
A Murky Road Ahead for Android, Despite Market Dominance - ddlatham
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/technology/personaltech/a-murky-road-ahead-for-android-despite-market-dominance.html
======
fenaer
_What if a significant number of the people who adopted Android as their first
smartphone move on to something else as they become power users? In Apple’s
last two earnings calls, Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive, reported “a
higher rate of switchers than we’ve experienced in previous iPhone cycles.”_

Are they trying to insinuate that power users move to iOS? I'd consider myself
a power user, but for that very reason I've stuck with Android. Higher-end
Android phones provide much more for me than iOS can with its closed-
ecosystem.

Also, are these "switchers" coming from Android, or a mix of other sources?

~~~
bane
If I had to bet, it's probably Apple finally getting around to offering a
phone product in the size that people want. For years, if you wanted a large
phone your choice was only Android.

~~~
earlz
And now the situation is reversed, if you want a normal size (ie, less than 6
inches) phone, Apple is starting to be the only company in business that
delivers powerful hardware in a non-phablet form-factor

~~~
bitskits
I assume you're comparing only Nexus devices, because the breadth of Android
devices in different sizes is by no means limited.

~~~
soylentcola
Yeah, I've got a Moto X and while it's not particularly small, it's basically
the non-phablet version of the Nexus 6 with a few minor differences.

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jonathansizz
It's an interesting time. Android 5.1 is easily the strongest version of
Android that Google have ever produced; in terms of design, functionality and
performance the bar has been raised several notches. The big problem that
remains is getting it onto devices is a timely manner. This also reared its
head on several devices that received 5.0 early, only to have fairly serious
bugs that were not rectified for weeks or months until the next update finally
rolled out.

Android Wear is the most complete smartwatch OS, backed up by a solid
selection of hardware. Chrome OS continues to show strong growth, with
Chromebooks and Chromecasts selling very well. Will we see more integration
between Chrome and Android? Will Google try to directly interfere with third-
party app stores and launchers?

~~~
danieldk
> The big problem that remains is getting it onto devices is a timely manner.

This. I own devices from a manufacturer that supposedly uses close to vanilla
Android to roll out quick updates. My Moto X 2013 is still rocking 4.4.4,
despite the fact that it was just over a year old when Lollipop came out.

My Moto X 2014 (also pure) has Lollipop, but the bugfix releases (5.0.1 and
5.0.2) were never rolled out. The rumor is that 5.1 is now rolling out in
Brazil (I am in the EU) and one US carrier. It's been 2.5 months since 5.1 was
released.

No surprise that my next phone will either be a Nexus or an iPhone (I used an
iPhone 3G and then 4 for years, and always had prompt updates).

The counterargument is always: the user does not care about updates. But I
assume that people who drop 500 Euro on a smartphone care more than those who
buy low-end.

~~~
jdhawk
> the user does not care about updates.

The Manufacturer does not care about updates. It nets them no cash flows.
Delay the updates, force people to buy new phones for new (software) features.

~~~
thedrbrian
Now if Apple did that it'd be called planned obsolescence and every tech blog
would be breathlessly bleating about it.

~~~
jdhawk
Apple controls everything in their walled garden.

Android controls next to nothing - so you can pass the buck pretty well.

------
Ologn
I've been seeing these gloom and doom articles on Android since its launch.
Nowadays at least they have to have the reality of the situation included - "A
Murky Road Ahead for Android, _Despite Market Dominance_ ". "Android is now
not just the globe’s most popular smartphone operating system, but the most
popular operating system of any kind. More than a billion Android devices were
sold in 2014". It doesn't seem so gloomy to me.

At least nowadays these Android gloom-and-doom articles have stopped saying
that Microsoft is going to come out and crush Google in mobile. Microsoft's
threat has been reduced to being involved in cloning what Google did - "One
software start-up, Cyanogen, has raised about $100 million from several
investors, including Google’s arch-competitor Microsoft, to sell phone makers
an alternative user interface that works on top of Google’s Android."

~~~
dangoor
FWIW, there have been iPhone doom and gloom articles since _its_ launch. Maybe
it's just that doom and gloom articles get clicks?

