But when I could carry around a little computer with internet connection I could write programs for, the choice was easy

Laptop screen too small for me to write code. I like to see a lot of lines at once wide.

Apple did not invent. They innovated. Very difficult to truly invent. But much easier to innovate. Which is to take an existing set of ideas and put it together as one, or make an idea, invention, or other innovation better in a unique way.

So the list of innovations for a phone all together as one (just the hardware):

• Responsive touch only screen on phone.
  
• Three axis accelerometers
  
• Proximity sensor so screen goes off when you hold it to your face
  
• GPU accelerated graphics on a phone
  
• much bigger screen on phone than what was typical at the time
  
• doing way with the stylus
  
• 60 FPS from the beginning
  
  Software innovations on a phone:
  
  
  • Full featured browser less flash plugin
    
  • Bounce back to provide organic feel for scrolling and other seemly superfluous animations to your most staunch logical techno nerds
    
  • call waiting that actually works properly on a smart phone. I have not an android phone yet that does this properly.
    
  • soft keyboard on phone
    
  • Random access voice messages - still missing to this day on galaxy nexus.
    
  • responsiveness and fluidness - of which android is finally there with jelly bean - less running a c++ game engine on earlier versions of android.
    
  • UI that automatically reorientates based on how the device is held
    
  • beautiful perhaps overly simplistic UI that required no documentation or guess work to use or figure out
    
    Now in terms of the motion event API internally, I doubt apple came up with that because there had been plenty of research on multi touch screens and UI frameworks. And the mechanics of this was already probably figured out.
    
    
    This is said from a current android phone user. I give credit where credit is due.

In EU market shares are:
Android: 75%
IOS: 15%
Windows 2%
Linux 2%
and some others

In EU market shares are:
Android: 75%
IOS: 15%
Windows 2%
Linux 2%
and some others

Looks like these numbers, which are world wide: http://www.idc.com/g...Id=prUS23771812
Might look bad for apple, but interestingly, apple increased their market share too over the last year, from 14 to 15, and sold 59% more phones then the year before, well above the average growth of the market. So its not like they are hurting that much.
They never really had that large share, if one remember Symbian (which most tend to forget, and I don't blame them)

You can see on the numbers that the thing android does more then anything else is help expanding the smartphone market (90%+ growth!), selling to people who never had a smartphone before, and taking over symbian, bb and windows shares.

It doesn't seem to be that many that convert from iOS just yet.

[quote name='abcdef44' timestamp='1352133097' post='4997614']
In EU market shares are:
Android: 75%
IOS: 15%
Windows 2%
Linux 2%
and some others

Looks like these numbers, which are world wide: http://www.idc.com/g...Id=prUS23771812
Might look bad for apple, but interestingly, apple increased their market share too over the last year, from 14 to 15, and sold 59% more phones then the year before, well above the average growth of the market. So its not like they are hurting that much.
They never really had that large share, if one remember Symbian (which most tend to forget, and I don't blame them)

You can see on the numbers that the thing android does more then anything else is help expanding the smartphone market (90%+ growth!), selling to people who never had a smartphone before, and taking over symbian, bb and windows shares.

It's not that many that convert from iOS just yet.
[/quote]

Indeed, iOS only really competes in the high end market, If you strip out the lower spec Android phones the race is fairly even. (The Galaxy Y for example is selling for ~$170(often "free" if you tie yourself to an operator) and is doing incredibly well, both in less wealthy countries and as a feature phone replacement for those who just want a reasonably cheap phone)

Cool.. android is dominating so far. Quite unexpected from my side. In New York City it seems like everyone has the iPhone.[/quote]There really is no doubt that Android is *way* ahead. Never mind anecdotes and polls, this is supported by the actual stats (e.g., see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/05/android_sucess/ ). It is now at about 75% share, with Iphone only at 15%.

Also note that whilst Iphone is now the number two platform on quarterly sales, this is relatively recent. Symbian was number one until 2011, and still a major platform until dropped by Nokia last year. And whilst the other platforms may now be smaller than Iphone, they still represent a significant share - far more than say, Linux on the desktop.

Also note that the installed userbase for platforms like Symbian and Blackberry will be much higher than their current sales would suggest (since most people don't throw their phones away every year).

