
Android Won. Windows Lost - cramforce
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/12/android-won-windows-lost-now-what-the-battle-of-the-century-is-decided-microsoft-relegated-to-ever-s.html
======
zmmmmm
The big problem I have with this kind of analysis is that it's all
extrapolation based on existing conditions, with the assumption that nothing
disruptive will happen from here on out. You could have done the same analysis
at various points in time and concluded that Windows Mobile, Symbian,
Blackberry and iOS were all going to dominate the future. The very nature of
technology is disruptive and we simply cannot predict what's going to happen
next.

Having said that, if this vision does come to fruition, I think it is a
wonderful thing for humanity. The fact that the OS that comes to dominate the
planet is free, open source and available on (nearly)equal terms to everyone
from the most powerful and rich on the planet to the most poor and deprived is
a truly amazing and awesome feat. A few years ago I looked at the growth of
iOS and truly feared that humanity was headed for a very different future -
one where the poor were separated and disenfranchised by their inability to
afford access to the dominant mobile platform and the rich were slavishly
bound to the constraints of a locked down and tightly controlled ecosystem
where all decisions made would be in the interest of the largest company on
earth. This latter future did not come to pass, and I am very glad for that
(even as I admire and love using Apple products).

~~~
ddw
Yeah, when he gets into Android forecasts for 2014 with one in every four
people or whatever - a bit much.

But like you I think its pretty amazing that I can put the same OS on my
Raspberry Pi, any crappy tablet, my phone and whatever else at the same rate
as the rest of the world for practically nothing.

------
bicknergseng
"Today latest Q3 data and 20 months after Nokia CEO annoucned the premature
death of Symbian, in Q3 Symbian sales has collapsed from the 29% market share
it had when Elop announced it, to 2% now."

So tired of this total misuse of a statistic. Yes, Symbian had ~29% of the
market when they switch to backing WP7. However, that's leaving out the fact
that 29% is down from 47% in 2009, and that the rate at which people were
abandoning Symbian for Android continued to increase. Furthermore, that market
share was almost entirely cheap dumbphones. The reality is that Symbian was
never a popular smartphone platform and was not ready for a global shift from
dumbphones to smartphones, and that Apple and Android disrupted that market
and split it among themselves. That whole section was littered with ranty
inaccuracies. OP goes on to talk about "Windows Phone 6" as a confused
combination of WinMo 6.5 and WP7.

~~~
sounds
Nokia had the N900. They had MeeGo (back before it was a joke). They had a
good shot at being part of the smartphone market.

What other "ranty innacuracies" would you like to point out?

Windows Phone 6 was a (mild) typo for Windows Mobile 6. (Not WP7)

~~~
bcoates
By the time the N900 came out Nokia had already lost to iPhones and Androids.
It's predecessor devices were neat but they weren't phones, the N800 was a
weird little pocket-sized tablet. Usability of the whole series was
underwhelming.

~~~
jerf
"Lost" to iPhones? Sure. Lost to Android? A lot harder call. Certainly Apple
partisans of the time were still in full Android-dismissal mode. That was
2009; what if they'd stuck with it and kept improving it? No guarantees, but
they at least would have had a seat at the table. Nokia spent some of the most
formative years in this market not even sitting at the table while they waited
for their Windows phone to come out.

Plus given the Linux base at the core of both Android and Maemo, had there
been more resources put into it, it seems like there's a reasonable chance
they could have been in a position to come to some sort of accommodation with
Android, perhaps being able to run some apps, or at least making it easy to
target both.

~~~
pmh
I agree. My N9 is a pleasure to use and it feels like MeeGo could've been an
actual competitor had it not been mired in the internal battle with Symbian.

------
genuine
Windows will not have lost until Microsoft goes bankrupt.

Mobile platforms are really just a fad. The future will be essentially a
distributed OS, where devices throughout the home interact with a larger
system to provide a much more immersive and practical experience. Few will
give a fuck about iOS and Android in 10 years

Apple is going to be focusing on novel user input with their new T.V. They've
already provided Airplay, etc. but other than music, streaming video, and
other information provided by screens and tablets, what are they providing?

Microsoft has a head start with kinect, so if they invested in related
research, touch screens, and other novel input devices like the LEAP, they
might be able to compete in the future. By placing kinect-like devices around
the home with some mics and speakers, you could talk to your computer like in
the original Star Trek ("Computer, how hot will it be today?") or make a
gesture in the air to turn on and off lights or lock doors. That would be
something people would buy.