~~~
georgemcbay
I'm sure that's the reason. Doom and gloom headlines for any kind of platform
or brand identity is perfect as clickbait because it sucks in both the
opponents of that thing (due to schadenfreude purposes) and proponents of that
thing (who want to see what is being said so they can refute it and be
outraged by its wrongness).

"Apple Phones and Android Phones both pretty cool and here to stay for the
foreseeable future." just ain't going to get clicked like any of these doom
and gloom ones (in either direction) are.

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zmanian
As a free software proponent, I've spent most of the time promoting Android to
my friends.

Android(Non-Nexus) is a toxic hellstew of surveillance and security
vulnerabilities.

I'm currently recommending iPhones or Nexus only to my friends.

Google could do a lot to improve this but the carrier relationship with
handset manufacturers allow them to MITM the CA systems through root certs and
that is god damn unacceptable.

~~~
higherpurpose
It's also why the rumor that Nexus devices would get 2 years of OS updates and
one extra year of security updates (3 years) makes me want to stick with Nexus
devices, despite some of their annoying shortcomings such as worse cameras
(than high-end competition).

Two years of OS updates (2 major OS versions, since they do them yearly now) +
another year of security updates seems quite ideal and I'd hope more OEMs
adopt that. Unfortunately even if they do, they won't do it for _all_ of their
phones, only their flagships, which means lie 80% of the Android smartphone
population won't benefit from it.

~~~
ac29
>Two years of OS updates (2 major OS versions, since they do them yearly now)
+ another year of security updates seems quite ideal

As someone who has recently had to support some Windows XP systems, I have to
say Microsoft has set a high bar for support. XP was released in 2001,
received major updates for 7 years until 2008 with SP3, and received security
updates until 2014, a total of 13 years. Some customers are still receiving
special security updates.

While Windows XP is not exactly a desirable OS in 2015 for many reasons, its
sad that 3 years of security updates is seen as progress in the smartphone
world, and I say that as an Android user with a perfectly functional phone
facing EOL this year (a 2013 Nexus 4). I'm hoping google can wrestle enough
control from OEMs and carriers to be able to support their OSs for 5+ years
with at least security updates. Its not without precedent, they supported
Chrome on XP until at least this year -- on a 14 year old OS.

------
mkawia
TL:DR

A lot of poor people use android , poor people don't spend a lot and don't
click many ads.Therefore Android is doomed.

~~~
pacofvf
maybe you didn't read the article it says that Google also benefits from iOS
users(although it says it's a risk that they lose the higher end niche), and
the "poor" people are the ones actually ditching the google ecosystem
entirely. The article never talks about poor people, instead it refers to
places where google services are unavailable/unpopular, e.g. China.

edit: For those down voting, could you please quote the part of the article
that implies this: " A lot of poor people use android , poor people don't
spend a lot and don't click many ads.Therefore Android is doomed."

it actually contradicts the parent comment: " For years, Android apps were a
backwater, but sales have lately picked up."

"In 2014, Google Play sold about $10 billion in apps, of which Google kept
about $3 billion (the rest was paid out to developers). "

"Google’s app revenue is becoming an increasingly meaningful piece of its
overall business, and it is also growing rapidly."

~~~
bduerst
This article commits a composition fallacy and ignores that Android is the
cost-leader.

Yes, as the #1 low-cost solution you're going to have users you don't make a
return from, but you have enough users that as a sum you make returns.
Android's strategy isn't to maximize returns from each user.

It's a subjective article and doesn't really provide anything insightful
beyond FUD of the future.

~~~
s73v3r
Google's strategy isn't to maximize returns from each user, but what about
developers?

~~~
bduerst
>Google's strategy

Android's strategy isn't to maximize returns from each user, not Google. It's
all market driven. Google _is_ trying to maximize returns for each AdWords
user, for example.

App developers all have their own markets and their own strategies which are
mostly irrelevant here.