It's really a shame that there're these prevalent myths of Iphone being the largest, or that the mobile market has just been IOS and Android. Historically, Iphone has never been number one, and for many years was 3rd, 4th, or even 5th place. And whilst it can now claim 2nd place, that really isn't saying much, when it's still a low 15%, and Android is so far ahead.

For me, I use a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Until earlier this year, I used Symbian on a Nokia 5800, which I still develop for, as the market is still massive (I get about 100 times the downloads for Symbian on Nokia Store, compared with Google Play).

They never really had that large share, if one remember Symbian (which most tend to forget, and I don't blame them)[/quote]Indeed, though not sure why we should forget Symbian - as I say, it's a shame to misrepresent the market. If that's a snarky comment on you not liking the platform, (a) I disagree (I loved Symbian, and competed just as well as Android), (b) personal opinions aren't really an argument for pretending iphone was the biggest. I might as well say that iphone doesn't exist, because I'd rather forget about it.

Indeed, iOS only really competes in the high end market, If you strip out the lower spec Android phones the race is fairly even.[/quote]I'd be curious to see evidence/stats for this...? The S3 alone is doing pretty well - add in the Note 2, the Nexus, the high end HTCs etc, it's not clear to me that this would be lower than Iphone. Also remember that if you're limiting by spec, you also have to strip out all the Iphone 4 and 4S sales, which still make up a fair proportion of the Iphone figures.

double post

Thanks to the difficulties in developing for Android, it is simply not possible for Android to win.

While number of sales is one statistic, it really has no meaning.
I can sell an acorn for 10 cents and create 10,000,000 sales.
If I sold the same acorn for $1 and sold only 1,000,000, I have done the same thing.

It’s super-duper that Google has sold so many Android devices, but in the end it was just a 10-cent sale. The numbers say Android is winning in terms of users, but that really has no meaning when prices are compared. Android can rack up all the numbers it wants; it is still losing because those iPhone sales are profitable for Apple.

And this is coming from someone who hates Apple and likes Google.
I am offended when there is any mention of a search engine other than Google’s. Bing? Fuck off Microsoft.
I use Google Chrome and slap people in the face who don’t. (It’s funny because here in Japan most people don’t know why I just slapped them.)

Android development is something to which I will never subject myself, and fuck Google for making it so. In history there has never been so much dip-shittery. “Let’s let all the devices have capabilities dependent on vendors.”
Nice way to segregate the developers who really just want their shit to run the same on all devices they support.

I like Google, but Android is nothing but shit.

You can quote numbers all day long but the actual prices of each device tell the real story, and Apple got it right this time, as much as I hate them.

Once more, I tend to favor Google over most corporations, and the only Apple product I have ever bought was reluctant, but in this war the winner is simply obvious. No matter how many sales units are projected, Apple dominates the mobile industry where it actually matters.


L. Spiro

I have the godly Nexus 7....soon to be version 4.2 :-D

It's really a shame that there're these prevalent myths of Iphone being the largest, or that the mobile market has just been IOS and Android. Historically, Iphone has never been number one, and for many years was 3rd, 4th, or even 5th place. And whilst it can now claim 2nd place, that really isn't saying much, when it's still a low 15%, and Android is so far ahead.

I don't think anyone who actually know anything about the smartphone market have ever thought that iPhone is the largest.
Though, on the other hand, most people don't even know what a smartphone is, and don't care.
It has been the biggest "large fancy touch-phone" for some time though, which I think is what the customer classifies it as.

For me, I use a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Until earlier this year, I used Symbian on a Nokia 5800, which I still develop for, as the market is still massive (I get about 100 times the downloads for Symbian on Nokia Store, compared with Google Play).

Cool that you can get that many downloads on symbian still!
Just out of curiosity, are you selling it, or is it free/adware? Is it a game or an app?

They never really had that large share, if one remember Symbian (which most tend to forget, and I don't blame them)[/quote]Indeed, though not sure why we should forget Symbian - as I say, it's a shame to misrepresent the market. If that's a snarky comment on you not liking the platform, (a) I disagree (I loved Symbian, and competed just as well as Android), (b) personal opinions aren't really an argument for pretending iphone was the biggest. I might as well say that iphone doesn't exist, because I'd rather forget about it.
[/quote]

I'm not saying anything about if you should or not, just that most people tend to do.
Symbian never tried to market their name to end users though, so its not that strange that many forget about it.

