Android continues to own Apple - Now half a million activations a day

All "unlocked" means is that you can use it with any carrier network (and I believe even then it only applies to GSA networks like AT&T and T-Mobile). It has exactly the same OS limitations as any other iPhone.

You still need to go through iTunes to get stuff on your phone. You cannot just drag and drop like you would a normal hard drive. You must go through the iTunes gatekeeper.

You will not be copy/pasting MP3s into your phone without hacking to circumvent the OS blocks.

 

Im failing to see the big deal. The process is quite simple. I have thousands of songs and pictures and it takes seconds to add stuff I cant access directly from my phone. The content availiable to me directly on my phone seems endless.

Im sorry I just dont feel like Im missing anything.

I can appreciate you yearning for something easier- its human nature....but the rant seem a little overly dramatic.

Each phone has drawbacks....it would be dishonest to say they dont. Its a personal choice and an obvious bias vs Apple that drives you to criticize and thats fine.

I have had Iphones since they were born...maybe a biased as well.

Whats weird is I hate Macs.

I also dont think youre seeing an Apple fail. Apple has shown time and time again its quite resilient and year after year theres been an iphone killer...but in the end....not so much. Theres more to it than simply freeing up an operating system.

 

That has not been the experience of any other iOS users I know. It was not my experience as well when trying to get stuff onto my newphews' iTouches.

Apple used to be way ahead of Android. Now it is not. That = fail IMO.

It is resilient in the Desktop world as well. But how many people use Macs? Even you dont.

And the "iPhone Killers' have done their job I would say, if the Marketshare trends are any indication. Dont you think?

 

Blockbuster never had anything approaching this much money. $70 billion is enough for Apple to buy out all of their hardware competition but Samsung. At the same time. With their spare cash. What's Google going to do if they've got no hardware partners? Any innovative products or technologies come out, Apple can own it. Any competitors release wildly popular devices, Apple can own it. Money is what wins platform wars, not technical factors.

Google is having a hard time making money with Android, but Apple is having no trouble whatsoever making money with iPhones and iPads. Even with their sizable market share, Google is having a hard time turning that into dollars, and their costs are very high.

Not so. Android's marketshare peaked back in March, and Google so far hasn't been able to find a way to make much of a profit off Android. Unlike Apple, which is raking in money at a nearly unprecedented rate in the tech industry.

Windows 8, not WP7.

The idea that Windows 8 won't be able to supplant Android, especially on tablets, is ludicrous. Who wouldn't want to be able to run all of their applications on their tablet?

No. Apple is utterly dominating the tablet market right now. Android tablets aren't even close. Apple owns 70% of the tablet market right now, and there is little indication that there will be any substantial challengers this year. Apple also has more room to cut prices than the other manufacturers do because of how they negotiate deals with suppliers, and how they control their supply chain. None of the Android tablet manufacturers have been able to do much in the way of cost cutting, which is why Android tablets tend to be relatively unprofitable at the price points that are competitive with the iPad. They aren't going to be substantial challengers for at least two more years, and by then there will be an absolutely massive installed base of iOS tablets.

Yes they do, and Android is starting its decline. Google's undisciplined growth of the platform is causing a wide range of strategic problems for Android.

It hasn't grown for the last 3 months. It's actually been in decline.

Apple's tablets are better, and generally cheaper. There's room for debate about smartphones, but absolutely no room for debate over tablets. It's not even a contest right now. The fastest selling Android tablet is the nook; and it's not even close to the iPad. Android tablet growth isn't very substantial either, due to bad, overly expensive hardware, slipped deadlines for hardware releases, and an underperforming operating system. Apple lost the platform wars because they sold a product that wasn't obviously better, for much higher prices, and lacked the software diversity required to compete with PCs. That isn't the case on the iOS devices. They're competitively priced, the hardware is more than adequate, and they have an excellent library of software.

Is the Android library growing quickly? Yes. But take a look at the market and you'll see why--a lot of developers are just flooding the market with apps that perform the same trivial tasks. There's not much on the Android market in the way of killer apps that aren't also on iOS, but there's plenty on the App Store that isn't available on Android.

Maybe next year, but I doubt it.