------
BinaryIdiot
I wonder if Google will need to, eventually, move away from Java or if it's
simply impossible at this point. I've owned an Android device with every
version of Android so far (all flagship devices) as well as iOS devices and I
find it difficult that Android still has that annoying (but occasional) lag
that everyone equates to Java and garbage collection (though with so many
initiatives from Google to eliminate this I have to wonder if it's really
garbage collection that's the problem). I see this on my wife's S6 Edge and on
my Moto X 2014 both running Lollipop.

iOS is always buttery smooth and while I enjoy the power and flexibility of
Android FAR more than iOS it's hard not to get distracted by the occasional
lag / hiccup that I've seen on every single Android device I've ever owned or
tested.

I also find it annoying that Google doesn't seem to be able to focus on
delivering a full user experience. For instance Android Wear let's you respond
to test messages but you can't if your phone uses the default Messages app on
the phone (I had to download Google's or almost any third party SMS
application to do it). Such a flagship product with features being advertised
that you can't use by default on most of their phones is just...dumb.

~~~
on_and_off
> that everyone equates to Java and garbage collection It is a very complex
> problem and there I don't think it is possible to simply point at Java or GC
> as the culprits. It has more to do with how the platform architecture has
> been thought out and the lack of focus at that time on overall fluidity. The
> Sky experiment by the Dart team (so another GC language) shows a very
> interesting attempt at designing a runtime for 120 fps apps. The core idea
> of this project could very well be rewritten in Java.

------
fidotron
It's interesting to see a wider acceptance of the reality of the mess of
Android.

Really the shocking thing was how good the iPhone 6 was, and how ready to
switch to iOS places like Korea were when the larger devices became available,
when previously it had been assumed those markets were lost to Apple. The
emerging social class type distinction emerging globally between Android and
iOS users is a real and growing problem for Google, especially combined with
Apple's probable search engine launch.

The noise from my network in Android land has been that Lollipop remains a
disaster. Easily the worst version since Android became popular, and it will
be very curious to see what, if anything, Google have proposed for the
resulting mess at I/O.

It says quite a lot that the most exciting thing about Android for I/O is the
rumoured stripped down headless version for Internet-of-Things devices, which
may become an accidental foundation for a cleaned up future Android proper.

~~~
tompagenet2
I don't have the contacts to know if my opinions with Android are even vaguely
representative. I'm interested in what your network think is wrong with
Android Lollipop, and without any sarcasm or snideness can I please ask who
your network represents just to get a sense of how representative it is?

~~~
bane
From a user who's devices just all upgraded a short while ago, it has all the
usability problems of the new google maps. Things are more
animated/transition-y/slid-y, but hell if I can figure out what to push or
where a desired setting is.

It looks great, but it's not great for usability.

~~~
izacus
Can you elaborate more? Since I'm finding Lollipop significantly more usable
in pretty much all respects - UI is more thought out, runs faster, battery
life has significantly improved, dead Wifi detection is more reliable, timed
audio profiles are a godsend...