I do very much not like it though, something I developed over 5 years of working with them. Not just writing apps, but writing code for the actual OS.
That's one horribly over-engineered and very inefficient system, no matter how much their architects tried to upsell it
If one need an example of OOP running amok, Symbian is a good case.

It was obvious to me that they would die, about 4 years ago, a death by legacy, by not beeing able to cope with change, and not being able to support hardware graphics in a sensible way. Their UI framework was absolutely horrible from the inside and out... I've seen way more of the window server from the inside then I would prefer, so I'm not just assuming.

I could probably write a couple of articles about why I think symbian died, it's not only technical reasons, but also how the company itself was organised and owned, but it feels largely irrelevant now.

Indeed, iOS only really competes in the high end market, If you strip out the lower spec Android phones the race is fairly even.[/quote]I'd be curious to see evidence/stats for this...? The S3 alone is doing pretty well - add in the Note 2, the Nexus, the high end HTCs etc, it's not clear to me that this would be lower than Iphone. Also remember that if you're limiting by spec, you also have to strip out all the Iphone 4 and 4S sales, which still make up a fair proportion of the Iphone figures.
[/quote]

It's not clear to me either who comes out on top, but it should be a pretty tight race if you only look at high end devices over the years.
We're talking about devices that is released as the top end of their product line, so also S2 and iphone 4 is counted.
There is though massive amounts of low end android devices sold, that is now replacing all those symbian and feature phones for the people who couldn't care less what OS their phone has. While those are nice for android, it's likely not the people that will spend much money on apps.

For us, as application developers, what really matters is one thing. "cost to develop" compared to how many are willing to give us money for our work.
The really big problem for android is that cost to develop skyrockets when there is so much fragmentation, and the will to pay is still very much lower then on the app store.

And I mean the problem is android's.
I as an application developer couldn't really care less about who is "on top" right now, any platform choice is a cost/profit calculation and nothing more, and from our perspective (small game makers that make "premium" (non-freetoplay) games), iphone still wins with a large margin.
As a programmer I also like that iPhone is much easier and hassle free to develop for then any other mobile platform I've tried, with excellent tools (in comparison)

A few points:

Apple did not invent. They innovated. Very difficult to truly invent. But much easier to innovate. Which is to take an existing set of ideas and put it together as one, or make an idea, invention, or other innovation better in a unique way.
So the list of innovations for a phone all together as one (just the hardware):
Responsive touch only screen on phone.

Rather, first with a capacitive screen. Which is worth mentioning - though as someone who's owned resistive and capacitive screens, I'd say having a touchscreen of any kind is the main benefit, and the difference between resistive and capacitive is far smaller (resistive also has some advantages).

much bigger screen on phone than what was typical at the time[/quote]Screen sizes have been increasing since around 2000, and whilst it may have been much bigger than average of the time, this was true of other phones appearing around then too ("larger than average" is very different to largest, and a much easier "innovation" that many phones will achieve). Whilst we might credit Apple, they're just one of many companies/phones that have been increasing screen sizes. Most notably Samsung, who have been coming out with larger than typical screens from 2007, all up to the present day.

doing way with the stylus[/quote]No, rather it wasn't possible to use a stylus, so this is just repeating "capacitive screen" again, and I don't see it as a benefit. And indeed, now that companies like Samsung and MS have developed capacitive screens that can use styluses, we are seeing them reappear.

Full featured browser less flash plugin[/quote]Standard on many smartphones back then, and before.

Bounce back to provide organic feel for scrolling and other seemly superfluous animations to your most staunch logical techno nerds[/quote]I hate that - when I reach the end, I expect it to stop, not carry on.

beautiful perhaps overly simplistic UI that required no documentation or guess work to use or figure out[/quote]Never had a problem on feature phones I owned before 2007, nor on phones I had after that.

This is said from a current android phone user. I give credit where credit is due.[/quote]See this is the thing - whilst there are plenty of minor firsts that one can credit Apple for, the same is true of Google, Nokia, Samsung and so on. If we wrote a list of top 100 phone firsts, sure, Apple would make a few in the list, but you'd also have lots of entries from lots of other companies.

Apple get credit all the time. It's all we hear about, from the media, from Apple fans, and from Android users. I'll credit Apple, the day I hear Apple users credit companies like Nokia, Google and Samsung for all that they did. But, I never ever do ;)