

Steve Wozniak: Android will be the dominant smartphone platform - citizenkeys
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/18/steve-wozniak-android-will-be-the-dominant-smartphone-platform/

======
robinwarren
I've been thinking a bit about this recently as I've seen a number of people
getting android devices because they were offered them as an upgrade when they
renewed their contract. They weren't interested in spending money to get an
iPhone but liked the idea of a decent browsing experience etc. All of them are
happy with the device they have been given. Apple will become the Apple of the
phone market much as it was the Apple of personal computer market.

I'm think maybe some Apple fans expect iPhone to be the thing which makes the
rest of the world wake up and switch to Apple products. It's not. It was
innovative and it meant a number of people who would never have bought a smart
phone before did so. But Apple don't seem intent on capturing the mass market.

~~~
lukestevens
_Apple will become the Apple of the phone market much as it was the Apple of
personal computer market._

I understand the sentiment here, but I don't think it's true. There was a
recent quote from El Jobso (can't find off hand, sorry) saying that Apple
actually sat on the top end of the market with the Mac (in his absence), got
greedy, failed to innovate, and suffered.

Instead, look at what they did with the iPod. They didn't just remain as a
high-end mp3 player, they developed products which covered nearly the spectrum
of the marketplace, while still remaining the high-end brand.

I think past will be prologue, but it should be the iPod, not the Mac, that
will be the best example. That said, when you're taking 50% of the profit in
the market with just a 4% share, there's not a lot of reason to be
particularly unhappy with your current position!

~~~
robinwarren
Fair point about their dominance of the mp3 player market, but I think the
mobile phone market is a lot closer to PCs. More people have computers or
expect to own one than have mp3 players. Pretty much everyone is going to get
a mobile phone. Possibly we'll even see android phones start to compete with
Apple as mp3 players.

I should perhaps have made it clearer I don't think Apple particularly care
about the mass market or consider their position as losing. Why not be happy
with what is viewed as a premium product by part of the market, charge extra
and make additional revenue as a result?

------
mattparcher
Update: Woz gave Engadget clarification, saying:

 _"Almost every app I have is better on the iPhone._

[He expects Android] _"to be a lot like Windows... it can get greater
marketshare and still be crappy."_

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/18/exclusive-woz-
misquoted-a...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/18/exclusive-woz-misquoted-
almost-every-app-that-i-have-is-bette/)

~~~
martythemaniak
So he clarified by saying.... it'll be the dominant platform. But he likes his
iPhone.

I don't really understand what the argument is here. A year ago we could have
tried to guess whether Android would have taken off or not, but the fact is
that Android-based phones are already massively outselling iPhones and
BlackBerrys and nothing Apple or RIM have up their sleeves is likely to change
that.

The reason is very simple - Apple offers a one-size-fits-all solution and one
size doesn't fit all. I like large-screen phones, but Steve jobs says 3.5 is
large enough. Do I force myself to like what Jobs likes, or just go and buy
something I like? Examples like this are endless: Don't like iTunes? Don't
like the boring icon-grid screen on the iphone? Annoyed by pop-up
notifications? Think Swype is better the a conventional keyboard? Well it
doesn't matter. It's Apple's way or the highway, and a lot of people are
taking the highway.

~~~
redrobot5050
The reason is even simpler than that. In the US, only one carrier has the
iPhone. Not everyone is going to want AT&T, or can get AT&T. They have an
Android phone because their cell phone vendor says "This is our version of the
iPhone". Or, after looking at Nokia's OS, or Verizon's OS, and seeing Android,
they're taking the obvious choice.

And just because a phone runs android doesn't mean its in the same class an
iPhone. A lot of the $99-$150 Android phones that ran 1.6 (back in the days of
the iPhone 3GS being top of the line) definitely did not compare.

~~~
martythemaniak
Yes, in the US "apple's way or the highway" includes AT&T, but as I said in
reply to this excellent comment
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1918854>), most discussion on HN is
ridiculously US-centric. In other countries, selling unlocked contract-less
phones is common and Android will still dominate because it can cater to
people's needs better.

~~~
redrobot5050
That was an excellent comment (the one you're linking to, to be clear.)