And yet despite this large marketshare, they can't figure out how to make money with it. The choices that allowed them to grow quickly have made it difficult to make a profit off the platform. Google is now in the position of eating the software development costs of smartphone manufacturers without any clear path forward to make money on it. By contrast, Apple is raking in money on every iPhone and iPad they sell, even the $50 3GS. None of the $50 Android phones (the few there are) are even close to that level of quality, because the manufacturers can't get their costs down.

How long do you suppose Google will continue to eat the costs of developing software for other companies? How do you suppose they plan to make money on Android?

Yet Google still hasn't made much of a profit off Android, even with 50% of the market.

They have less cash on hand than Apple. Apple's got roughly twice as much they're sitting on. It's something of a mystery as to why Apple's not spending it. Still, if current trends continue, Android will continue to gain marketshare, Apple will continue to make far more money, and in two or three years Apple will be able to buy Google outright with their cash on hand. Keep in mind that Google's total enterprise value is $127 billion; Apple's got $70 billion in cash right now, and adding to that pile very, very quickly. Much faster than Google is. Google brought in a record $8 billion in revenue in Q1 2011, and actually profited about $2.5 billion from that. Virtually all of that profit comes from Google's search business, which is floating their failing Android business. For comparison, Apple brought in $26.7 billion in revenue, and $6 billion in profit.

One of the few good reasons for holding on to this huge amount of cash would be to make a major bid to buy another large company. If things continue on like they have, for the next two years, Google might be in a mood to simply sell Android.

It's ultimately the deciding factor in the majority of cases. The companies that have the deepest pockets are best able to go crazy with loss leading profits and strategic buyouts. There's a lot to be said for being able to sell your product at a thin margin for a few years while you drive the competition under.

Microsoft hasn't put nearly as much money or serious effort behind their mobile offerings as Google or Apple. That's going to change in the next two years. Windows 8 is going to be a major threat to Android, especially on tablets, in a way that little else could be. There's really no way that Android is going to be able to compete with tablets that can run the same applications as a person's desktop. Windows 8 is a major strategic shift for Microsoft, away from what they've been wasting their time on with WP7 and earlier. Microsoft is putting a lot of money and effort behind this play for the tablet market, because they're going to risk Windows itself on it. And they have to, because they know the tablet market will be larger than the smartphone market, and way, way larger than the laptop market.

 

They have content controls, just like iOS, they have platform limitations, just like iOS, they have proprietary software at the core of it, just like iOS. The only difference is that Google is currently slightly more liberal with allowing development than Apple is, and every indication shows that that's going to change as Google faces legal threats from apps distributed on the Android Market.

No, you can't. For example, game emulators. Google started yanking those from the market just this month. Several music streaming apps have been banned as well. Google is only going to get more draconian about this as time goes on.

LArgely irrelevant. If it's an issue, jailbreak the phone. Doing so is absolutely trivial.

You can find apps for competing products on the App Store too; like Amazon's ebook reader app, which directly competes with iBooks.

Google treats you just as much like a child, they just push this marketing hype about being more open on a gullible public that knows no better.

 

Because of the app store I think the usual software life cycle for open-source would not work well. The the iSeries is currently the fastest growing platform.
The main plus point of using an open source is it's integration, future resistant technology, availability and probably most important these days is security, because OS/400 is an object orientated operating system.

 

Like? I've never run into a site that my iPad banned for me. I guess you're going to claim that not supporting flash is the same thing as not letting you access a site, despite the obvious and relatively simple html5 alternative.

That's what jailbreaking and cydia is for. Jailbreaking an iOS device is downright trivial. Plug device into computer, run application, click through the installer, done.

The App Store bannings aren't arbitrary. Complaining that the App Store is overly restrictive is a bit like complaining about all those pesky traffic laws requiring you to drive on the correct side of the road and stop at red lights. If this less "open", sure, yeah, in an abstract academic sense, but in practice the App Store policies aren't really very restrictive.

There's dozens of apps that do this. Dropbox is about as convenient as it's possible to get--certainly more convenient than carrying around a USB cable. We've had this discussion--you refuse to consider alternatives to the USB cable.

