This seems like a bad way to compare the two devices. In particular, love it or hate it, the original iPhone had to fight a big uphill battle towards adoptions. When android was later released, smartphones had already been quite well accepted amongst the masses, and did not have to fight many of the same battles that the iphone did.<p>I'm not really sure what conclusion he is trying to go for...
The tricky part with Android adoption, is that it's so tightly coupled with manufacturer adoption. Can we intelligently say that someone buying the Motorola Droid X is choosing Android? or are they choosing Motorola? (or are they choosing Verizon?)<p>Geeks seem to ignore this point; likely because we'd been making fun of feature-phones for years before the smartphones hit. But those phones were well-liked by a great many people and had non-trivial brand loyalty.
Perhaps _this_ is finally the moment where Linux (to steal a quote from Wayne Gretzky as to why he was so dominant in hockey) skated to where the puck is going rather than where it is. It was always playing catchup to Windows with its entrenched cash cow and monopolistic control over PC manufacturers; though it did find footing where MS wasn't: The server room.<p>As someone in a 50/50 mix household of iOS and Android products, this is the kind of competition I relish in an industry. No one trying to box another out, neither one with any monopolistic tactics to crush the other; all on equal footing both financially and culturally. iOS attacks the high end with simplicity and seamless usability; Android with open configurability (in most instances) and endless options to make it yours.
The original blog post is called "The Android Step Function". Taking the name of the graph, "Android vs. iOS Growth", and applying it as the title of the new story is disingenuous.<p>The entire point of the article is that there is seasonality to the growth of Android. The point of the article is the shapes of the graphs not the absolute values.
It's not a step function, it's just very very rapid growth. It helps if you think of the G1 and Android 1.0 (first 5-6 quarters) as "Android Beta", since it could not even play to its intended strengths (different devices and carriers).<p>Also, these kinds of observations don't make much sense - neither company discloses anything more than carefully worded tidbits. End-of-quarter sales numbers are the way to go.
"A dictum of classical physics states that in nature everything is continuous. However, in quantum physics everything is discontinuous. Both models of the physical universe have their uses."<p>This is some good science here.
I really think this is going to end up hurting Google in the long run. Quality control for Android phones is horrible and handset manufacturers add their own garbageware to the phones.<p>Google is banking on consumers being too naive to realize they are getting a substantially inferior experience. Not a good bet in my opinion.<p>Apple is being stupid here by not calling Google's bluff and lowering prices even more aggressively. Nobody who used both phones side by side for a few days would prefer Android.
No matter what, Unlike Google, Apple is making lots of money from its ios devices.<p>Android feels geeky thus limits its audience.
Ios is very well polished and fancy. Maybe some people might not like it, but still ios has a lot larger audience than Android.<p>This article sounds like saying "Both are great but android is catching up and will beat ios someday soon".<p>I highly doubt that. Until Google learns doing marketing as well as Apple, apple will be leading the market and eating largest piece of pie.