Mindshare >= Marketshare, tho. Android can cater to specific needs, but where
ever Apple goes, the market will follow. (At least, in the US centric world)

Check out <http://www.marco.org/980434663> to expand upon my point.

------
ryanlchan
I agree, but for entirely different reasons. Android will win for one reason
alone: China.

There are 900 million people with cell phones in China. It is currently and
will continue to be the biggest cell phone market on the planet. However, the
market's fragmented to little bits; shanzai phone here, nokia there, motorola
sprinkled in between. But there are two driving forces common to all of the
successful phones in China.

1) Price 2) Adaptation to local needs

Shanzai (unbranded local phones) came out and took massive market share by
having an almost immediate feedback loop with which to respond to customer
demand. Want two sim chips? You got it. Want a phone so loud it turns into a
boom box? We can do that. Can you imagine Steve Jobs making these concessions?

MediaTek is cranking out Android capable SoC that bring the price of a
smartphone down to $150 - unsubsidized. This is a price level that allows
Android to go Shanzai - a very scary proposition for any large handset player.
What now separates these 'low end' phones from the high end? They're not
perfectly designed by Jonathan Ive, they're not super intuitive, they're not
4g, but they're good enough for China. Remember how Flip came out and just
decimated traditional video recorders? It was good enough. MediaTek's $150
android phones are good enough.

If you really want to put the nail in the coffin, realize that if they're good
enough for China, they're probably good enough for Africa, for South America,
and beyond. The iPhone might retain the high end crown, but Android will
undoubtedly become the dominant global smartphone platform.

~~~
martythemaniak
Almost all arguments on HN on this topic are ridiculously US-centric. As you
can see from other comments, people wonder how the iphone can be "expensive"
when it's "$199" vs "$179" for the Samsung Galaxy S.

HTC sent me a free Tattoo last year - 2.8" resistive screen, 340x240
resolution, slow processor etc. Any iPhone user (including myself - I kept on
using my 1st gen iphone) would have snubbed this crummy phone, except there's
hundreds of millions of people in the rest of the world who'll have phones
like this as their first smartphone.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I just bought a £100 (not on contract) Android that blows away my iPhone 3G.

I wasn't really expecting it to, I bought it as a stop-gap while I waited for
the Nexus S and heard it was a good developer friendly device for the price
but it's surpassed my expectations greatly.

Related to the grandparent, this phone (Orange San Francisco) was made by ZTE,
the Chinese telecoms giant who I've heard were originally blackballed from the
Open Handset Alliance because HTC etc. were worried that they would provide
too much price competition.

------
asmithmd1
Woz is a great engineer but I don't know about his market prediction skills.
Anyone remember his last company, Wheels of Zues? I didn't think so. It was
some kind of low power wireless, mesh network, GPS something. I am sure it was
fun to play with but not really a product.

~~~
theandym
I agree as well. While he has had a big impact on technology I don't see the
domain expertise to justify his assertions. He is just another person trying
to make a guess about something that no one can accurately predict.

~~~
asmithmd1
I like Alan Kay's quote the best: "The best way to predict the future is to
invent it."

I think I will get back to that

------
johnmmix
Android won't become the dominant platform if for no other reasons than:

(a) The carriers won't let _any_ platform become dominant, as the owner of
that platform would then be able to dictate terms. The original Apple/AT&T
iPhone deal was probably a one-off that only happened because (i) Apple had a
markedly superior product to anyone else at the time, and (ii) AT&T wanted to
increase their market share. [Happy to be corrected on that latter point - I'm
not in the USA, and I'm only going off what I've read online.] The failure for
Apple & Verizon to come to any sort of similar agreement is more likely to be
down to Verizon not wanting to give ground, than technical issues like CDMA.
The carriers actively encourage alternative platforms as a means of playing
divide-and-conquer against the manufacturers - look at how AT&T is the US
launch partner for Windows Mobile 7 rather than one of the other carriers;
AT&T clearly don't want to be (or be seen as) locked hand-in-hand with the
iPhone.

(b) Google won't want Android to be dominant either, as this would bring
political threats in terms of antitrust and the risk of being broken up. It's
far better for Android to "just" be market-leading or profitable, as this
wouldn't attract such negative attention. And of course, if Google services
also appear on other platforms such as iOS, then they're not completely losing
out.

Have a look at this Asymco post for some more points against a dominant
platform: [http://www.asymco.com/2010/08/19/talk-of-mobile-dominance-
is...](http://www.asymco.com/2010/08/19/talk-of-mobile-dominance-is-bunk/)