You're flat out wrong about that. I've got lots of mp3s on my iPad, no conversion at all. I definitely find the iOS method more convenient than the pathetically limited option on the HTC Thunderbolt. There is exactly one way to transfer files between an Android device and a Mac--using the USB disk drive method, which is horribly inconvenient by comparison. At least Apple offers iTunes for Windows and OS X. Google can't even be bothered to offer a universal syncing solution.

Tap the star button, it will store the file on the device. There's dozens of other options to do this, like FileApp.

All of this is going to be even less of a valid complaint next month when iCloud comes online.

Tap the star button, it keeps a local copy. You can also open the files in other apps on the device.

I have no idea why, since it's quite possible with iOS.

I am not happy with my Android phone's syncing capabilities at all. They're pathetically limited. And from what I understand the Thunderbolt has more options than most (which is yet another problem with the Android platform--every phone works differently, has a radically different set of features, etc. Finding advice or solutions becomes horribly device-dependent, which is annoying). USB drive mode is decidedly less convenient than managed syncing, but it's the only option for Android devices on anything but Windows. Personally, the ability to manually drag a file over occasionally is way, way less convenient than being able to keep both devices automatically synced on connection. It doesn't help that the thunderbolt's battery life is much, much worse than an iPhone 3g.

 

Apps promoting competing products. A game about dog fighting. iBoobies.

You seem to be using the same defense that Catch is using to defend PRC censorship. "Who cares if its censored? I dont want to view it anyway".

Why ban anything at ball? Why not let the end user decide?

No, not supporting Flash is retarded for entirely different reasons. Thats actually worse than censorship. Apple is denying its users access to flash merely for techie-ideological reasons. It is a blatant statement of "I dont care if you want it I know whats best for you and the internet".

Here's a thought...why not support both?

Android does.

LOL

I dont want to use a product that makes me feel like I am in jail.

Banning an app merely because it promotes a competitor is arbitrary.

The traffic laws dont apply to just Ford pickups though.

Except that you cant actually use it to save anything on your device.

Explain why Dropbox would not work.

I have helped my nephews with their iTouches enough to come to hate iTunes. Transferring movies was a huge hassle too. Everything about the software was slow.

Yes, it will be awesome when Apple catches up to what Android has had for years.

 

Sources? Examples?

Android doesnt ban porn. Android does not ban apps for competitors.

Even with the dogfighting app, all they did was ban it from the primary market...you can still install the APK if you want (without rooting). And any other Android store (Amazon, Gameloft, whatever) could also carry it if they wanted.

LOL

All they did was remove them from the market. Unlike Apple, Google does not have a stranglehold on apps...you can get them from sources other than the market and they will install just fine...WITHOUT ROOTING. You can get them from competing markets. You can get them even from individual users.

You are not locked in Jail with an Android device. There is a security setting that allows you to install unofficial apps.

Such as?

The irony is that it would be irrelevant even if true. Google does not force you to use the Market at all.

LOL...declaring it irrelevant does not make it so.

You should not have to jailbreak just to be able to install apps you want.

Oh yeah, Apple loves competitors.

yeah, so open.

Yeah, dont knock yourself out actually providing examples or anything.

 

That is factually incorrect, as I demonstrated in post #15. Android is outpacing all of the other platforms combined right now. By a wide margin.

If that were true, more people would be flocking to the iPhone or Blackberry.

Android is based on Linux, just like iOS is.

 

If this relevant?

http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2011/06/21/android-market-share-decreases-for.html

 

It is amusing watching people try to defend an inferior product.

Apple is a joke. They are little more than a manufacturer of toys for mouth breathers that have more money than sense.

As for Tablets...

It's a new market. As always apple will fall behind due to their refusal to recognize and correct the short comings of their OS and hardware.

Microsoft doesn't care because they hare a software company that specializes in business applications. Their software is the industry standard on several fronts. They are a non-issue for Android and apple to overcome.

Apple can't even bother to make a tablet version of their iOS. The iOS on your phone is the same as the iOS on your iPad. In addition to that, the new iPad 2 was already behind the curve the day it was released. No Hi Res Screen, no expandable memory, no flash support, no 4g support, no usb ports, no HDMI ports... What part did they upgrade?

Then you have Google poising to take over the market, with their superior hardware and software. For users that want more features, more customization options, better hardware and more flexibility from their OS, Android Honeycomb is a perfect fit.

