Posted on 06/06/2011 12:35:21 PM PDT by ctdonath2
Apple introduced OS X Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud today. Lots of articles at the link and elsewhere.
Which one is killing Apple in smartphone sales?
Of course it's faster. The Samsung is only a few months old, while the iPhone 4 is just short of a year old. At various times some high-end phones will be faster than others due to the staggering of release cycles. Expect the iPhone 5's CPU to maybe be a touch slower (likely lower clock, but likely more memory bandwidth), but the GPU will be much more powerful than the Samsung's. And then the Nvidia Kal-El based phones will come out by early next year, leapfrogging Apple. And so on, and so on.
Well at least someone realizes that’s the case. It’s the same with O/S’s. Yet for some reason it doesn’t seem to matter that iOS and the iPhone had a headstart on Android and Android powered phones.
Maybe, as you said, if he was only having to market a handful of products, he’d could have afford to have a narrow focus like Jobs does. Instead, he’s busy running a company with 275k employees compared to one that has less than 50k.
So if I have an android phone, an ipad and a windows comp than amazon wins handsdown?
So if I have an android phone, an ipad and a windows comp than amazon wins handsdown?
“Really? WHat manufacturers would that be? The highest share of any Android phone maker is 12% for HTC, vs. 27% for Apple. Samsung rings in at 5%”
Ummm, we’ve been talking about this chart.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/06/hgfjhg.jpg
Do try and keep up.
Apple's iCloud will also sync music and photos to your Windows computer.
For hardware, the iPhone was definitely ahead of Android phones, but it was not the first candybar touch-screen phone. That distinction goes to the LG Prada. Also, this was Apple's first phone, vs. some well-established players in the phone industry. For example, some early HTC Android phones were closely related to their Windows Mobile phones, so their hardware development curve wasn't as steep.
I'm not too sure which OS was first. Android was started in 2003 with research into phone interfaces, purchased by Google and started on development to be a full phone OS in 2005, and released in 2008. It's a guess as to when iOS was started. Apple likely didn't start working directly on it until after the 2005 Motorola ROKR fiasco told them they needed to rethink how to do a phone. However, there is good evidence that Apple was researching touch tablets earlier than that, and much of that effort would have gone into the iPhone. End guess: They're probably about the same age.
One reason Apple was able to put out a high-quality OS in two years was that they pulled developers working on OS X to work on it, delaying Leopard by several months. They also held off a third-party developer API for another year. In contrast, Android 1.0 did have the Market when it came out, but overall the OS was pretty rough, even a year later. I had an Android 1.6 (released 2009) phone and played with a friend's original iPhone (updated to 2008). The iPhone easily won all around, except that my phone had 3G.
And now allow me to continue my gripe about support. His iPhone maintained software support until 2010. Three years after introduction of the model it could still officially get the latest OS. My phone got one update six months after it was released (to 2.1), then nothing. Rooted 2.2 and 2.3 will work on the phone, but they just don't feel like rolling out a supported release.
I agree with you that manufacturer’s O/S support has been lacking. Some are better than others and I think you'll see it only get better because now people have many different options for high end android phones that they'll move to the ones with the most support.
Manufacturer O/S support to me is really meaningless anyway. Even after my carrier updated to 2.2, I was still running a custom 2.2 ROM that was better than stock anyway. I've now been running 2.3 for a couple months and just like 2.2, I don't see the carrier's official 2.3 being anywhere near as good as the custom ROM I'm running now. Nearly all the carrier ROM’s are just the basic Android with their own UI and bloatware added to it anyway.
Perhaps you should look at THIS chart instead:
This chart is a bit dated, representing the last quarter of 2010... but the change is a reduction in the size of RIM, Windows, and Nokia and an increase in both Apple and Android.
I'm curious why you root for foreign companies to keep the profits so strongly over an American company...
Your chart is misused. The top one refers to smartphones by OS provider. In this chart, Apple and RIM's numbers reflect hardware sold only by them. Google's 31% reflects hardware sold by a number of different manufacturers. Not one of those individually (Samsung, HTC, etc.) is anywhere close to the amount of hardware sold by either Apple or RIM.