~~~
robinwarren
re (b) I don't know that Google can control that well enough. I'd think it
more likely they'd control the appearance of being #1 than they'd actually be
able to stop it happening.

------
jsz0
I don't agree with him. I think things will remain highly segmented for many
years to come. Mobile devices are far more personal than desktops and there's
less chance of a one-size-fits-all solution. I don't see any killer app that
is going to make one platform vastly superior to another. It's not like the
old days of PCs where you needed a DOS/Windows PC to run your applications and
there wasn't much choice to the end user or enterprise user. These days many
enterprises are giving their employees a choice of different SmartPhone
platforms exactly because there is no one-size-fits all. In the consumer space
it's even more of a wild card but the same theory applies. There's simply not
enough lock-in to allow one company to become dominant. You can easily jump
from an iPhone, to Android, to WM7, and back to iPhone without losing any
major functionality.

I would agree that Android based platforms will likely be the single biggest
player but that's not exactly the same as being a dominant, homogeneous,
platform in the style of Windows. We could see the Android handset market
evolve (or devolve) into a Symbian-like future where the operating systems
share some common DNA but are effectively different platforms. For example
Sony's possible PSP phone with games incompatible with other Android phones.
You can technically still call it Android but in reality it will be "baed on
Android" This is something that was never really possible with Windows. I
don't know if we'll be able to group all these Android based platforms
together in any meaningful way in the future. The differences between Android
Device A and Android Device B might be as meaningful as the difference between
iOS and Android.

------
DanHulton
> Eventually, he thinks that Android quality, consistency, and user
> satisfaction will match iOS.

Oh, I'm not so sure about that. The biggest problem Android app developers
have now is the wicked fragmentation on the platform, and that's only going to
go UP as more handhelds come out.

When you target iOS, you know the capabilities of pretty much every generation
are pretty similar going in, and that's all you have to worry about. With
Android, you have to ask - Does this model even HAVE a keyboard?

EDIT: Okay, because I'm being modded down into hell, then why doesn't Android
have Netflix? Oh that's right, device fragmentation:

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/netflix-on-your-android-
dev...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/netflix-on-your-android-device-
platform-fragmentation-strikes-again/2625)

Netflix is on your computer, your Xbox 360, your Wii, your PS3, and on your
iPhone, but NOT on Android and the Netflix devs themselves say "fragmentation"
is the issue.

Sure, the keyboard was a silly example, but it's not like it's not a problem.

~~~
vetinari
Do you have practical experience with that, or are you just repeating what you
read on the internet?

~~~
DanHulton
What? Just last week there was a flurry of stories where Android app
developers were complaining about device fragmentation. Studies done that show
the breakdown of devices, features, screen sizes, etc.

You know, occasionally you _can_ trust what you read on the internet.

~~~
biafra
As if the iPhone/iOS-Platform had no fragmentation:

1\. different OS versions (The classic won't get 4.x and some users never
upgrade) 2\. different features on the same version (3G with 4.x has no
multitasking) 3\. different screen sizes (480x320, 1024x768, 960x640)

~~~
blub
Any sane developer would pick iPhone fragmentation over Android fragmentation.
I should know, I develop on a platform that's even more fragmented than
Android.

Google and Android fans refuse to acknowledge the impact of fragmentation as
much as they can, but it's there and it's going to get worse. Look at what the
Android developers are saying tough (even here on HN): it's more time
consuming and it costs more to develop for Android than for the iPhone.

------
davidedicillo
Sure, and I'm sure that it can do that with the iPhone keep increasing their
sales as well. There is a huge market of dumb-phones that Android will slowly
erode and make its.