 

lol...What will happen when Apple incremently adds these features to the iPads?

What happened when they released Ipad2? Did they sell?

Is it wise to give everyone,everything they want and leave nothing in the tank?

Like I said...I remember when RIM was the apple killer.

Howd that work out?

Time will tell.

People sure pay attention to Steve Jobs when he speaks-strange for his company being such a joke.

Id put my iPhone up against an EVO any day of the week.

All smartphones are toys....sorry.

 

So what? It works a hell of a lot better than Honeycomb does. Android sucks out loud on tablets.

The hardware was roughly equivalent. It actually has better hardware than the baseline Tegra 2 tablets. Mind you, that won't be the case by the end of this year, but that's halfway through Apple's update cycle.

Android tablets are crap right now. Overly expensive crap.

Two features that customers apparently do not care about, given the overwhelming popularity of the iPad. It's funny that people call the iPad a joke, when it owns 70% of the market and the competition can't even get prices at a competitive level.

There's only one 4g tablet right now, the 7inch HTC Evo, and it isn't even on anyone's radar. There is literally zero consumer interest in 4g tablets right now, mainly because 4g isn't available in most markets on the carriers that people most use.

You can buy attachments for those.

The internals got a massive, massive improvement. The iPad 2 is the fastest tablet on the market right now. None of the current Tegra 2s are able to match it, and it's made worse by the excessively bloated and slow Android 3.0.

That's a laugh. Google is floundering fast in the tablet market--due to a (*)(*)(*)(*)ty operating system and overly expensive hardware. The lack of tablet-optimized applications doesn't help them either.

 

Well, as someone who just had to make a decision on this one, I went with Android.

There is no significant app or product that the I-Phone does that Andorid does not do. Not one. The possible exception would be I-Tunes, but there are easy work arounds for that as well (which is exactly what Apple did with Office).

There really are very few tangible differences between the phones, but there are tangible differences in two areas:

#1 - Cost. If I can get a phone that does the same things cheaper and faster - why would I worry about anything else?

#2 - Service providers. AT&T and its customer service are so bad that I will avoid them like the plague. I refused to even look at the I-Phone as long as it was AT&T only. And when they allowed Verizon in and you do a side by side comparison - then look at the cost, its a no brainer.

As someone who travels all over the world, the inability of a provider to provide assistance when it is needed was the biggest thing that kept me away from the I-phone.

And, in a sign of what is coming for Apple, when the I-Phone went out, there were people at the office that certainly got it. Now that smart phones are everywhere, all the new accounts that I have seen lately are some version of Andriod phones. All of them.

 

No, it's beneficial to your customers...

They had the largest market share until android took it from them, so I suppose that worked pretty well for them. Of course, I wasn't a fan of RIM either.

All apple products are toys. Other companies make tools that are useful in a business environment. One of my favorite things about droid is it's complete lack of iTunes.

 

Lots of your opinion with no examples of why it's crap.

Because who could possible want to carry around movies or music on their iPad!?!

Get real, the storage is tiny on the iPad. That statement is purely false. I have heard iPad owners complain about it.

I know 8 people that have an ipad. 7 of them got theirs for free. The other one owns a multi-million dollar company. They ALL complain about the lack of storage.

That's true... except that it's not.

The xoom shipped without it, but they offer a free upgrade. The Dell Streak 7 Shipped in February with 4G capability. The blackberry playbook has 4g capability.

Just about every other new tablet coming out has 4g support.

Or they could be included so you have less to carry around ith more functionality.

lol, yeah right.

 

Come on guys... these platform flamewar are so old now. We used to have them in the good old BBS days, Apple vs Commodore, Atari ST vs Amiga, Everybody vs IBM...

One thing that my long IT career has taught me, is that, there isn't a "best" of any kind, only stuff who will become obsolete...

Apple make as good a product as anybody else and whatever the price you pay for it or for any other brand, you'll still end up throwing it away in 3 to 4 years max to get the shinny new thing that just came out.