~~~
watmough
This is a good point.

I believe, that in the end, the browser will win. The Mozilla OS on phone will
go somewhere, and many many apps will move into the browser, both on the low-
end phone hardware, and on high-end laptop hardware.

------
clarky07
It turns out its easier to "sell" lots of copies of something for free.
Microsoft actually sold those > 1 billion copies of windows. Google still
makes almost nothing on android. This article was absurdly over the top IMO.

~~~
mtgx
What do you mean? Devices that run Android are not free.

~~~
clarky07
Android is free. the devices aren't. Google gives Android away and the OEM's
sell it. Samsung makes lots of money selling Android phones. Google makes
almost nothing.

------
huggah
Too much hyperbole, but I was struck by this, which I hadn't considered
before:

"We often go to Amazon just to search something - to see what else Amazon
recommends. We are quite literally accessing Amazon 'just to see ads'."

I haven't seen a clearer demonstration of the argument that ads, properly
targeted and displayed at the right times, provide positive value to the user.

~~~
pixl97
People don't like most advertising because it's lying to them, or at least
covering up it's faults (turd rolled in glitter). I mean, what company is
going to pay to tell everything about their product. There going to show it in
the best light. When people buy something they want to be informed (doesn't a
free market require this?). With sites like Amazon or Newegg you get more
information about the product and similar products that is supposedly neutral.
They don't care 'which' product you buy, as long as you buy it from them. The
customer benefits by exposure to more choices, better products, and possibly
better pricing.

This does not work as well for vendors, they do not care who you buy from, as
long as you buy their product.

~~~
B-Con
The lesson from that is that customers are more likely to _trust_ ads that
come from the marketplace, not the sellers. The original point is very good
and can be extended a bit: Customers don't hate ads, they hate modern
advertising.

Obviously, the marketplace does have some incentive to lie, because they want
you to buy _something_ rather than nothing, but they certainly seem less
biased. Especially when it comes to relatively fungible goods, they don't care
which DVD you buy so long as you buy one, they don't care if product X is way
better than Y or about as good as Y, so long as you buy one of them. Unless
it's their own product or a very unique product, most goods are relatively
fungible from the marketplace's perspective.

Now lets hope the marketplace doesn't secretly sell ad space, disguised as
their own "recommendations". It would probably be completely against their
best interest to do so, but if a lot of cash were on the line, well, who
knows. (They risk their reputation, but if the replacement was plausible, how
would they get caught?)

------
fumar
This vision of the world feels like it was dreamed up by a science fiction
author. I understand Android is growing. But, I can not help but think he is
answering the wrong question. Honestly, I do not know what the right question
is. It reads like a narrow view of the market, global economy, and fads. I
look at my very young cousins. They are growing up with iPads and iPhones not
Google products. (observations)

~~~
zmmmmm
> I look at my very young cousins. They are growing up with iPads and iPhones
> not Google products. (observations)

This is true, but I think you are looking too short term. Here in every
Christmas catalogue there are 3 pages of iPads and iPad accessories. But you
know what is on the _front_ page of most of the catalogues? a $99 Android
tablet. The tablet probably sucks, but I think this is the turning point.
Parents are not going to spend $300+ on tablets for their kids when the "same
thing" is next to it for $99. These are going to flood into living rooms, then
schools, and all other instutions. The iPad has a temporary monopoly in these
places now but it's not going to last. In a year's time the components in the
$99 tablets will be good enough that the experience will actually be good and
then it's all over. Apple's fatal flaw is that their business model _depends_
on those high margin. The often quoted statistic that Apple makes nearly all
the profits in the mobile industry is as much a weakness as a strength. Apple
needs those margins, their business model depends on it. They can't survive in
a low-margin world but they also can't prevent it. They have to retreat and
hide every time in the luxury / premium segment of the market where their
business model works, but the vast majority of us do not dwell. To survive in
the mass market, Apple needs to create revolutionary hit after revolutionary
hit - and they've done amazingly well at that so far, but you have to ask how
many times they can pull it off. Eventually they are going to falter and then
their whole model crumbles.