The bottom one refers to total phone sales (assuming 1 subscriber = 1 phone sale) regardless whether they're smart or dumb, what OS they run, whether they're $300 smart phones or the ones that come free with a contract or cost $14.95 prepaid. These dumb phones make up the majority of phones sold. Do the numbers, if Apple is 7% of all and 24.7% of smartphones, then dumb phones are almost three quarters of the market. Almost all of Samsung sales are in the low-margin dumb phone market, so they dominate this chart. Apple and RIM actually sell enough smartphones to be included in this chart. HTC, the #1 Android and Windows Phone 7 manufacturer, doesn't even show.
Like most large conglomerates, Samsung is heavily diversified, each division having its own focus. I highly doubt the head of the electronics division has to worry about products from the heavy industry division.
I’ve been thinking of rooting. Which custom ROM do you suggest?
“I’m curious why you root for foreign companies to keep the profits so strongly over an American company...”
Remind me where Apple products are made again?
Since you seem to believe that Android has stalled care to make a prediction on next quarter’s data? Will Android’s market share go up or down? And considering the new phones that have been released over the last couple months and the one’s soon to be, what do you think that’s going to do the the numbers?
“I’ve been thinking of rooting. Which custom ROM do you suggest?”
What handset do you have? Some devs only have their ROMS for certain phones.
Do you see what you are writing? It's Geek speak.
The average phone user does NOT want to worry about what version ROM he needs to install in his phone. . . compared to what version ROM the manufacturer shipped with his phone. . . to get functionality. The average user wants it to just work... as advertised... to update, as advertised... and to forget it, other than when he wants it to work and update, and otherwise not get in the way as it does it.
What you wrote reminds me of the heady days of playing with my Commodore and Amiga computers and how much fun it was to trick them out with new add-ons to the OS and how exciting each incremental upgrade and tweak to hardware and OS speed made things different... and how it was necessary to be a member of the local Amiga Users' Group to even make some of the hardware and software work together. It was no different for the Atari users, the DOS users, and later the Windows users... there were user groups to support them. And some of us made lots of money supporting all of the users who did not have the time to join the groups and learn how to do it themselves.
It was a fun time... but that was when computing was a hobby... and I have long grown out of that and have a lot better things to do with my time than tweak a device to get it to work right or spend hours trying to figure out what I need to get it to do what I want or look the way I want.
I am starting to get calls from people with Android phones asking "How do I get my phone to save changes to my contact lists?!" or "I put in a new name in my contacts, and now it's GONE! What happened to it?" and "Where is the flippin' setting for ______?" I can't help them because I don't have an Android phone and can't step them through the process. . . and the one's I've used are NOT intuitive like an iPhone.
One acquaintance of mine, who had her iPhone stolen, who was no where near the end of her contract, got a cheap Android as a replacement: she is continually swearing at the thing because it is NOT easy to use, unlike what the AT&T salesperson told her—"It's just as good, if not better than your iPhone!"—and does a lot less than what she was used to, with an inconsistent user interface. They are, at best, a make do; a poor substitute for the better choice. She's counting the days until her contract is up and can go back to an iPhone.
“Do you see what you are writing? It’s Geek speak.”
LOL, you need an IQ slightly higher than a rock to figure out how to flash a custom ROM.
If that’s too much for you, you’re exactly who Steve Jobs is looking to get money from.
Not being able to figure out Android is out of pure stupidity, laziness, or a little bit of both.
Devs make custom ROMS to INCREASE the functionality of their phones. You get increased functionality when Steve Jobs says you do. Enjoy your closed ecosystem.
Just proved my point. Flashing custom ROMs is exactly what is the essences of geekiness.
You just proved my point. Calling it “geeky” means that one is either too lazy or too dumb to figure it out. But thus is our society these days...would rather have everything given to us than try to figure out how to improve on something and make it better. You all fit quite nicely into our little nanny state.
“What? You mean you actually have to put some brain activity into it? It’s not for me then. I like my life simple and boring because that’s what Steve Jobs tells me I should like.” Signed the typical iFan.
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