
1. The blog post you linked is referring to the failure to license the Mac OS in the 80s. I am referring to now, hence why I said Mac OS X. You honestly think if there were more devices capable of running OS X, specifically cheaper devices, that the market share would not be greater? Especially since hardware is now generic, for the most part?
2. That blog post disagrees with the theory that the Mac could have had a Windows style monopoly if they licensed their OS back in the 80s (or platform since hardware was dramatically different back then). I never said they would have dominant market share if you could install Mac OS X on any computer now, just that the market share would be higher. The 5 year old link you provided is not relevant at all to my comment.
3. That blog post is also conjecture, because as the very article you posted states: "It’s conjecture, and barring a time machine, it can never be proven."
I don't disagree with your general point about the app store, but Cydia has plenty of crap apps as well. One only needs to wade through all the calculator skins, winterboard themes, and soundboards to know this.
Yes, there are some great apps for jailbroken iPhones, but it is disingenuous to imply that Cydia doesn't have many of the same problems as the app store. But an open store is going to get you a lot of junk, so you have to take the good with the bad.
Who cares what you think? You will find high quality apps for pretty much anything you can think of in the App Store. You won't find quality apps for everything in Google's, Microsoft's, RIMM's, Nokia's etc App store. That's the only thing that counts.
And your "argument" that it is oh-so-impossible to get iPhone Apps approved is ridiculed by the sheer number of Apps and the fact that the number is constantly growing.
Source please.
Utter nonsense. Name "a lot" please!
You can't really make decent money with jailbroken apps. Tell me how on earth "a lot of the best" would ONLY be available outside the App store?
How many iPhones with OS >=2.0 are jailbroken in the first place?
Yeah it tells us that you're making stuff up and have a very warped idea of the facts.
i agree with you but i think that he was referring to the fact that if android surpasses the iphone, then MS's windows mobile OS will fall even further back in the mobile operating system rankings.
still, i find it annoying when people blindly bash MS or Apple just because others are doing it. MS does make some good products, but i prefer (and can afford) apple when it comes to computing and mobile products. i do however enjoy the MS Xbox 360 product and will purchase the upcoming Natal technology.
And how is this relevant? If Adobe makes it possible to use the entire range of the iPhone's hardware it makes no difference.
-> New development platform, available for other OSs
Exactly what you wanted, right?
Oh the whining will go on I suppose...
Have you actually READ the link you posted?
Times have changed a bit since then, you know ...
Due to Apple's grown popularity (if not ubiquity) it can be safely assumed that quite a few more people would install Mac OS if it were officially supported on non-Mac hardware. A highly significant number of people? Good question. To Apple's benefit? Probably not.
We currently have Donut. Eclair is coming, followed by many others. I will always take a nice pastry over an apple any day of the week.
I will not be surprised. This is similar to what happened to Apple and PC makers back in the days. Just the sheer volume of PC producers finally lifted Windows above OS X. I believe similar trend will follow on for mobile market. More and more phone makers will adopt Android or Windows Mobile and overtake Iphone OS.
For those who like the iPhone, this works in our favor. With iPhone OS, there's only one hardware platform developers have to deal with. All they need to do for QC is make sure their apps work on the latest OS rev.
Since Android is a platform running on multiple handsets, devs SHOULD test their apps on multiple phones. Most won't because they don't have the resources to get their hands on every single phone out there. So software that runs fine on one phone won't run on others and might even brick them because of different hw configurations. It happened with Windows Mobile.
I agree with the app approval being slow but I don't think people appreciate how streamlined the process of putting a 3rd party app on your iphone is. It's rare that an app will make your OS unstable, brick your phone, and make you restore factory settings just to get it running again.
Far as jailbreaking, to put it in perspective, look how bad Verizon cripples ALL their phones on release. Yea I have to hack the iphone to install maybe 5 choice apps I can't get otherwise, but at least my phone didn't have its GPS and bluetooth disabled, RAM cut in half, wi-fi disabled so I'd have to use 3g even though I'm at home, etc
True it has its own list of crap apps but it is much more open. Apple current system is closed. We have rejection with no reasoning why it was rejected and on top of that 84k+ apps on the apps store are crap.
So both apple system and Jail break system are full of same percentage of crap but at least there is a better chance of finding great apps in the Jail broken world because you have both the apple side and the open side to work with.
