

Who is Android's customer? - dkasper
http://calebelston.com/who-is-androids-customer

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gvb
_Google_ is Android's customer.

Before Android, the phone market was either screwed up locked down "smart"
phones produced by the carriers or the iPhone which is tightly controlled by
Apple. Aggravating the iPhone option, AT&T has a lock on the iPhone, freezing
out the other carriers.

Without shaking things up, Google had little market for serving mobile ads.
Nobody did Google-style searching -> web browsing on the screwed up
"smartphones" and Google is at the mercy of Apple (to some extent) on the
iPhone.

With Android, Google is shaking things up and getting their opportunities (in
spades) to serve ads to mobile browsers.

The carriers saw iPhone as the major threat that it is, saw their smartphones
losing popularity as people realized how poor their UI was, and still were
paying lots of money for the smartphone software. AT&T has the iPhone locked
up (for now), so Android is the only way for them to be competitive.

Google did the "white knight" on the phone ecosystem: they offered the
carriers software competitive with the iPhone and offered the phone
manufacturers _free_ software that didn't suck for development and didn't suck
for UI. While neither is probably real happy with the leverage Google has over
them and the disruption that Google is doing in their industry, the
alternatives with Symbian or Windows Mobile is worse and more expensive to
boot.

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haseman
Google already has a strange split concept of 'users' and 'customers' when it
comes to online advertising. I imagine they can split the concept further when
it comes to handset manufacturing.

That aside, this is _the_ issue of the Android platform. Apple knows that
their 'customers' are the people who purchase the device and not their
developers (as any developer who's gone through the approval process will tell
you). The question remains...can Google make the same leap?

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koepked
Maybe there is no customer, not yet. I suspect that right now, Android isn't
much more than market research. It's talked about all the time here: release
early, iterate often. Google's initial choice for a market was the geeks, and
with the Android, they've given us much capability with minimal restrictions.
The geeks are going to determine Android's customer, when we collectively
figure out what the best uses are for what I consider to be the first true
general purpose computer that fits in my pocket.

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jsz0
I'm not sure there's any one type of customer for Android. Google is throwing
a lot out there right now. It's still fundamentally a platform and not a
product. For what Android is lacking in fit & finish is nothing compared to
the feature set. Integration with Google Voice is going to be huge in the
future. It's just too compelling of a service not to be a huge success.
Hardware choice is important because there's no one-size-fits-all. People have
different requirements. For example we'll almost certainly see a hardened
Android phone without a camera for professions where this is an absolute
requirement. Apple is a non-player there. Small market? Sure but when you add
up a bunch of small markets you get something big. For the mainstream consumer
market I think the iPhone's App advantage, specifically games, is going to
keep Apple in really good shape for a while. It's RIM/Microsoft/Palm/Nokia who
have the most to lose here. I think from Apple's perspective, if they could
choose their primary competitor going forward, they would happily pick Google
over the others because in the end Google doesn't really care if you're using
their services on an iPhone or an Android phone.

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pragmatic
Uh, my brother, brother-in-law and about everyone I know that's contract has
expired since the droid came out.

There are places where iPhones just aren't offered/don't work well. Here, the
competition is more for the BlackBerry market.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_There are places where iPhones just aren't offered/don't work well._

Yes, but do you know what? That advantage of the Android platform is entirely
temporary, as the original article hints at near the end:

 _As Apple expands to other carriers in the US it will be even more clear the
massively better product they have for consumers._

We're just waiting for that shoe to drop. It's not as if Steve Jobs does not
know, probably down to the second, exactly how long Apple's exclusive contract
with AT&T will last in the USA. Nor does it seem likely that Verizon and
T-Mobile -- however eagerly they appear to have clutched Apple's competitors
to their breasts in the short run -- will hesitate for a nanosecond to augment
their current offerings with the iPhone if that will earn them additional
money.

~~~
netcan
I think it might be a mistake to assume that the iPhone is even aiming for
ipod-like market share. Soon the smartphone market will virtually disappear
and replaced by the phone market.

Do we really think that Apple will own the lion's share of the phone market? I
think a mac-like strategy is more likely: Apple take a big, juicy, high margin
chunk of exactly the piece of the market they want.

All the other phones will need some sort of OS too.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_All the other phones will need some sort of OS too._

Absolutely. And from what little I've seen of how the Android market has
played out so far, this might as well be Google's official mission statement.

But this is what the original article is about. "The people who aren't well-
served by Apple" is a large market, and is always likely to be a viable
market. But it is a terribly _fragmented_ market, and it has an ephemeral
definition to boot.

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s3graham
> _Google really needs to focus on building out the user experience so that
> average users can pickup the phone and don't want to put it down._

I think it's pretty clear that this is what Google itself is focusing on. The
built in apps are, by most accounts, pretty slick.

Additionally, while people might not be clamoring for "multitasking" by name,
they do want features like "my X program keeps working while I check the web",
etc., so that's a bit off. I guess what's lacking for that to be an Android
strength, is the 3rd party app that you _absolutely positively_ want running
in the BG.

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narag
Maybe Google doesn't want to "win" right now. If it needs applications, it
seems logical to create a device targetted at the people that can write them.
In three or four years, equivalent hardware will cost peanuts...

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cantastoria
Google was stupid to release the Nexus One. They created a fragmented
developer environment, stabbed Android licensees in the back and terrified
carriers all in fell swoop.

They're going to have to work _very_ hard to get the industry to trust them
again. It may already be too late.

~~~
FooBarWidget
I don't think so. None of this would have happened if the manufacturers and
carriers didn't fuck up. Google's Nexus One might very well save the platform
by serving as an example of how things should be done.

~~~
kylec
Here's hoping that they keep the device updated like Apple does with the
iPhone (unlike HTC/T-Mobile with the G1 that's still stuck on Android 1.6).
One of the reasons why I like buying Apple is because they continue to add
value after the sale.

~~~
cantastoria
I wouldn't count on this from Google. The release of the Nexus shows they have
a very muddled strategy as far as Android goes.

It looks like they thought they could pull off some of Microsofts' old tricks
but Android is open source and they had no way of keeping the handset makers
from messing with it. The Nexus is a retreat from this strategy.

------
jasonlbaptiste
Your mainstream user does not give two shits about "open-ness" and apps
running in the background. Odds are they think the iPhone does already,
especially with push notifications.

It is a nice alternative to the iPhone on carriers that don't have it the
iPhone yet, but that's certainly not a position of strength. The iPhone will
be on other carriers and at that point the iPhone will almost always win out.
Android is a nice second best to the iPhone. Price is irrelevant too. There's
already a $99 iPhone, so what are they going to do, lower the Android phones
to $50? Even at that point, the iPhone is still worth $50 more. I think palm
tried this with the Pixi, the Pre, or the Pez. Yeah, that worked out well. Go
lower than $50 and you're out of smartphone territory.

Oh an unlocked phone? Your mainstream users do not give a shit, especially
when it costs $538.

Everyone is trying to be Apple, no one is trying to BEAT them.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Even second place in the cell phone market is not a bad chunk of change.
Everyone keeps talking about whether or not Android will beat iPhone. They
seem to be ignoring the fact that there are still a lot of $$$ being spent on
other smartphones (WinMo, BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm, etc). Even if Android
_never_ beats iPhone, there's still a lot of users and a lot of money for them
to hoover up.