Can you be a bit more specific? Are you perhaps using a Samsung TouchWiz
device, where Samung pretty much removed most of AOSP UI improvements?

~~~
bane
Here's a quick example, on my shield tablet, when videos fullscreen, the
button to make it go full-screen/embedded disappear for no reason after a few
seconds when it's full screened, meaning to escape a full-screen video, I have
to hit the home or back buttons. This is a new behavior and super annoying.

On my phone, under settings, there's no obvious button to push to change wi-fi
settings. There's a skeumorphic switch to turn it off and on, but no obvious
button. In fact there's no obvious button for all the settings, just the label
and an icon, but apparently if you push the label for Wi-Fi it's actually a
button, but there's literally no affordance that it is such a thing.

Strangely, when you dive deep and view the app info for an individual app,
there's buttons and pushable things everywhere.

The new google apps are a mess as well. Here's the process to change users in
the gmail app

1) hit the hamburger menu (what could be there?) A panel slides out, which for
some reason doesn't go all the way across the screen, because I need that 20%
of my inbox that shows me nothing at all to stay visible

2) I have 3 colored circles with faceless people icons, they switch between
three of my accounts, where are the others? I have no idea which one is which,
so I push one, get dragged in the inbox for that one, but it doesn't tell me
which one I'm in until I hit the hamburger menu again.

3) I'm of course not in the right one, and the one I want to be in is not one
of the three choices. Where to now?

4) I see a list of folders, labels, and other crap, does it scroll? Apparently
it does (oh, and apparently settings is all the way at the bottom of that
scroll list, that will be easy to find) but there's no indication that it's a
scrollable thing.

5) Nope, no list of accounts to choose from. Where to now?

6) Oh...the name of the account that _I 'm currently in_ is a thing I can push
(again no affordance) and if I push that for some reason the little down arrow
triangle next to my account name turns to face up and a list of user accounts
appear. I thought the arrow was just telling me to look down for stuff about
my account. In other GUI metaphors, a down arrow means a selection list is
unrolled, so it turning up means that something should have rolled back up.
Why do I push my account name to find other account names?

Absolutely a mess.

I could go on, maps is something I use almost daily and it's a similarly
painful experience. It's like google just said "fuck it, bury it all under
hamburger menus". But didn't google get rid of the menu button on new android
phones to force designers not to bury stuff under the equivalent? Remember
when android devices had a built in menu button _and_ a search button? Now
that garbage clutters up every app screen and lazy designers just bury stuff
under them. At least with the menu button I knew what to press to look for
options. Now I can't even figure out what's a button, and the buttons they do
show use faceless icons that mean nothing.

The new chrome also, with it's "let's have every web page be an activity on
the app stack" is terrible. Now I have to thumb through a pile of long-since
closed apps to find the web page I was reading yesterday. Thank goodness
somebody had the good thinking to revert that nonsense.

It goes on and on, hiding needed interface options under 2 or 3 deep layers of
hamburgers, making buttons invisible, weirdly out of place skeuomorphic
sliders, removing affordances...hell, I have to hit "agree" _every single
time_ I turn on the location finding thing to consent to location sharing.
_EVERY_ _SINGLE_ _TIME_.

They've completely lost the plot.

~~~
Yhippa
> In fact there's no obvious button for all the settings, just the label and
> an icon, but apparently if you push the label for Wi-Fi it's actually a
> button, but there's literally no affordance that it is such a thing.

This annoys me. I see what they were trying to do by giving you more options
but the touch target for small for the label button that I fat-finger this a
lot and end up doing something like turning off Wi-Fi.

------
krisgenre
I am sure Android helped them collect data to improve their Maps, Google Now,
retain people on Google search, Gmail, Drive.. and to some extent even
Google+.

Google's biggest strength is their huge data and Android definitely helps them
there.

------
RyanMcGreal
> About one of every two computers sold today is running Android.

So, like, half of them?

------
Zigurd
This article takes a rather strained and artificial angle: It ignores revenue
from Google getting to place Google Search, Google Maps, etc. on a billion
devices each year. Then, it attributes Google Play revenue to Android. I can
buy movies from Google Play on my PC. Profit from media sales are probably
greater than profit from app sales.

~~~
millstone
It does not ignore Search or Play:

> ...Google collected about $11.8 billion on mobile search ads in 2014, with
> about 75 percent coming from ads on iPhones and iPads... 2014, Google Play
> sold about $10 billion in apps, of which Google kept about $3 billion

Yes, I can buy Google Play media on other devices, including my iPhone, but
surely non-Android Google Play revenue is a rounding error.

The claim about "a billion devices per year" is false - around 30% of Android
sales are forked AOSP, which Google does not allow Maps on. The concern is
that these forked variants are most popular in growth markets.

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throwaway_97
My main problem with android is the play store. Its so heavily localised with
crappy apps and many bad attempts at trying to find the right things for me. I
miss out a lot.

~~~
MBCook
Come over to the iPhone side of the fence where...

no, we're flooded with crap too. Tons and tons of it.

I like the walled garden, I like the idea of curation. I just wish Apple would
really enforce them. It takes a single search in the iOS store to easily find
stuff that is either illegal or just copied junk.

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Oletros
I like the part about iOS representing the 75% of mobile ad revenue for Google
without even linking to the source

Yes, some analyst at Goldman says something in a report and now is an stated
fact like I'm saying in some other sites.

