Quote: Original post by Valderman
Saying that Android faces the same problem as Linux is misguided. It was two years late to the party, yet has already overtaken Apple's market share

The majority of that market obviously belonging to RIM, the undisputed business and enterprise platform, something neither iOS or Android really "get".

And here is why Android's actual share is still incredibly weak. Due to its openness and fragmentation, it's highly difficult to administrate in corporate setting. And as far as monetization goes - Apple has all the paying customers, who are actually willing to spend money (yea, it's lame source, but great example of consumer priorities and supply/demand).

As an example of market share vs. value - what does AOL do these days ($2.4 billion)? What does Yahoo do ($21 billion)?

Quote: Original post by Antheus
And here is why Android's actual share is still incredibly weak. Due to its openness and fragmentation, it's highly difficult to administrate in corporate setting. And as far as monetization goes - Apple has all the paying customers, who are actually willing to spend money (yea, it's lame source, but great example of consumer priorities and supply/demand).

That would be quite relevant, but it isn't. Android is about giving people a vehicle to access Google's main business: advertising and cloud services. It's pretty much like MS and Sony selling consoles at a loss or IKEA chartering their own free bus line for shoppers; a way to get the customers to where they can spend their money. For Apple and RIM, it's different. Their business models are all about driving that bus.

We appear to have strayed from a discussion of corporate philosophies into consumer bickering over which product line we prefer. Which is boring.

See ya later.

Quote: Original post by Valderman

Quote: Thing is, Joe Public does not care about any of this.

No, but he will care about his applications being buggier and more expensive than necessary. Or, well, he would if he could make the comparison, which he can't since the alternative will never be available on the iPhone.

Either way, since the user doesn't care about how his application was written, you can't exactly claim that these arbitrary restrictions benefit users. On the contrary, the way they hamper cross platform development, and development in general, I'd argue they're actually harmful in the long run.

I never said it was beneficial to users. Simply that, right or wrong, users don't care.

Quote: Original post by Valderman
...lots of iPhone hate....

You're getting away from the point. I conceded earlier that iPhone is not without it's faults. I could argue your individual points, but I don't want to hijack the thread.

The point I was making is that the iPhone is the benchmark device in this area. As Antheus pointed out, they are the ones making money. If I was going to write software for the mobile market, it'd be for iOS, because iOS customers are spending money.

Business issues dominate technical issues

Quote: Original post by ChaosEngine
You're getting away from the point. I conceded earlier that iPhone is not without it's faults. I could argue your individual points, but I don't want to hijack the thread.

The point I was making is that the iPhone is the benchmark device in this area. As Antheus pointed out, they are the ones making money. If I was going to write software for the mobile market, it'd be for iOS, because iOS customers are spending money.

Business issues dominate technical issues

Side point, does anyone have any recent Android Marketplace sales data. I googled around and most of what I'm seeing was from the early days of the Android Marketplace. Curious to know if it's trending better or staying about the same.

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care

Side point, does anyone have any recent Android Marketplace sales data. I googled around and most of what I'm seeing was from the early days of the Android Marketplace. Curious to know if it's trending better or staying about the same.

Marketplace isn't really relevant for Apple anymore, not in this sense.

Apple is betting on iOS. Being in minority share position is allowing them to do what Microsoft got bombed by anti-monopoly lawsuit for.

----

Imagine that in 5 years, desktops could be seen as quaint as mainframes. Imagine that your phone has HDMI out and your keyboard and mouse are plugged into monitor. Take your phone, plug it the HDMI cable, and you have your desktop. This phone has quad CPU, 2GB RAM, supports 1080 resolution, is always on internet, and it has almost identical user experience as OSX. Bulk of your data is in the cloud, the remaining 256GB are on the phone.

Scary?

It's doable today, it just requires 3 cables instead of one.

That is what iOS is about. And all of that is provided within a walled garden, tightly controlled by Apple.

There is also no need for Google anymore. Apple will take the entire internet, and put it on a floppy (aka, shipping container). Then they'll filter out all unacceptable content, malware, spam pages, compile wikipedia, imdb and a few other reference sites into convenient apps. The rest of internet will be Facebook and Twitter apps, perhaps youtube and vimeo and such. URL? As quaint and unknown as command line today for non-developers.

This is why Apple doesn't want another platform in their platform. iOS is aiming to become the one stack which provides everything that majority of users will ever need.