~~~
cageface
Exactly. Apple's vertical integration gave them a big first mover advantage in
this market but their obsession with control is going to kill them as the
hardware is commoditized.

Bezos is 100% right about this - content is king in mobile in the long run.

~~~
watmough
My Nexus 4 is bigger and better than my iPhone 4s, in everything except
absolute hardware quality, though it's not far behind.

Jellybean is fantastic, and provides a stable glitch-free experience, with
significantly better performance in key apps such as Exchange integration that
are a key part of my daily usage.

------
jiggy2011
Never seen anyone use an android workstation as their main work system though.
I have an android phone and a PC. I spend ~8-10 hours on the PC and probably <
1 hour on the phone.

Not saying it won't happen , but it seems a little premature to call "victory"
just yet.

~~~
rbanffy
> Never seen anyone use an android workstation as their main work system
> though

Me neither, but if the hardware specs are right, it's a breeze to install a
full Ubuntu userland and work from there. I don't think anyone will ever want
to run a heavy IDE (such as Eclipse or Visual Studio) on any machine that was
designed to be power efficient rather than fast, but I have no problem
developing for Django, Flask or App Engine on my aging Atom (N270, IIRC)
netbook. And, if I develop on a remote host (as I do, when I need serious
computing power), all I need is bandwidth, a decent screen (all my phones have
HDMI outputs), a keyboard and, maybe, a pointing device (easy, since all of my
Android devices have Bluetooth).

The more people read their e-mail and manage their shared work documents
through a browser, the less they need a desktop PC. Soon enough, the desktop
PC will follow the path of the Unix workstation and be relegated to a niche
where being able to locally process locally stored data is important. If I
were Steve Ballmer, I'd retire right now and never, ever, worry about
Microsoft again.

------
gurkendoktor
I don't get it, and I found it very hard to read meaning into all the
superlatives.

Haven't there been more Linux devices than Windows devices for a long time
now? For every PC that maps 1:1 to the owner's digital life, there are
probably three toasters and a smart fridge running Linux. In the future, they
will run Android. How does that help Google or hurt Microsoft? Apple could
probably switch all their non-iOS iPods to run a modified Android and not a
single thing would change.

So far, Android has only "won" the smartphone game by numbers. And in the
process, Samsung has become an internal monopoly. I'm not convinced that this
is the solid foundation on which mankind's digital future will be built.

~~~
pacala
The Linux devices out there were all lacking a good GUI layer. From the
perspective of a consumer they were primitive, ugly and barely functional.

~~~
gurkendoktor
But will Android clothes have an awesome UI layer? Not to downplay Android's
success, I find it very hard to follow the jump from smartphones to everything
else. I don't see Android scaling up (to run on computers like Windows 8). And
when it scales down, Google doesn't win anything.

The OP reminds me of business analysts in the last years. Some metric in the
PRC increases XX% year over year, and a short back-of-the-envelope calculation
later, Westerners shouldn't teach their kids anything but Mandarin anymore.
And Android is not even as autonomous as the PRC. Suppose it runs on 99% of
all devices (whatever that means at the time) - I can easily imagine a court
forcibly separating Google's services from the OS.

------
cageface
_The Platform of the Century will power cameras, credit cards, cellphones,
computers, consoles, clocks_

This is why I've decided to crosstrain from iOS to Android. I think Apple is
going to continue to do well for many years but Android is going to be much
bigger than just phones.

