Is Android Only Surging Because Apple Is Letting It?

It's a shame he didn't really actually address the question that is the title of his article. Whatever else we know about the Apple vs Google situation one thing is sure: Jobs is seriously burned by Android's success and there is not a chance in hell he is "letting" Android win. Whatever is happening out there is happening <i>despite</i> Jobs' best efforts to stop it, not because he is "letting" it happen.<p>Personally, I think that just as there is a slightly delusional sense about Apple's competitors that all they need to do is make something in the same category as an Apple device without any of the design brilliance or attention to detail to succeed, there is also a slightly delusional part of the Apple camp where they believe that design and enforced simplicity is the be-all and end all of the user experience. Like this guy who is simply confounded that anybody is buying Android phones and hence comes up with, by process of elimination more than anything else, that it must be AT&#38;T's fault. In reality, many people actually care about features, power and flexibility too. Nobody likes to think of themselves as being paternalised and Apple does that all the time. Not to mention that many people dislike being treated as a channel for mass-market commercialism that Apple wants them to be.<p>My mother came to me last week for the third time to plead with me to tell her some way - any way - to use something other than iTunes to manage her iPod Touch. She doesn't understand it. It confounds her at every step. She hates it. I told her what I always tell her: "Look, there are ways, but the bottom line is, it is designed to be used a certain way, and only that way. Get to know that way, try it out how it is intended to be used and you might find it is wonderful - many people do. But in the end, Apple is not about choices and alternatives, they are about simplification and control. If you really dislike it after really trying it Apple's way, I think you should think about getting a different device." She came back a bit later and asked me how much her iPod Touch might sell for on ebay.

I found very few factual things in that article. He's trying to make a point that android devices are worse or the only <i>feature</i> they have is that you're not forced to use Verizon. (where he's obviously forgetting that there's a universe outside of the US)<p><i>There are a dozen or more elements that are better about the iPhone. Everything from the big: the App Store versus the Android Market (from the consumer perspective) — to the little: the multi-touch and overall touchscreen responsiveness.</i><p>I would think Multi-touch/touch responsiveness has more to do with the devices and not the operating system.<p>I myself believe that Android <i>will</i> become the dominant OS on phones, because they've got developers on their side. All my hacker friends and developers are really excited to start hacking on android phones (as am I) and not so interested in developing for iPhone. I believe the biggest reason there are a lot of developers (more so companies) that flocked to iOS development is because of the marketplace, the opportunities it brought and that there wasn't any similar device available at that time.<p>A marketplace for apps will in the end become decentralized and the greatest apps will be for android because the smartest people will want to develop for it. History repeats itself.

I think evidence points to this being true. For instance, in Australia - a technically advanced market where the iPhone is available on every major wireless carrier - the carrier exclusivity doesn't warp market share in Androids favour:<p><a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/surging-iphone-hot-on-the-heels-of-nokia-as-australias-no-1-smartphone/story-e6frgakx-1225879621669" rel="nofollow">http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/surging-iphone...</a><p>As of May 2010, Android is at 2.1% smartphone market share, the iPhone is at 40.3% smartphone market share.<p>In the US, the iPhone's AT&#38;T exclusivity gives Android protection from true competition. When the customer can select a phone on its own merits and not due to network availability I'm sure that the market share picture may be different.

I've done some Android development and didn't think it was that bad. It was definitely something of a struggle at first (not the least because I hadn't used Java - er, a Java-like-language - since my freshman year of college), but it grew on me quickly and it didn't take me long to internalize most of the important design patterns. That being said, I've never done any iPhone development, so I can't really compare.<p>As to the phones themselves, I don't think its as clear cut as the author suggests. I bought a first generation iPhone, but when it eventually met its demise I picked up a G1 on eBay. The G1 was obviously pretty horribly specced, but I liked enough about it to eventually got a Nexus One and rather like it. Its lacking a lot of the polish of iOS, but seems generally a lot more capable. I don't know anything about the history of using a back button for navigation through multiple applications, but that and a few other things (the notification UI for example) really pay off for Android.<p>I'll probably get another iPhone at some point (I'm still on AT&#38;T and have never gotten a subsidized phone from them - I got that original iPhone before they subsidized them) to play with development on it, if nothing else. But for my primary phone I'm probably going to stick with Android, at least for the foreseeable future. Its far from perfect but it works a lot better for me.<p>Of course I'm not at all your typical phone user, so what I think probably doesn't mean that much.

