Posts tagged Android

Apple takes on Google in struggle for world domination

Dan Gillmore:

The iPhone 5, likely to be introduced in the third quarter of this year, won’t be significantly better hardware than the best Android devices, if it’s better at all, but it will be sold by a company that doesn’t abandon its customers the minute they spend their money.

Telling observation.

Compared to magical

Seth Godin:

The easiest way to sell yourself short is to compare your work to the competition. To say that you are 5% cheaper or have one or two features that stand out—this is a formula for slightly better mediocrity.

If only Android phone makers would listen to this advice!

Google now officially owns Motorola Mobility

Larry Page, Google CEO:

I’m excited to announce today that our Motorola Mobility deal has closed. Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone. We all remember Motorola’s StarTAC, which at the time seemed tiny and showed the real potential of these devices. And as a company who made a big, early bet on Android, Motorola has become an incredibly valuable partner to Google.

Flipboard is coming to Android

Hot on the heels of Instagram becoming available on Android, Flipboard (another hit iOS app) is now going to be heading to Android. It’ll start out as an exclusive for the Samsung Galaxy S III.

The iPhone accounts for 78% of all AT&T smartphone sales

Jay Yarow, Business Insider:

AT&T activated 4.3 million iPhones, which is a 43% sequential decline. That means between AT&T and Verizon, iPhone activations fell 37% on a quarter over quarter basis.

This information was published under a somewhat misleading headline: ‘The iPhone Crashes At AT&T’. As you’d expect for this quarter - and Apple themselves indicated - the sales of iPhones are not going to match Apple’s blowout last quarter. But there’s one very telling snippet further down in Yarow’s piece:

This AT&T news sounds bad, but here’s the silver lining: AT&T sold 5.5 million smartphones overall, which means the iPhone was an astounding 78% of sales. At Verizon, the iPhone was more than half of all sales.

So the truth is that smartphone sales have crashed this quarter. (Again, smartphone sales dropping this quarter is no surprise.) But of those smartphones AT&T did sell, 78% of them were iPhones. That means that less than 22% were Android devices. That’s a pretty astonishing statistic and, combined with Verizon’s recent figures what had iPhones at around 50% of all their smartphone sales, Apple - in marketshare terms - is rising rapidly in the US market.

All in all, physical sales are down as you’d expect, but marketshare is rising rapidly. I don’t think Apple will be too worried.

"Android is suddenly in a lot of trouble"

This is a pretty solid piece by Jay Yarow at Business Insider breaking down the growing array of challenges the Android platform is facing. As John Gruber points out though, the only thing you can really argue with in the piece is the use of ‘suddenly’. The truth is that there have been tell-tale signs of Android’s problems for a long time. More people are just waking up to the reality.

Typing with no hands

Walt Mossberg reviews and compares voice dictation with Android (on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus) and iOS (on an iPhone 4S):

I found that both platforms’ dictation systems worked well enough for me to recommend them. In case after case, both phones got it right, or close enough to require little correcting.

I can only speak for the iPhone 4S and iPad (3rd generation), but I too have been very impressed with voice dictation results when I’ve used it. Though, my results in noisier environments haven’t been as good as Walt’s seemed to be.

How to install Instagram on your Android phone in 23 easy steps

This made me chuckle. As Fraser Spears tweeted, ‘for the love of sanity please tell me this is a spoof’.

I have a sneaking suspicion it’s not (even if not all Android users are finding it quite so convoluted.)

The new Microsoft/Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone disappoints

Joshua Topolsky:

Don’t misunderstand me, Windows Phone offers some very good experiences in its core apps, and it’s probably the most gorgeous and cohesive piece of software Microsoft has ever released. But after nearly two years on the market, I struggled to find a single thing this platform could do better than Android 4.0 or iOS 5.1.

The sheen has worn off of Windows Phone for me. When I put something in my pocket, it needs to be able to quickly and efficiently get things done. It needs to trump other devices in its class. It needs to be the best — and Windows Phone is far from it at this point.

After a lot of very positive media coverage for what Microsoft has been doing with Windows Phone 7, it seems like the criticisms are starting to mount. And as products hit the market, disappointment is rising. If they want to become a genuine competitor to iOS and Android, it would seem they’re going to have to do more.