------
camiller
In 2006 MySpace was the dominate social networking site...

~~~
redrobot5050
Your point? MySpace was free, and the cost of switching to another social
network was fairly low.

Most phones in the US have 1 or 2 year contracts with ETFs. Outside the US,
the unsubsidized phone price is quite expensive, rougly to $500-$600 USD.

What I'm saying is your comparison doesn't really apply. It's actually even
worse than the "Apple vs. Microsoft 2.0" or "Open vs. Closed" debates.

~~~
camiller
The argument was not that X phone on carrier Y will be dominant but that the
Android OS in general would be.

Two years is a pretty short time frame in the grand scheme of things, MySpace
was dominant in 2006 but it wasn't an overnight switch to Facebook. My whole
point is that things continue to change, there is no winner if the race never
ends.

------
torme
Is there an actual quote from him saying it will be the dominant platform? The
article seems to be lacking that. In fact, there aren't really any quotes in
here that even hint at him damning or praising one platform over the other.
It'd be interesting to know what he actually said.

------
grammaton
Why is this considered an amazing insight? If you could get an iphone on more
than one carrier there might actually be something to discuss here. Android is
due to win simply because there are more people who can get it at any one
time.

~~~
cryptoz
> Android is due to win simply because there are more people who can get it at
> any one time.

This is true due to cost, not carriers. The iPhone is available on most (all?)
carriers in Canada. In fact, the USA is, I think, the only place in the world
that has the carrier problem with iPhone. And since the USA is only ~5% of the
world's population, that particular problem isn't very significant in the
grand scheme of things.

More people are able to get Android phones than iPhones because there are
price variations in the Android ones that allow people with little money to
buy an Android phone.

~~~
ergo98
Here's the discount argument.

Just to be clear, so people can sign up for $3000+ contracts, but they just
can't afford that $159 for the iPhone 4? (on contract at Rogers. Or they can
get the 3GS for $99)

That ridiculous argument doesn't pass the most superficial of consideration.

Further, the Galaxy S costs $179 on contract. I guess it's for the really
rich. Even the miserable Dell streak is $149. The Blackberry Torch pushes in
at $229.

If cost were a serious factor, Apple would have long had a iPhone 4LE or
something of that sort. Right now they know it doesn't make a difference.

~~~
cryptoz
Coming soon to Canada: an Android phone for $50.

[http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/03/lg-gw620-eve-coming-to-
ro...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/03/lg-gw620-eve-coming-to-rogers-
android-deftly-avoids-atandt-yet-ag/)

Even if there aren't many cheap Android phones out there right now, the
_potential_ is there and will be exploited. There'll probably never be a cheap
iPhone, however.

~~~
ergo98
Still, though, it's $50 _on a 3-year contract_ , over which time thousands of
dollars will be paid in tithe to the mobile company.

In smartphone pricing anything below $200 (in a contract) is a wash, because
very few people actually buy their phone outside of a term. And yes, that
includes internationally.

 _There'll probably never be a cheap iPhone, however_

There's this myth that Apple just never lowers themselves to becoming the
discount option.

Except with the iMac, which became popular because it was a cheap, all-in-one
computer.

Except with the iPod and iPod Touch, which have always led the entire category
in value.

Except for the iPad, which still can't be matched by competitors.

Except with Apple TV.

Except with the iPhone, compared to the Blackberry competition at the time.

Apple plays a great value game. That they are considered some sort of BMW of
electronics is laughable. They are the Toyota of electronics: Great products,
but if you really think they're exclusive...

~~~
johnmmix
> Apple plays a great value game. That they are considered some sort of BMW of
> electronics is laughable. They are the Toyota of electronics: Great
> products, but if you really think they're exclusive...

In some markets such as the UK, BMW models such as the 3-series outsell all
the comparable vehicles from 'mainstream' manufacturers (e.g. Ford Mondeo,
Vauxhall/Opel [GM] Insignia, Toyota Avensis, Honda Accord), so comparing Apple
and BMW as examples of false exclusivity isn't necessarily that far off the
mark.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DeLarge/Top_10_best_sellin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DeLarge/Top_10_best_selling_cars_in_Britain#2009)

