

Android takes huge lead in US Smartphone market - cshenoy
http://www.pcworld.com/article/235105/android_pummels_apple_and_blackberry_in_smartphone_supremacy_race.html

======
guelo
I've been keeping track of Comscore's numbers for a while and I've been
looking for the Verizon bump that iPhones were supposed to receive. Looking at
the derivative of the trends there does appear to be a small change but the
effect is small and Android's growth is still about 3x the iPhone's.

Historical market share: <http://i.imgur.com/Aj7og.png> Change per month:
<http://i.imgur.com/2qIqH.png>

One thing to consider is that these numbers are market share, they don't show
how the overall pie is growing.

(By the way, Comscore wants you to pay for historical data so they wouldn't
like this being posted publicly, but I've been collecting this data from their
press releases.)

~~~
boredguy8
First, thanks for the historical data. That's nice to see.

But it doesn't seem to me that we'd expect to see an immediate bump in
iPhone's numbers from Verizon for at least three reasons unrelated to the
platform's (potential) desirability:

1) The iPhone has a lot more competition among Verizon customers. For a while,
if you wanted a good smartphone with AT&T, you were getting an iPhone. We
wouldn't expect to see "auto-flocking" to the iPhone on Verizon like there was
on AT&T for that reason.

2) Contract rollover inhibits fast reaction to new developments. I know a
substantial number of people who went Android with the Motorola Droid release
in November, 2009. For a 2 year contract, that means November, 2011 is when
those customers will be reevaluating their smartphone brand.

3) For some people who wanted an iPhone, they probably bought an iPhone
regardless of the network. iPhone on Verizon was (or will be) a chance for
some people to change carriers and keep the phone they love.

I think those three factors inhibit a massive switch to iPhone simply because
of its availability on a new carrier. Other factors may play a role, too. For
instance, AT&T put a lot of their own advertising weight behind the iPhone.
Verizon hasn't platformed the iPhone in the same way.

------
codeslush
I was an original droid owner. I didn't want to switch to AT&T, as I had
dropped them years before for a variety of reasons. Everyone I knew got
iPhones, and I stuck with Verizon and was happy with my droid. Two months (or
so) before the iPhone was released on Verizon, my droid essentially died (left
side of touch screen unusable which rendered the phone useless). I got a
Droid2. At the same time, I got my non-techie fiance a DroidX.

Right after acquiring those two phones, Verizon announced iPhone. So...I
returned them at the 30 day mark. Went to some old phones we had for a month
or so and then got the Verizon version of iPhone a few days before everyone
else.

I DO NOT like the iPhone. My fiance also DOES NOT like the iPhone. I will be
giving mine to our teenager in a month when I have an upgrade available and
she will be giving hers to another kid a few months later with the next
upgrade. I will immediately go back to an android phone, and most likely a
Droid. Why?

1\. Unexpectedly - the droid battery life sucks. That was the major reason I
wanted an iPhone. But, I'm willing to deal with it. In fact, when I actually
USE my iPhone, its battery life isn't substantially better (but still better).
But it's not enough for ME.

2\. I am just old fashioned I guess - I like the physical keyboard. In its
absence, I like swipe. For me, it's just faster to get my emails/sms messages
sent. Forget the keyboard - it's a preference thing. I can get a device on
android WITH a keyboard or WITHOUT a keyboard. I like the options!

3\. Google Maps/Navigation is SPECTACULAR on Android. It's not even comparable
on iPhone. I'm sure I could purchase an iPhone app to make my experience
better...but I refuse! The android app is free, it's awesome and with the
various layers it's just something that I can't live without. I'm very
directionally challenged and that app is a lifesaver that I don't want to live
without.

4\. Little indicator light telling me I have something new. Stupid, right?
That little light saves me from having to unlock the phone and see if I have
something that's new or not. The notification system is just __better __.

5\. Email - I can't (or I don't know how) to reply to an email on the iPhone
and add an attachment.

6\. I used my droid WAY more for voice search and voice navigation. I NEVER
used voice in other areas of the device, such as txt messaging - but I LOVED
it for certain things and I just don't do it on the iPhone. Why? Don't know! I
bet it's there - somehow. For me, it's just not part of the experience.

7\. File/Photo transfer - it was so easy with my droid. Plug it in to my PC -
copy! DONE. I could even copy from my PC back to the phone and it figured it
all out. With iPhone, it seems I have to do everything through iTunes. iTunes
is slow as hell on my PC. I hardly EVER sync the phone via my PC for this
reason.

8\. I don't recall (and maybe I'm wrong???) ever having to delete voicemail on
my droid to free up space.

I have more reasons I'm sure - these are off the top of my head. In the end,
it doesn't really matter. If people are still replying to this thread, I'm
sure some will give me an equal number of reasons why the iPhone is better -
or even challenge some of the reasons why I loved my droid. At the end of the
day, I'm going back to the android platform. I LIKED IT BETTER! I don't REALLY
regret switching, because it allowed me to form my OWN opinion of the two
platforms and come to my own decision.

This is relevant to this conversation because I would PAY the same, or more,
for an android phone over an iPhone. That's MY preference, as a techie, and
that's my fiances preference - and she is definitely NOT a techie. I have very
close friends who just don't get where I'm coming from - that I must be
crazy...to them - enjoy your iDevice. I'll soon be back to enjoying my android
device!

