
IPhone User? 90% Chance You’re On The Latest OS. Android User? 0.4% Chance - obilgic
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/ios-android-breakdown/
======
raganwald
Look, fellas, I keep seeing these kinds of blog posts and while I am waiting
patiently for some fresh insights, I keep seeing the same discussion recycled.
So to spare everyone the angst, here's the bottom line:

Apple takes the attitude that if you give users what they just discovered they
wanted, they will give Apple money.

Apple considers this more important than its relationships with the carriers,
which is why AT&T got an exclusive: None of the other carriers would play ball
with a phone that the carriers can't control to the point of making their
users miserable.

I am not making a value judgment that this is good or great or a revolution,
just stating what I believe to be Apple's business strategy.

Google works the other way, it makes an OS that _in theory_ is just as good as
iOS or even better, but in practice Google's business strategy is about
getting as many copies of Android out on as many handsets as possible. Take
your pick, this is to get as many search clicks and/or other data aggregations
into Google's hands or to suck the oxygen out of the market from their arch-
rival Microsoft, or possibly both.

To that end, they give the carriers what the carriers want, and the carriers
want to make their captive market miserable.

This plays itself out in a myriad of different ways, and it always seems to
come down to the same thing: Android is more open in theory, but the gap
between theory and practice is smaller in theory than it is in practice, and
the cause of the gap is the carriers and Googles perfectly sane business
strategy of appeasing them.

I am not saying Apple's strategy is better or worse than Google's. It is
possible that each strategy is a local optimum, and the poor companies between
Apple and Google--like Microsoft, RIM, and so on--are between a rock and a
hard place.

But I do think each strategy is valid given its company's goals, and therefore
I do not expect to see anything change unless there is a seismic shift in the
industry. Until then, Apple will make a lot of money off a smaller number of
handsets, and Android will dominate the numbers but its users will be hostage
to the carriers.

~~~
aristidb
That logic does not apply to unlocked GSM phones (like mine), where no carrier
is involved in the purchase.

These don't get updates either, despite (or because) the device manufacturer
is in control, not the carrier.

Maybe in the USA, it is not common to buy phones unlocked and unsubsidised,
but here (Germany) many carriers offer rebates if you don't buy a subsidised
phone and bring your own.

~~~
raganwald
Well, it wouldn't apply if you could argue that the carriers don't want Google
selling unlocked phones and it defies them. My guess is that there are so few
unlocked phones sold that the carriers don't really care one way or another
about people buying unlocked phones, they mostly care about people hacking a
phone that is supposed to be locked down.

~~~
aristidb
I think a fair number of people have unlocked phones outside the USA because
their carrier offers rebates for "phoneless" contracts.

------
ja27
I know he considers Android's .X releases major, but in case you don't: iOS
4.X: 89.73 % Android 2.X: 87.4%

Of course, it's hardly the fault of the Android users. If it wasn't for
cyanogen and a couple hours of work I wouldn't even be on 2.2.

------
dusing
This really is the key difference between the two platforms for developers.
Apple just makes a developers job so much easier, an iOS dev is safe to get
excited about new features, because they can count on them being supported by
customers devices almost immediately.

One of the big advantages android has is the lack of app approval. However if
curated stores like amazon take off and users prefer it android will loose
that advantage too.

From a users perspective it is great to know you can get 3 years of new
features out of an iPhone vs ??? From an android device.

~~~
garyrichardson
I think your last point is key.

Remember back in the day.. if you wanted a Nokia phone that played MP3's, you
got the special model the played MP3s. That model didn't really surf the net
or have games. If you wanted to play games, you had to buy an NGage, and if
you wanted to surf the net (poorly) you needed to get the net surfing phone
(can't think of the model). Then there were the E series black berry knock
offs.

And once your phone's model year was up, that was it. You were stuck with what
you had.

I like my iPhone. It does 97% of what I want it to do. I could get the other
3% of features by getting an Android, but the Android doesn't match the 97%
the iPhone has -- it's more like 80%.

Plus, in Canada, my phone has to last 3 years -- that's the contract term up
here. 3G's are 3 years old and can run iOS4. Let's see an Android that you buy
from Telus or Rogers today run the latest Android in 3 years (even if it
doesn't have 100% of the features).

------
blinkingled
Doesn't matter much from either a regular developer or regular user standpoint
as long as people are using 2.1 and above (90% of users are) - most of the
apps just work.

If you are keen on OS upgrades - you just need to have bought the right phone
- Nexus line or some of the HTC ones or even the original Droid. I am running
Cyanogenmod 7 which is Gingerbread on my N1 happily.

I happen to know many iPhone users at my office - they don't use iTunes and
don't even know there is an upgrade - they are running the version of the OS
their device shipped with. Only the Mac/iTunes users (which there are few)
tend to upgrade to the latest.

So yeah - big numbers but not much practical significance in comparison.

~~~
wmf
_as long as people are using 2.1 and above (90% of users are) - most of the
apps just work._

A bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy if developers are targeting old Android
OSes because the newer releases don't have critical mass. I'm reminded of the
Vista debacle.

~~~
blinkingled
Well the developers don't lose anything by targeting a lower API version - if
they target 2.1 the app is more or less guaranteed to work on 2.3 due to
forward compatibility.

~~~
wmf
Developers who target old OSes lose the features that are available in the
newer OSes (unless they do feature detection and a lot of extra testing). This
is so obvious that I must not be understanding your comment.

