

Google's Better iPhone - GiraffeNecktie
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-06/googles-better-iphone/

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SamAtt
I don't fault him for his love of openness above all else. I like open systems
too! But I don't think most consumers care. I certainly don't think they
obsess over the couple thousand apps Apple's rejected (like we in tech do).
They're too busy marveling at the 75,000 apps that are available.

Google will win the Cell Phone Wars if they can iterate fast enough to become
"Good Enough" to Apple's "Great". That's what worked for Microsoft. But I
don't think a normal consumer will ever choose an inferior open phone over a
closed one with more capabilities.

~~~
ynniv
> I don't think a normal consumer will ever choose an inferior open phone over
> a closed one with more capabilities.

Yep. There are only two ways to "beat" Apple at this point: install Android on
the freebee (< $100 unsubsidized) phones with basic contracts that 99% of the
world uses (this would be the Microsoft strategy), or honestly build a better
product than Apple. Given the limitations of the average cell phone, I can't
decide which path is more difficult.

People continue to claim that an OS will dominate all of the non-Apple
smartphones out there. Symbian is already there and no one is talking about
how dominant they are. Dethroning the iPhone is clearly going to be more
difficult than most of the cacophonous mouthpieces realize, so my advise to
them is to stop making your future self look bad, and think harder.

~~~
pospischil
You have nailed it...

When apple introduced the iPhone, it became a big to-do because it was 10x
better (at least?) than anything else on the market. "Me-too-ing" the iPhone
(palm?) (android in another year) isn't going to get you there. The trouble
is, Apple had a lot of opportunity -- 3.5 years ago, if you looked at a cell
phone, it was absolutely clear that a LOT of things needed to be done. Apple
simply executed on those things, but did so in an absolutely stunning way --
it just worked. And it worked in a way that most of us didn't realize was
possible.

The second idea -- that a low cost version can work, I think is valid. But
then, is that the chunk of the market that you want? To be another dell,
making $4 per unit? Do carriers even want the smart phone that doesn't come
with the data contract?

As for openness, as the other commenters have pointed out, most people don't
care. If something ends up happening that causes people to actually care about
the openness (or lack there of), than Android will be well positioned. For
now, with 75k apps, we certainly haven't seen it (regardless of how many
rejection horror stories we hear about on hacker news or techmeme).

~~~
enjo
I hinted at this in another post, but I want to detail it a bit.

In short: I think you're wrong. Android can win this by me-too'ing the iphone
as long as it has strong differentiation in hardware.

Do you want a small stick phone? How about a blackberry style one with a
physical keyboard? What about something flashy like the side-kick? Do you want
a highly customizable phone with brightly colored cases and add-ons? Android
can rise to address those quirks. That high level of segmentation shouldn't be
discounted.

A cell phone isn't just about software. It's a highly personal choice. If
Android succeeds in becoming a mobile operating system with a vibrant 3rd
party application base... well then they can win by appealing to a large
number of segments through support of a number of form-factors.

The issue of course being that supporting all of those form factors in
anything resembling a consistent way is VERY difficult. It's something Symbian
has never really figured out. If anyone can...it's Google.

~~~
pospischil
Thats a valid point -- the big issue on this one is, how do you handle the
varied screen size/varied capabilities dilemma? Or rather, how do you get
developers to target so many different devices? I think you get stuck with
devs building for the lowest common denominator. To illustrate the point,
consider an imaginary situation where a android has 3 phones on the market,
with equally split distribution: 1) black and white 200x300 screen 2) color
320x480 screen 3) color 800x600 screen

Which one do developers build for?

Multiply this by different capabilities (one has a compass, the others don't.
One has a high quality graphics chip, the others don't, etc.) In this latter
case, you can really see that it will be difficult to get a significant amount
of developers to take advantage of all the capabilities of the phone.

I think gruber talked about this a while back, but all I could find with a
quick search was this: <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/09/24/g1-flaws>

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rbranson
I have a T-Mobile G1. My girlfriend has an iPhone. There is just no
comparison. Hands down, the iPhone is a better handset altogether in every
imaginable way. Comparing the iPhone to Android is like comparing the Mac
experience to Windows. While they both have similar feature sets, the entire
end-to-end experience is significantly more polished and user-friendly.

~~~
TomOfTTB
But maybe that's the point. Windows won in the end (at least market share
wise). I think the key for Google is to (a) work with phone providers to get
the price point below the cheapest iPhone and (b) manage to copy enough of the
iPhone interface to approximate the look and feel to someone comparing in the
store (true elegance is only clear after using a iphone for a while).

No one would argue Windows 3.11 was as elegant as the MacOS but it had a
mouse/icon based interface and sold for half the price.

(I actually made a blog post on this a year or so ago
([http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/Android-vs-iPhone-Can-
Googl...](http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/Android-vs-iPhone-Can-Google-Be-
The-Microsoft-of-the-New-Millennium.aspx)) if you have a couple minutes to
spare)

~~~
ksvs
_Windows won in the end (at least market share wise)._

When was the end?

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gfodor
It's funny, these articles about how Apple is doomed because of a pending
software/hardware release remind me of the good old days where people on
Slashdot would say Windows' time was up since the new version of Linux distro
foobar was going to beat it.

It might have ended up true, in a sense, but by that point nobody really cared
anymore, the world had changed. I think the same thing is going to happen here
-- Apple has such a ridiculous head start in this market that by the time we
can look out and see what looks to be a healthy ecosystem it will probably be
well past the point anyone really cares and have moved onto the next big
thing.

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jayroh
His article is all well and good, and I don't blame him for the case of
shaudenfreude - but all this talk means nothing until verizon or google
actually do something. It's been all talk and no walk from top to bottom.

Palm Pre? Supposedly it was the top contender ... but I have yet to see anyone
walking around with one in the wild. That's a fact.

~~~
nomoresecrets
It seems so unbelievable too, I mean, that Palm guy said it was going to rule:
<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/03/05/palm-pre-iphone> ;-)

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haseman
"That's right: The biggest and most notoriously closed wireless carrier on
Earth is partnering with the biggest and most open Internet company ever, to
bring Google's new Android phone platform to users who want a truly expandable
smart phone, yet still require a robust and dependable carrier."

Anyone who thinks that Verizon's Android phones will be 'open' has never
written mobile software that'll run on their network. I'm really hoping to be
wrong about this, but historically Verizon's track-record is to lock down any
platform on their network.

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MaysonL
I wonder how many Android users it will take to overwhelm Verizon's network as
badly as the iPhone users have overwhelmed ATT's.

I suppose it depend on how good Android gets [i.e. whether people will use it
as heavily as they do the iPhone].