~~~
gte910h
That physical keyboard thing is a huge deal with women with nails (nails don't
trigger the iPhone screen).

While iOS catching up on the notification system, you're right about the
defaults being somewhat better on some android phones for people (sync/maps
especially).

If you don't like apps (sounds like you don't), it's a tossup which phone
you'll like better. iOS has a better browser, sync is better on many (but not
all) android phones, the lack of a physical keyboard is daunting for many,
especially women with nails.

If you just take pictures with the default app, mail, text and use the default
maps app, the higher quality camera in many droids can make it a better device
for you. It's really only when you get into apps themselves (especially 3rd
party apps) does the difference hit you. You and your fiance do not sound like
app people.

That said, if you want to make your phones suck less till you get new ones:

Install PhotoSync to copy your pictures over. Don't even need to plug in.

Install navigon to make driving directions better

If you want new notifications now, either install a GM seed (not recommended)
or jailbreak (a bit of a pain if you're getting rid of the phone), there are
lots of different much better notification schemes on there.

------
tylerneylon
By my calculation, there have been about 130 million Android devices sold to
date, and over 200 million iOS devices (including iPads and iPod touches). I
haven't found an easy way to get these numbers. Here are my sources:

* Apple announced the 200m number at WWDC this year [http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/06/apple-touts-impressive-ios-nu...](http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/06/apple-touts-impressive-ios-numbers-at-wwdc/)

* There have been about 325m smartphones (including iPhones) sold worldwide so far <http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1421013>

* Android has about 40% market share worldwide [http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/09/6820706-andr...](http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/09/6820706-android-market-share-to-surpass-40-percent-this-year)

It looks like iOS still has at least 50% more users than Android.

But none of that matters compared to the one number I find hardest to
determine:

How much money is sent to third-party developers on each platform?

