
Android users will surpass iPhone users by end of 2010 - aaronbrethorst
http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/12/mobilebeat-android-users-will-surpass-iphone-users-by-end-of-2010/
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ewanmcteagle
What I'd want to know is what percentage of users faced with a choice of
iPhone and Android (on the same carrier) would pick one or the other. As it is
right now a lot of people are buying Android phones because the iPhone is not
available to them without switching carriers. If that exclusivity expires it
could plausibly adjust the trajectories of each of these platforms.

~~~
usaar333
I imagine this could be seen by looking at adoption rates in other countries
where there isn't exclusivity.

Another data point is how many people are held back by carrier quality. AT&T
should be great quality wise for at least 80% of America - so if someone
really wanted an iPhone, I feel that most would have switched already.

~~~
tl
I'd like to see data supporting that 80%. We had AT&T phones through work at
my last job, and we'd use our personal Verizon phones because of poor signal
quality and dropped calls during service calls.

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ams6110
If you believe the rumors, Verizon will be selling the iPhone in January 2011.

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w1ntermute
Most people stopped believing the rumors after around the 5th time they were
wrong.

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pkaler
They are basing their guess on stats from AdMob. Everyone, say it with me: Ad
traffic does not equal web traffic. Web traffic does not equal market share.
Market share does not equal revenue.

~~~
patrickaljord
I agree with you but let's face it, the number of Android devices being sold
is increasing each month at a huge rate. Just like Windows outsold Mac, the
same will happen with Android. That doesn't mean iPhone will go away though.

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catch23
There's no doubt android will be everywhere eventually -- in a laundry
machine, toaster, microwave, etc. However, whether android becomes an actual
competitor to iOS is still undecided. App developers on the iOS platform still
make around 40x more than android, so companies jumping on that platform right
now will most certainly lose money initially.

A few friends of mine run their own ISV producing around 5-10 apps for the
iPhone a year and are able to make a decent living (around 100-200k a year).
If they focused on android, they'd only be making around 3-5k a year,
definitely not enough to be independent!

I think it's too easy to pirate and return apps on android, plus the App
market not quite as globally available as iOS. Users on android are too
accustomed to downloading free apps -- if it's not free, users don't download
it. There are too many steps involved in buying an app, there needs to be far
less steps involved so it can be an impulse buy. One also can't do fancier
sales models like in-app purchases that the iOS is capable of doing.

I really wish well for android, but I feel like Google just doesn't know
marketing & sales like Apple does.

~~~
orangecat
_I think it's too easy to pirate and return apps on android_

Around 5% of my app's purchases are returned. Even if every one of those is a
pirate, that's not too bad. Agreed with the rest of your points.

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dreyfiz
Why do people insist on writing like this? The first sentence is the only
piece of information in this article. The rest is filler, mindless
regurgitation for people who just woke up from a 30-year coma combined with
random predictions based on nothing.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Because the writers at these blogs are expected to produce tons and tons of
content per day, and thoughtful, insightful content is not something that can
be produced in 15 slapdash minutes.

~~~
dreyfiz
I guess you're right. If you're writing about a topic that your audience is
also well-informed about, odds are that you're wasting their time
regurgitating such factoids as "iPhone only comes in one form factor" and
"there are 50 different Android phones". I'm guessing anyone reading
VentureBeat knows that, it's not exactly USA Today's audience. It's a plague
on the internet, not just with paid bloggers but even people who are writing
for their own sites who feel the need to tell you things you already know for
paragraphs on end before getting to the point.

In fact, if your headline had included the phrase "AdMob chief says", _all_
the information in the article would be contained in your headline.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I hope I'm wrong. Because the alternative suggests that our tech media is, by
and large, as useless or even more useless than our traditional media (our,
meaning the United States'. Apologies to the other 6.5BB people worldwide).

The people who are seen as the true 'luminaries' of tech journalism are simply
the ones who've been able to make the most noise:

Steve Gillmor writes the most incoherent essays I've ever read.

Robert Scoble is simply excited about _everything_ (but occasionally takes
time to call me an idiot when I criticize his photography).

John Dvorak has admitted to and seems proud of being a professional troll.

MG Siegler...I don't even know where to start with him. Frankly, I would
probably believe he was a cunning piece of software had I not met him at WWDC
2009.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

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aresant
Here's a much needed additional data set:

"The average Android user is spending just . . . $0.50 among all
applications."

"iPhone users are spending an estimated . . . $5.00 among all applications."

Those data sets are measured monthly - <http://fadellc.com/press_1.html>

So does this mean that Android needs 10x traction to create the same
opportunity for your general app maker?

~~~
theBobMcCormick
IMHO, one of the big things the Android Market is missing is Gift Cards. Gift
Cards make it easy to spend money (after all, once you've received the card,
what else can you with it?). They also make it much easier for teenagers to
buy apps, a demographic who likes to spend money, but seldom has ready ability
to charge to credit cards.

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petercooper
They seem to be tying innovation and market share which makes no sense to me.

Further, the number of Windows users is significantly higher than Linux or Mac
users, yet I'm still going to stick with Linux and the Mac regardless. As long
as there are enough users to keep a platform viable and profitable for the
vendors, I doubt users care about the percentages.

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samratjp
This seems fairly reasonable of a prediction. What I wanna know is when there
will be more Android developers than iPhone developers?

~~~
ddlatham
That seems to already have happened.

[http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2010/07/mobile-developer-
ec...](http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2010/07/mobile-developer-
economics-2010-the-migration-of-developer-mindshare/)

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Aaronontheweb
I wonder if the rapid fragmentation of the Android OS might degrade the
Android experience and its public perception. If so I suspect that Android
might become commiditized and therefore vulnerable in a way that Apple's
experience is not.