What does the new iPad mean for the future of Android tablets?

Andy Ihnatko in his conclusion to his review of the new iPad:

Android tablets? Yikes. Once again I find it impossible to think of a situation in which I’d recommend an Android tablet to any person of whom I’m even remotely fond.

This is a great and thorough review of the new iPad by one of my favourite reviewers. But I’ve chosen to focus on his comment about Android as that to me is a really interesting question right now. What is the future for Android tablets? They’re really struggling to gain any significant traction and this new iPad only serves to undermine its chances even further.

It strikes me that, whilst secure for now in the mobile phone market, I can’t see how it’ll gain serious momentum in the tablet market. In fact, I think it’s only going to get harder for them once the Windows tablets hit the market.

We Need to Talk About Android

Fraser Spears writes a brilliant post explaining why, in his educational context, he uses iOS rather than Android. Here’s a few clippings from the piece. It’s well worth reading in its entirety though.

The Android platform is currently stuck in second gear because Google, their OEMs and the carriers can’t, won’t or simply have no incentive to get the installed base past the Android 2.x API set. There are better and more powerful APIs in Android 4, and there will be better ones again in the future, but developers can’t take advantage of them because almost nobody is running the latest OS…

…This means that iOS apps are not only better than Android apps today, they’re getting better faster than Android apps because Apple is deploying and the installed base is rapidly upgrading to much more powerful APIs on the devices in consumers’ hands.

And:

You’re either buying into a platform or you’re buying gadgets. The fundamental disconnect between the apprently solid Android engineering that’s happening at Google and the actual packaging and deployment that’s happening to end-users is turning into a real problem. To my mind, it’s a dealbreaker for schools or anyone thinking beyond their next carrier subsidy.

Why do developers prefer iOS over Android? Try 75% adoption of iOS 5 while ICS is stuck at 1%

The Next Web, quoting Chris Sauve:

iOS 5 captured approximately 75% of all iOS users in the same amount of time it took Gingerbread to get 4% of all Android users. Even more astounding is that 15 weeks after launch iOS 4 was at 70% and iOS 5 was at 60% while Ice Cream Sandwich got to just 1% share at the same age.

The problem Android fans pretend isn’t there! It’s a real problem that a new operating system released in October last year is still only on 1% of Android devices. What percentage will it be on when Google release the next version later this year?

People compare the most recently released versions when comparing iOS and Android. But really it makes more sense to compare the OS that at that given time is on most devices. Though that would leave Android languishing a long way behind. What’s the point in making big strides forward with the development of an OS if no one gets to use it. I’d be very frustrated if I worked on the Android team!

Why Mountain Lion could blunt Android’s momentum

Yep. This pretty much nails it. It’s pretty obvious what Apple are up to in creating a beautiful harmony between the Mac, iPhone and iPad. And the greater integration that Mountain Lion has with iOS devices makes for an even more enticing, jump fully on board with the complete Apple ecosystem, proposition.

Guess how many Android phones have Ice Cream Sandwich on them

Cult of Android:

Ice Cream Sandwich now occupies 1% of Android devices according to this month’s Android Platform Distribution chart.

Yes, three months after it’s release, a measly 1% of Android devices are running the latest version of the operating system. For a comparison with Apple and iOS, the latest version (iOS 5) was on 40% of all iPhones within a couple of weeks of its October release.

I would find it so frustrating being within the Android ecosystem knowing that there were updates out there but I was unable to get (or at least be delayed in getting). Google are at the mercy of both the handset makers and the carriers and the updates are constantly held back. Apple refuses to give the carriers any influence over software updates and as a result everyone gets every update.

iPhone 4S launch propels surging Apple 20% to close the gap with Android

The latest quarterly sales data from Nielsen shows that while just 25.1 percent of American smartphone buyers in October chose an iPhone, that number ballooned to 44.5 percent in December. In addition, 57 percent of new iPhone owners polled in December indicated they bought an iPhone 4S.

Considering lots of people said that the iPhone 4S was a dud and that everyone was disappointed that it wasn’t the iPhone 5, the take up of the 4S has been phenomenal. And if that’s the take up for a device with no external changes, imagine what the demand will be like for the inevitably redesigned iPhone 5 that will likely come out September/October time.