Meaning, how much do customers spend on apps, less percentages sent to the app
store owners? The consistent feedback I've gotten from all Android and iOS
developers is that iOS customers are willing to pay more. (Apple announced
they've given $2.5 billion to developers at WWDC. I can't find the
corresponding Android number.)

~~~
Daniel14
I imagine the number for Android lying significantly lower, because a) it's a
lot harder to pay in the Android market and thus b) more apps are ad-
supported. But I don't think you can ignore the market share trends in favor
of how much money devs get on each platform today. Google is already working
to get carrier billing for apps to more countries, so buying apps on android
will get easier. Given the huge android userbase, it might soon be very smart
to put in the extra effort of programming for Android (especially as you'd be
one of the first to do so).

------
econgeeker
As a developer, what's relevant to me is the addressable platform.

Here the comparison is between a bunch of android phones with a mind boggling
matrix of hardware and OS versions... to just one of the iOS devices.

Having ported an app between the iPhone/iPod and the iPad, and having done the
transition to "retina" resolution, the fragmentation in the iOS universe is
about as much as I'm willing to take.

Is there a single hardware & OS combination for android that is comparable to
the size of the iPhone & iPod touch, iOS 4.x installed base?

I really don't know, and have no idea where I'd go to find out.

The thought of trying to support an android port of my apps, with the
seemingly lower return on investment that the android application stores seems
to give doesn't seem profitable.

~~~
koko775
Ha. You don't know how good you have it. On Android:

* Certain devices decode h.264 wrong and crash, others don't, and it's hard to reproduce and virtually impossible to test

* No, there is no Android device dominating the others. Not even _close_. Program to API 7 or API 8 if you must, but the whole thing's a headache.

* No expectations for resolution

* This freaking bug (ARGH!!!!!!): <http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1353>

* Everything is sized relatively, but the only way to size to a % of the screen (that I've found) is to pad a view with empty views with different weights, and set the middle view to 0dp (density-independent pixels, which, because of some manufacturers' lies and trickery, aren't always density-independent) tall, and have it resize later. But wait! Setting it to 0dp messes up other aspects of resizing!

* The order of operations that Android goes through to resolve layouts, if it's even logical, is incredibly opaque, and at the very least, not at all intuitive. For example, denoting a view "A" to be above another view, let's call it "B", is not the same as denoting view "B" to be below view "A". Now try that with four views, arranged in a T formation. Hellish! And good luck trying to resize an image to clamp its left, top, and right edges to the screen, and crop it at the bottom - it won't work unless you clamp only a corner (i.e. top and left) then have it resize to fill the third clamped dimension, that is unless you're using other special tactics to mess around with other parts of your layout, in which case you'll waste a LOT of time finding the right answer, or one good enough to use.

* The concept of resource overlays in Android is a huge, huge, huge pain in the ass. Possibly necessary given the complete fragmentation of the devices.

* Devices will actually lie to you about their screen dpi/resolution because they think it'll be better

* Some devices might have bad defaults, or not allow you to select a button without tapping it (i.e. with a directional pad) while others will.

* Weak-linking and adding in checks for future functionality is not possible, to my knowledge, on Android. Adding in support for Honeycomb features entails actually not supporting them directly, but proxying them through a compatibility library.

* The error-checking for XML layouts and themes is weak.

* XML layouts and creating views in the equivalent of a view controller is entirely different and the mapping is not 1:1. Combining the approaches piecemeal complicates the whole process enormously.

* Asynchronous data can only really be loaded one way without causing lower-end devices to crash on large datasets, and that is with the whole cursor/content provider ecosystem, which is a poor excuse of an abstraction given Java's power.

* Parsing stuff tends to be dog-slow unless you spend an inordinate amount of time paying attention to it.

* Certain upcoming platforms running Android - and developed by Google itself - don't even support the NDK, which means you can't even dip into C/C++ for performance anymore for said platform.