I expect solid Android experience to be very much in demand.

~~~
Dove
I do Android freelancing, and I'm starting to see requests for apps that look
more like traditional embedded software than smartphone apps. Controllers for
industrial equipment, personal medical devices, props in simulations. Real
Technology stuff.

That's not exactly new, but my perception is that it's picked up a lot in the
last few months. And I think it's just the tip of the iceberg. For anything
you can imagine wanting to control with a touchscreen, putting a cheap Android
display in a case and connecting up over USB or Bluetooth seems to be making a
lot of sense to people.

I fully expect Android skills to be _profoundly_ in demand in a year or two.
Study up now; it's not really a quick system to master.

~~~
cageface
Exactly. I've got a couple of apps about to hit the app store so I'm gradually
making my way up the curve. I agree it's not the easiest API to learn. The
basics are actually pretty straightforward but the details you have to
consider once you start doing real apps can be tricky.

I'm really hoping Kotlin takes off as an alternative Android development
language though. Java's OK but a more modern and flexible language would
certainly help.

Do you have any good pointers or references for Android dev in these kinds of
environments?

~~~
Dove
_Do you have any good pointers or references for Android dev in these kinds of
environments?_

No, not really. I haven't really done much of it myself, just seen a lot of
chatter about it. The specs I see, compared to the average smartphone app,
have a lot more in the way of _very_ specific UI specs and binary protocols,
and less in the way of reposting tagged pictures to Facebook. So it's a
different part of the system to study.

I _can_ recommend <http://commonsware.com/> for coming up to speed on the
system in general. One of the best references out there, and it stays up to
speed with a rapidly-evolving ecosystem.

~~~
cageface
I do have the CommonsWare books and I agree they're good. I should probably go
grab the updated set.

I thought Reto Meier's book was also pretty helpful.

------
ricardobeat
Too much hyperbole. Things change quickly these days, and I hope we don't see
java "embedded within humans" anytime in the future.

~~~
tnuc
There is a pacemaker that uses java.

------
ChuckMcM
I wonder if this guy did the Googlezon video (that is the one where Google and
Amazon merge and become a planet dominating company) people would start work
at Google and then post it to the company wide 'misc' mailing list. It was
almost like clockwork.

I think Android has had an impressive run. There is an interesting article
about how it dominates Chinese smartphones but Google isn't getting any return
on that investment (80% of Android phones in China ship with Baidu as the
search provider). That is something that didn't happen with Windows.

~~~
e12e
> here is an interesting article about how it dominates Chinese smartphones
> but Google isn't getting any return on that investment (80% of Android
> phones in China ship with Baidu as the search provider).

They still maintain Google as the app-store though? So Google gets ~30% of
every app/media-item sold?

~~~
untog
I'm not sure that they do. AFAIK, they take open-source Android (that is, with
no Google apps) and build on it.

------
Executor
The idea of doing ALL payments and transactions by mobile is a horrible
future. It is the lack of privacy that cash gives us, and the complete
dependence on mobile phones, corporations, and banks. What about people that
don't want to have smart phones and refuse to pay via paperless? We have the
ability to choose what technology to use - let's not get rid of cash shall we?

~~~
w1ntermute
Who says we have to lose our privacy because we use digital payments? Just
take a look at Bitcoin.

~~~
politician
Bitcoin provides a number of great features, but anonymity is not one of them.

~~~
w1ntermute
By that token, neither is cash money - every bill has a unique serial number.

~~~
DougBTX
Each "bill" in bitcoin includes a full transaction history, which gets shared
with every other bitcoin user. It's quite different knowing that a dollar bill
got from A to B, vs a bitcoin which tells you exactly how it travelled from A
to B.

------
Zigurd
So far the vast majority of top-level comments on this thread slag the article
for hyperbole.

But it is very likely true. Although the installed base of Android systems is
small compared to what Windows has piled up over ten years of near total
hegemony, Android's market share is growing at a rate that makes Tomi
Ahonens's prediction a very good bet indeed.

Remember this prediction, and start acting on it now.

My prediction is that two years from now Hacker News will be full of posts
about how nobody predicted how pervasive Android has become.

------
politician
Maybe Microsoft will buy T-Mobile and let Skype loose on it.

------
Roybatty
3 seems to be a magic number. I think eventually Microsoft will have
significant share of the mobile/tablet market.

