
Android Is Suddenly In A Lot Of Trouble - jamesjyu
http://www.businessinsider.com/android-is-suddenly-in-a-lot-of-trouble-2012-4
======
jeffool
I have an Android phone (Droid X, old I know,) and I love it. But what's odd
to me is when hardware companies fork and go without Google, they say "no-
but", rather than "yes-and".

"Does it have all the stock Android features?"

It's often: "No, but we added ringtones, wallpapers, and our own store instead
of Google's."

It should be: "Yes, and we've added useful tools to increase/aid
functionality."

------
cheald
This seems like a whole lot of conjecture without any real information.

> Facebook buying Instagram for $1 billion. This is bad news for Android,
> because it shows that a developer can build a massively successfully product
> that the world goes crazy for without even using Android. You could argue
> that Instagram wouldn't have sold for $1 billion if it hadn't gone to
> Android and seen an immediate spike in activations. But, the truth of the
> matter is that Instagram was fielding offers from Facebook before it was on
> Android.

But then we have reports that it was Instagram's explosive growth on Android
that triggered Zuckerberg's insanely fast purchase of it:

[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-14/tech/31340760...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-14/tech/31340760_1_mark-
zuckerberg-android-users-facebook)

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/zuckerberg-did-
instagram...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/zuckerberg-did-instagram-
deal-by-himself-whittled-systrom-down-from-2-billion/)

> Two days before Zuckerberg approached Systrom, Instagram released a long-
> awaited version for Android-powered devices. Millions more users downloaded
> the free retro-styling photo app within days, adding to the already enormous
> iOS user base and taking it beyond the 30 million mark. Unable to wait any
> longer, Zuckerberg got on the phone and invited Systrom to his place. After
> three days of talks, the deal was done.

The reports would seem to indicate that it was the enormous growth Instagram
experienced _because_ of Android that spurred Facebook into making a fast
acquisition. If Android isn't relevant anymore, that's an odd way to make the
point.

> Android: It has been a complete and utter disaster in the tablet space.

This point is a little easier to support, because by all measures, Apple is
dominating the tablet space. However, I don't know that it's possible to say
that this is a tolling of Android's decline - Apple was dominating the
smartphone space until the Nexus One, too; the N1 marked the start of the
"viable iPhone competitor" phase of Android phones. In 2010, Android
marketshare went from 9% to 42%.

Google is rumored to be working on a canonical "Android Tablet" to be released
sometime this year. It'll be interesting to see what happens after it is
released.

> The success of the Kindle Fire shows that you don't need Google's approval
> to create a great Android product. This is only going to lead to more
> companies doing the same making Android more fragmented and causing Google
> to lose control over its mobile operating system.

Android is open source, and has already been "fragmented" by every carrier's
handset already. It's arguable that this has contributed to its growth, rather
than retarding it. HTC Sense, Motorola's Motoblur, and Samsung TouchWiz are
all very different facets of Android. Everyone throws around "fragmentation"
like it's some kind of killswitch for Android. Does the author even understand
what kind of fragmentation he's talking about?

> on the three biggest carriers in the U.S., the iPhone is outselling Android.

Wow, this is some shoddy reporting. "Verizon reports that half of the phones
it sold last quarter were iPhones. This means that iPhone is outselling
Android on Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint, nevermind that we have no data for the
latter two and the assertion is pure unsupported conjecture". This alone
should be sufficient to reject the article, but...

In Q42011, Verizon sold 4.3m iPhones, out of 7.7m smartphones sold (~55.8%).
Q1 2012 sales were 3.2m of 6.3m, or ~50.8%. The iPhone 4s was released in Oct
2011, and each iPhone release always sees a sales spike. Given that the iPhone
isn't likely to have another new release until Q4 2012, and that the iPhone's
sales percentage saw a relative ~10% drop quarter over quarter, I'm not quite
sure how to interpret that as "iPhones are booming, Android is dying".

Sales of the iPhone have certainly surged in the past 3 months, but at the
expense of RIM and Windows phones, not Android phones.

[http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/smartphone...](http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/smartphones-
account-for-half-of-all-mobile-phones-dominate-new-phone-purchases-in-the-us)

It's difficult to interpret this data as "Android is dying", when Occam would
suggest "New iPhone releases (and the subsequent price drop on older models)
always have a spike effect on iPhone sales". Given that the Neilsen data shows
that the iPhone purchases are not coming at the expense of Android purchases,
I can't help but think that the author is drawing some really faulty
conclusions.