God, I miss developing on iOS. It's too bad our app got rejected for using In-
App Subscriptions, then rejected for _not_ using In-App Subscriptions.

~~~
econgeeker
I understand the frustration of getting a rejection from Apple, it probably
wouldn't sting as much if they had better bedside manner. When it happened to
me, I was livid for about 5 minutes, thinking it was actually due to a bug on
their end. Then I investigated it and discovered that it was actually my
mistake, and didn't feel so bad. But a little less terseness and I wouldn't
have had that initial anger because I would have correctly understood the
reason for the rejection.

I appreciate greatly the long list of issues you just presented. Despite the
tone of my previous post, I was on the fence about android.

I'm dismayed to hear that google doesnt' seem to be supporting the NDK as much
going forward, as one of the alternative solutions I'd considered was using
the Unity engine. Unity is a game engine, but it can be used to make just
about anything you want, and you could concievably do a regular, say, business
app in it, with the advantage that the same app can be produced for multiple
platforms, including iOS and android.

It seems to me, the way to support android would be to do a web app.
Presumably the browser, being based on webkit, works and is reasonably
targetable. But that limits android as a platform to situations where a web
app works as a business model.

Thanks again!

~~~
koko775
To be clear, the NDK will probably remain supported and first-class on mobile
devices. Given that I have an NDA for the current Android device I'm
targeting, I can't say anything really specific about it, only that the NDK is
not designed to work with it (though it would appear that it does support
JNI). So I wouldn't discount Unity necessarily.

I have half a mind to just write up a new UI framework in OpenGL or something,
and use it as a vehicle to learn OpenGL better, but I don't have the time or
the money to do so, and ultimately I can worth with the stuff that's already
there, albeit with constant frustration and platform angst.

------
esun
I lost my iPhone 3GS last Thursday, used a Blackberry Curve as a loaner until
today, when my Samsung Galaxy S arrived.

I was really surprised how far behind RIM is. I knew it was bad; didn't know
it was that bad.

~~~
canistr
It's because you were using a Curve...

~~~
nestlequ1k
Nah, I used a bold for a week (while I was developing an app for it), and it
was unbelievably bad. I couldn't find a single thing to like about it, however
the most unbelievable thing is you have to reboot the device every time you
install an app.

------
ryandvm
So this _is_ going to play out just like Windows vs Mac.

~~~
jamwt
Yep--low margin but ubiquitous commodity provider vs. high margin but low
market share premium offering.

~~~
kenjackson
One thing I don't get though is that Android phones aren't very low margin.
Their retail price is just as high as an iPhone (or at least close). Even
feature phones aren't cheap.

So do non-iPhone phones not get subsidized at full retail pricing (or
generally much more substantially than the iPhone)?

~~~
jinushaun
With the exception of my gadget geek friends ponying big money for the latest
4G-whatever, everyone I know who has an Android phone got it on a two-for-one
special or nearly free discount. These huge Android growth numbers aren't
being driven by the $300 mega phones.

~~~
blinkingled
Cost of the handset is fraction of the overall 2 yr contract price with data
plans that are must for these devices. I know people are eager to label
Android as "cheap" and "commodity" but the reality is that there are hugely
popular Android handsets in both premium and low cost segments and it isn't
clear at all that all of the sales are from low end handsets.

Similarly Apple sells $49 3GS - so does Apple now become a commodity/cheap
brand?

------
protomyth
I think the more interesting number will hit when the next generation iPhone
shows up and, if history is a guide, Verizon gets an "entry level" iPhone. If
Apple is able to produce a phone that Verizon can do the same deal AT&T is
doing (free + 2 year contract), then we will get a real feel for what the
trend will be.

Nokia might also finally get a boost in the US market thanks to Microsoft's
help.

~~~
zmmmmm
Look I know there is this perennial argument that somehow it just can't be
true that people actually want Android phones and there must be some external
reason why not everybody is buying an iPhone. At some point you've just got to
give it up : people buy Androids because they want them. They want them more
than iPhones.

~~~
protomyth
No, I know people who wanted the Android phones, and I expect a market for
Android phones. I know quite a few people who still like Blackberry and have
taken the "free" phone when AT&T was offering some BB models that way. I want
to know the % of the audience that is in the "I don't care" category and would
take an iPhone if it were the free phone. I expect that some people might have
and older iPod and think of this as a cheap replacement.