~~~
blinkingled
It would be a problem if Android 2.x APIs were deficient in basic features
like iOS 3.x were when it came to multitasking. That isn't the case. Android
API additions are mostly tied to new hardware - NFC/Multiple Cameras/Tablets
etc as opposed to pure software improvements like added multitasking.

Not many developers _need_ to target latest AOSP release - that's my point.
Almost all apps can target 2.1 and benefit from under the hood improvements in
2.3 like faster VM. Few apps that rely on 2.3 specific features like
NFC/SIP/Multiple cameras also rely on hardware features being available - so
software features are a moot point there and then the problem is not unique to
Android.

iPhone 5 comes with new NFC and iOS 5 - developers have the same problem -
they have to wait for enough people to upgrade to iPhone 5 and iOS5 and if
they target iOS4 they lose the iOS 5 features. How many apps will be impacted
- not many. Same thing.

------
trotsky
iPhone OS 4.0 first available: June 24, 2010 (seven months ago)

Android 2.3 first available: December 16, 2010 (one month ago)

So, really, a release seven times older than another one has more adoption?
Stop the presses!

Android revision takeup on disparate hardware is a real issue, but as usual
this is just cheap fanboyism in its presentation.

~~~
wmf
Read on to the part where Android 2.2 has much less share than iOS 4.x,
despite them being of similar age.

~~~
trotsky
Right, like I said, Android revision takeup is a real issue.

It doesn't change the fact that headlining "90% vs. 0.4% LOLOL" is just yet
another episode of sports team like boosterism.

Or did MG write an article titled "apple tablet crippled by lack of OS upgrade
strategy" 30 days after 4.0 shipped that I missed?

------
zacharycohn
I don't think that headline is even remotely fair. When Apple releases a new
version of iOS, it often comes with a new phone and a $200-$400 price tag.
When the new Android version is released by Google, there are hundreds of
different devices that already exist that have to be updated, and it gets
updated for free.

~~~
mbrubeck
And how is this different from Android?

 _"When Apple releases a new version of iOS, it often comes with a new phone
and a $200-$400 price tag."_

\- When Android 2.0 was announced, it was available on only one device, the
new Verizon Droid ($199 w/ contract). Even the Verizon Droid Eris released the
_same day_ did not have the latest OS. (It missed out on 1.6 and 2.0, was
upgraded to 2.1 six months later, and will never see supported upgrades to 2.2
or higher.)

\- When Android 2.1 was announced, it was available on only one device, the
new Nexus One ($529). When 2.2 was released, buying a Nexus One was still the
only way to run it at first, although some other devices did get updates a
short while later.

\- When Android 2.3 was announced, it was available on only one device, the
new Nexus S ($529 or $199 w/contract).

Many Android devices _never_ get updated to the latest major release. New
devices are _released_ every month or so that ship with year-old versions of
the OS. Meanwhile, Apple provides upgrades for every one of its older devices,
for at least the next few releases.

Among other things, this means developers must decide whether to cut off half
their users by taking advantage of new OS features now, or wait a couple years
for enough old devices to be updated or thrown away. I work on Firefox for
Android, and a bunch of features in the Gingerbread NDK would be perfect for
us... if we could actually use them any time soon.

------
edderly
Step 1. Click link

Step 2. See the article is written by MG Siegler

Step 3. Find something else to read

~~~
ugh
Flag, don’t comment.

------
andrewjshults
If you use the same binning strategy that is used for the iOS versions then
the numbers aren't so far off. 87.4% of Android users are on 2.x which
compares favorably to the 90% of iOS users on 4.x. Granted there are bigger
differences between each Android point version than the iOS, but the iOS data
is too lacking to make this a fair comparison. It wouldn't surprise me if iOS
suffered from users not being on the latest latest (4.2) version because of
the lack of OTA updates.

That being said, my roommate has a Nexus S and I have an HTC Evo and would
trade HTC Sense for quicker updates to the latest releases (without having to
load custom ROMs).

~~~
dannyr
Yes but this is MG Siegler's article. He cherrypicks certain data to show that
Android is inferior to iOS.

Majority of Android phones are on 2.1 and up. For him that's not enough so he
had to break it down to specific releases (2.1, 2.2, and 2.3) so he can prove
his point.

There may be significant difference between 2.1 and 2.2. However, after
playing with 2.3 for a month, there's not a big difference from 2.2.

------
aristidb
An alternative explanation not involving carriers:

Device manufacturers fiercely compete to get people to buy THEIR phones. They
get customers by adding custom extensions, and by always having fresh phones
in the pipeline. Customers do not seem to prioritise promises of timely
updates.

Porting customizations costs money that the device manufacturers prefer
spending on new models.

Apple customers on the other hand are loyal enough to (now) buy phones from
mod 2010 or even 2009 - of course only with the latest iOS. Of course these
phones get updates.

------
mcritz
Even if the carriers _wanted_ to update users to the latest Android OS many
devices come with a preinstalled custom UI and existing apps. You don’t want
to mess with the users’ experience by changing their UI or what apps they
expect to see.

It would actually require a great deal of work to get new OS updates into the
many varieties of Android phones in the way users are accustomed to their
phones’ experience.

------
rmc
For years the majority of the web uses were using an archaic browser (ie6) and
the web flourished.

------
Niten
Chance this arbitrary statistic matters to real world Android users? 0.4%
Chance

~~~
CountSessine
Certainly mattered to a friend of mine who was suckered into buying an Experia
X10.