And before you all jump on me, I'm platform agnostic, I have a Win 7 workstation, a linux one and an iMac (presently typing this on it). I also have a C64, and Atari 800XL and 130XE, an Apple IIe Platinum, 2 Amiga 1000 and part of an Amiga 2000 in my collection, oh and I almost forgot I have a TRS-80 Model 1 and a CoCo 2 and 3 on loan to a friend.

As you can see I don't fight for or against a platform' I use them as they come...

 

Most of the companies leaving blackberry for corporate deployment are going to iPhones, not Android phones. Why? Because Android phones are generally considered toys suitable for teenagers, not real business professionals.

 

ORLY?

Is the Windows PC obsolete yet?

 

Uh huh.

...

 

Are you still using a 486 CPU with windows 3.11?

 

I am still using the windows PLATFORM.

iOS is also a PLATFORM. Android is also a PLATFORM.

 

It's slow, it's unstable, it lacks sufficient developer support, the fonts are bad, and the devices it runs on are generally poorly made. Android for tablets is a wholly different beast than Android for smartphones in terms of quality of hardware and software polish.

Maybe next year.

64GB is a lot of movies.

Gee, go figure, they complain about storage ont he smallest one. What the hell did they expect for free?

The 4g playbooks just got delayed last week, and existing playbook buyers will be left out in the cold. The Xoom does have a genuine 4g LTE upgrade in the works, but they haven't actually converted any of them yet. And you've got to send your tablet to Verizon for a week while they upgrade it. The Streak just has HSPA+, which is not significantly faster than AT&T and T-mobile's usual 3g speeds.

And it's very, very likely that we'll be seeing 4g iPhone & iPad 3 either by the end of the year or Q1 of next year. Apple has a problem with 4g right now because they sell the same product to both Verizon and AT&T, but both companies use different 4g technologies. Android phones don't have this problem because different carriers typically carry different models.

Note; not all "4g" services are equal. "4g" devices on Sprint, for example, use WiMAX, which is much, much slower than LTE on Verizon. AT&T is the slowest of the bunch with HSPA+, which is at times slower than their existing 3g product lineup (like with the Atrix).

Planned. They have support planned. Want to get your Xoom ugpraded today? Too bad, because they aren't actually doing the upgrades right now, they're just building a waiting list. And I'm sure Apple also has a 4g iPad in the works as well, but they aren't talking about an iPad 3 right now (even though everyone knows there will be one by spring of next year).

Actual 4g tablets are curiously absent at the moment, and the ones that are available right now support the slower "4g" networks, not LTE. I would also note that Android's record when it comes to 4g phones is not the greatest in the world. The battery life tends towards the pathetic side. My HTC Thunderbolt, for example, goes maybe halfway through the day before requiring a recharge.

The additional difficulty of carrying around a cable + dongle is not significant since I'd have to carry around a cable anyway. After all, the USB offered on Android devices is micro USB, not standard sized USB, and the chances of finding a microUSB cable is low. The same is true to a lesser degree for HDMI. I can't see myself intending to use my device for playing video or giving a presentation without carrying around the required cable anyway.

Go look at the benchmarks. The current line of Tegra 2s are significantly slower. It's probably in large part due to Android 3, but that's still a factor. There's a line of Tegra 2s coming out in Q3 or Q4 of this year with improved graphics performance that could change those results, but that's already halfway through the iPad's upgrade cycle, and it's doubtful that the iPad 3 will not feature hardware improvements as well.

As for tablet marketshare, Apple is absolutely dominating. 70% marketshare right now, and their biggest competitor is the (admittedly Android based) nook. Android will probably never break into the tablet market like it did on smartphones, because it's going to face much stiffer competition from Apple, and it's also going to face a serious threat from Windows 8 moving onto tablets.

 

US Army aren't a corporation. They don't even use the best of the best of the product available. They go with the lowest bidder.

But then again, you having the last word in any discussion is more important then the truth now isn't it?

We got your drift: Apple is bad and Google's (*)(*)(*)(*) doesn't stink. We got ya...

BTW have you ever used an Apple product? I mean own one?

You sound like a teenage script kiddy in your silly rant. Personally, being platform agnostic myself, I enjoy the good from each actual platform currently available. I like gaming and HTPC stuff on the Win OS, server tech on Linux and everything else on the Mac.

You really should stop with this silly tribal mindset.