(no clue on the down voting - seems like you cannot even imply free is a
factor)

------
bonch
Isn't it odd how the media always compares an entire operating system platform
to one phone? When iPads and iPod touches are counted, iOS far surpasses
Android. It's weird for them not to count mobile operating systems as a whole
and instead focus on a single type of device they run on.

~~~
nl
You keep stating this (in this thread), but it's not that simple.

Apple has sold 200m+ iOS devices in total (June 2011[1]). This includes around
60M iPod Touch's and 20M iPads[2]. There have been over 100m Android devices
sold (May 2011[3]).

In the phone market, the typical contract is around 2 years, and the iPhone
has been around a lot longer than Android. A larger number of the iOS devices
sold are no longer in user than is the case for Android (simply because it has
been in the market longer).

This can be seen by things like iOS vs Android usage statistics, where Android
is about to pass iOS (note that this _includes all iOS devices_ ):
[http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-
monthly-201006-20110...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-
monthly-201006-201106). I'd be surprised if iOS stayed ahead of Android this
year in usage, even including the iPhone 5 bump.

[1] [http://www.appleguider.com/article/wwdc-2011-200m-ios-
device...](http://www.appleguider.com/article/wwdc-2011-200m-ios-
devices-14b-app-downloads-and-other-milestones.html)

[2] [http://www.razorianfly.com/2011/04/19/apple-outs-q2-sales-
fi...](http://www.razorianfly.com/2011/04/19/apple-outs-q2-sales-figures-in-
samsung-complaint-108m-iphone-60m-ipod-touch-19m-ipads-sold/)

[3] [http://yourmobilesite.net/100-million-active-android-
devices...](http://yourmobilesite.net/100-million-active-android-devices-is-
android-taking-over-the-world/)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The gs.statcounter.com stats for iOS only count "mobile" devices, i.e. it
excludes iPads.

~~~
nl
I've seen this mentioned elsewhere, but I can't see anything on the
Statcounter site that confirms it.

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-
monthly-201006-...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-
monthly-201006-201106) breaks browser usage for iPod and iPhones out
explicitly, and the sum of those both is less than the total iOS usage in
[http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-
monthly-201006-20110...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-
monthly-201006-201106)

I could be wrong, but if I am then it would be a weird thing to do - it would
mean that Statcounter doesn't list iPad usage anywhere (eg, the other browser-
by-version graphs exclude mobile Safari)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
For the last three days: iOS = 19.98%, iPhone = 15.14% , iPod Touch = 4.76% ,
iPhone + iPod Touch = 19.90%.

The difference is only 0.08% of mobile usage, so either they don't count iPad
usage as part of Mobile at all and that's just a rounding error, or they count
it as drastically lower than the 1% (of all browsing, not just mobile) that
other sources are quoting for iPad browser share.

Actually, you can tell they do count iPad as part of the normal, non-mobile,
browser graph. It's small enough that it gets bundled into "Other" on the
browser versions graph, but if you download the CSV data it's called out
separately, currently at 0.73% of all browsing and the total they give for all
versions of Safari combined wouldn't add up unless they counted the iPad
versions in with the desktop versions.

------
gte910h
This is phone only share. Accounting for non-phone use, it's not even close,
android is still behind.

iPodTouches are very popular replacements for gaming platforms for
children/young adults (crowding out the nintendo DS), and there is the iPad,
while blackberry/android tablets aren't doing well (Galaxy tab had a 16%
return rate).

~~~
dhjson
_Accounting for non-phone use, it's not even close, android is still behind._

That sounds reasonable, but do you have any sources?

~~~
mmorris
The only market share numbers I've seen recently that included non-phone
devices were straight from Apple (so feel free to take it with a grain of salt
if you'd like). They have iOS at 44%, with Android at 28%.

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/06/ios-number-one-
mo...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/06/ios-number-one-mobile-
operating-system-says-apple.php)

~~~
smackfu
Wow, that is a lot closer than I thought, considering how many cheap iPod
touches Apple sells.