And how does carrier matter at all in your argument. Sorry but that entire augment there has no meaning in this debate.
Yes, I have. Several times. Things have changed, but the base premise of the article still applies - Microsoft Got Lucky - there is no way to suggest that Apple can pull that off in this day in age when the world depends too much on Microsoft. The article deals with past actions affecting the present. Its very relevant. Its point is that MS got successful because of how it parlayed successes over time, not because it embraced an "open strategy". They did that years ago. Read the whole thing. Grueber makes a point that still applies today because marketshare in the OS world has changed very little.
Popularity is irrelevant. Going up against Microsoft is suicide. Period. Their market share is too large and Apple's success is too dependent on hardware sales. Microsoft's objective is to rule the roost. They did that way back in the early 90's and they are too well entrenched to be taken out directly. They are just too big. You are simply conjecturing without any basis in reality. Apple tried the cloning market and it failed because people by in large do not want to undertake the massive pains to go to a completely different platform without somewhat of a safety platform. People want Windows because the stuff they run on depend on it. Thant and competing with Microsoft directly is a folly - going up against MS is going to be very bloody. You have better luck elephant hunting with a pea shooter.
Take a look at any other market that involves hardware and software. The article makes a good point about video games. They are totally incompatible with each other and are very closed systems. They remain successful because they can take one success and transition it to another - like the Mario franchise. MS did the same thing with computers years ago (with the objective of being really lucky thanks to boneheaded decisions by IBM). Apple did not. Of course Apple's objectives were far different back then, but Apple operates differently than MS does.
While Apple could get a few more customers, it just wouldn't last. There is no reason to think that it would or that they could sustain it. Its about making a good choice.
You cannot say that Apple's market strategy would gain them more money from copying MS business strategy, you just can't because they aren't the same. You cannot make a flawed assumption and think that Microsoft got achieved success by doing things the way the market was meant to be. They didn't. Microsoft got real lucky and rode on the coat tails of IBM business mentality and got massive market share because of that - way back in the 80's. That's just how things ended up. Doesn't mean that it works that way all the time and there is no reason to suggest that Apple is gonna want to chance it.
At this point in the game Microsoft has won - Jobs has admitted that years ago. Microsoft makes billions from the business market that by in large has no interest in making a risky and expensive change that going to Mac entails. Microsoft provides a very prediction, safe route that has massive industry support. Apple would have needed this kind of success really early on - but back in that day, they were adopting practices that were fundamentally different.
It doesn't matter that Apple's system is better - the lions share of the market made their choice years ago and that market doesn't tolerate direct competition. In Microsoft's world - they are the only game in town. And I say that the reason is that Apple is still around because they don't encroach into Microsoft's big markets. They don't license their software out to Microsoft's partners, they don't sell office software to PC's. There is a reason - Microsoft is far too big.
The cell phone market is so sporadic its hard to predict numbers for 1 year in the future, let alone 2 years.
So why hasn't Windows Mobile ever been really successful? I think we can rule them out. Like most MS products, they don't dominate the market enough to succeed. Cellular phones are very saturated market wise.
Even if it does surpass in the number of users, since when has Apple been solely concerned about numbers? Quality of design really does seem to be an obsession with Apple. When the iPhone was first released, didn't Jobs state that he would be happy with 1% of the cell phone market? He's already surpassed that. Just as with their computers, Apple has never positioned itself as a mass market brand for everybody. They have opened the floodgates on the smart phone market, but I don't think they ever intended to dominate it. They simply want to provide the best experience, and that in turn brings them discriminating customers.
For one, Objective-C is really a pretty elegant language once you learn it, and if you really care you can write mostly in C/C++ with a few Objective-C hooks.
As for the sdk, That will NEVER happen. Maybe for a hobbyist having to buy a mac may be a (very) slight issue, but if you can't afford $500 for a new mac-mini than you really aren't serious about developing an app are you? Why should Apple be serious about attracting you as a developer?
I remember reading a few weeks ago that apple has 125,000 developers signed up - finding eager devs willing to learn the platform and language is not a problem.
Look, I run an iPhone development business with 8 full time employees. A single iPhone game can cost us upwards of 6 figures (or more) to develop. What's a single one time cost of a few thousand in hardware?
Brian Howard
InMotion Software