As for niche applications (high-end game consoles, etc....), Apple could roll out one of their own, or let that market pass. TV? Not really relevant, there's iTunes, and iPhone connects to TV set anyway. And speakers.

And media industry will come crawling to this fully DRMed platform, asking to be let in. No more torrents (since all TCP connections are filtered). No more news stealing, since there is no URL anymore - news comes from New York Times Application.

Will the market accept it? Right now, iPhone aims at rich markets, so the full set of features simply isn't available beyond a handful of countries, at least not in their full glory (all features are available in US, perhaps Canada only anyway). The entire platform is also too expensive for most markets.

But this is the future. And the reason Google is failing at this is their openness. It causes fragmentation, lack of brand identity, along with their relentless dependence on the cloud (very few people have 10MBit 100% wireless, low latency connectivity 24/7, and for most it's prohibitively expensive). Google has no business model for their mobile services, since all of their revenue comes from web advertising (vs. 40% of Apple's revenue from iPhone alone). They are doing the only thing they always do - trying to commoditize mobile market (by funding it via web revenue) - but the market doesn't care.

---
The idea is genuinely cool, having something that fits into pocket replace that 30kilo noisy box, always on, always with you, doubling as credit card, TV, VCR, stereo, phone, videophone, game console, ..... It's perfectly doable today (minus high-end gaming and some of CAD).

So rather than looking at AppStores, the important choices in the future will be which walled garden will be your primary window to the world.

There will still be PCs, but they will be used for boring stuff at work. And almost all of non-real-time tasks will be running in the cloud anyway.

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care
Side point, does anyone have any recent Android Marketplace sales data. I googled around and most of what I'm seeing was from the early days of the Android Marketplace. Curious to know if it's trending better or staying about the same.

Some recent articles and blog posts I've come across (had to use the Google cache of Larva Labs because it seems they've been Daring Fireballed):
Android Market Payouts Total 2% of App Store’s $1B
Android Market Sales, Are Those Tears or is it Raining in Here?
App Store: 1% of Apple's gross profit

Quote: Original post by Antheus
Marketplace isn't really relevant for Apple anymore, not in this sense.

I think you're thinking of marketshare. Marketplace refers to the overall demand for and supply of a given good or service.

Quote: Original post by Antheus
There is also no need for Google anymore. Apple will take the entire internet, and put it on a floppy (aka, shipping container). Then they'll filter out all unacceptable content, malware, spam pages, compile wikipedia, imdb and a few other reference sites into convenient apps. The rest of internet will be Facebook and Twitter apps, perhaps youtube and vimeo and such. URL? As quaint and unknown as command line today for non-developers.

Wishful thinking. The internet isn't solely about consumption, and that is why a pre-boxed, curated approach doesn't work for it. Even Apple says that if you want the wide open experience, go to the web, reserving its "curated computing" for the App Store. It turns out there already is another platform on their platform, but it's one they're okay with because no single vendor or potential competitor controls it: HTML (5).

I just can't get behind your vision of the future, essentially controlled by a single company, even as someone who likes much of what Apple has to offer.

Quote:
I just can't get behind your vision of the future, essentially controlled by a single company, even as someone who likes much of what Apple has to offer.

Is it real control when people move towards it out of their own free will? I doubt the generic PC would be extinct, it would just be relegated to a small market of entusiasts, which becomes smaller and smaller as machines become more complex. Besides, if this model works, it would be adopted by more companies, increasing competition.

Something similar might happen in the business world, with small businesses opting for cheap speciality computers, and large businesses reducing their worker's pcs to little more than a web browser which accesses the applications on the main server.

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi

I just can't get behind your vision of the future, essentially controlled by a single company, even as someone who likes much of what Apple has to offer.

Not one, several. Just like TV. Someone who works in broadcasting has tons of options, but population at large has choice of cable or satellite or aerial, along with preselected sets of channels.

Internet isn't going anywhere, and it will almost certainly never get regulated. But useful services will increasingly converge around those specific vendors.

How many people already today use their computer for Facebook only. The rest might not exist at all. How many use it for Word only, perhaps as sole use at their place of work?

That is the reality - for bulk of users, all this "freedom" is one single app, which they don't even call that. Just like there are single-issue voters.

And Apple is currently leading the pack since, for one reason or another, they managed to figure out which of these issues matter to the users.