They shouldn't let MG Siegler write about iOS v. Android on TechCrunch. :)

Every time I see iPhone/Android articles like these I think of this:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/science/06tier.html?_r=1&#38;ex=1352091600&#38;en=8dd85ab605098dbc&#38;ei=5088&#38;partner=rssnyt&#38;emc=rss" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/science/06tier.html?_r=1&#...</a>

"But the iPhone does exist. And I simply can’t bring myself to use an Android phone when I know a superior device is out there."<p>WTF?<p>That line reminds me of this video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg</a>

The iPhone has many more deficiencies besides being limited to one carrier. Though I suppose that is the only one that most consumers care about.

I can't but agree with MG... even when he is an apple fan boy diehard... for the most part everything he writes has some point of trueness.<p>For me, as a entrepreneur and with a product targeting both platforms, the experience with android has made me think twice the whole idea of iphone and its appstore stupidity, in a way where it makes me believe they are there for a reason.<p>Apple provides probably the best user experience for a mobile phone out there, everything is consistent, simple and geared to make the life of their users likewise... and apple enforces this but also they provide tools so that we as developers stay that way with not too much pain.<p>Android on the other hand stays too much to its Linux parenthood... yes it's open, yes you can do lots of stuff with it, it even can power the coffee pot if you wanted it to... but everything comes at a price! And the price that google has have to pay for that "flexibility" comes in direct impact of the experience... and microsoft seems to have learnt this too, hence the level of control they are putting back on the WP7.<p>Google has to pick up the ball while there is still time... provide developers with the right tools so we don't go reinventing the warm water everything we need to do something and provided them so that it remains consistent with the experience the have created with the phone... and enforce OEMs to do the same.<p>Now will google do this before apple pulls the trigger on new carriers for the iPhone or before WP7 takes power?... I hope so, as competition is always good for innovation.<p>in the mean time I will keep my Galaxy (with its 12+ carrier stupid apps) at lab for testing purposes and will carry my iPhone for the every day experience.

Has the author not used a Droid X? Swype and eerily accurate speech-to-text are radically better than any input methods I've seen on the iPhone. Before Swype, I couldn't have imagined giving up my Treo 755P keyboard. Now I couldn't go back.

I personally haven't seen this kind of discussion change a single opinion.<p>As for the title question, we've all seen the customer satisfaction numbers and the willingness to switch numbers: <a href="http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/smartphones/?p=816" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/smartphones/?p=816</a>, so I think, hinging on the credibility of these data, it's an empirical fact that iPhone stands a lot to gain by going to Verizon. If you're an iPhone developer, like myself, these data ought to be reassuring.<p>It's clear that the tech blogosphere and its core readership have a hint of counter-consumerist taste which makes it very bad at predicting the success of consumer products (we've seen a ghosts from 2007 this weekend on HN, and I suspect the "iPad will fail" articles are bound to crop up and bite certain bloggers later). The remedy (please) is some good old fashioned market research if we're going to make business/startup decisions based on such discussions. Eh?<p>PS: The top comment of this TechCrunch article is perpetrating this "Big Brother" analogy with respect to Apple's app store approval. As an English major, this has been bothering me for a while. Have these guys read 1984? "Big Brother" is supposed to represent the panopticon surveillance state, you know, one where your footsteps are tracked and recorded constantly. Sounds more like someone else to me.

There must have been some sort of "out" for Apple in their contract with AT&#38;T. I've never seen a contract without some sort of early termination section. (I'm not a lawyer, but I work with them on business contracts often.)<p>It must be a prohibitively large dollar amount for Apple to end the agreement early, which is surprising since I think it's been far more successful than anyone could have imagined -- so I assume what would have at launch seemed like a ridiculous sum would now be quite affordable for Apple to remove the 100lb gorilla in the room.

I'm so glad in australia we can have the iphone on all our networks... Just one more reason that this is the best country in the world ;)

What is the iPhone/Android proportion on AT&#38;T?<p>How about in countries where the iPhone is available on all carriers?<p>That would be more instructive than a US/AT&#38;T-centric analysis.

This, and other coverage of the android vs. apple competition seems to alway miss an important point. For instance he says "if the iPhone didn't exist, I'd certainly use an android", and that they are much better than other phones that are out there.<p>But if the iPhone didn't exist, the android phone wouldn't exist in its current form.