"...and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don't count re-sold devices), and "activations" means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service."
So it seems like a new device only.
I don't think there can be a better measurement for them than this.
Last week I got a Samsung Galaxy Y. It's small, sturdy, has swype input and has great battery life. Gmail, reader & facebook over 3G or wifi.
The price: just $140!!!
I used to try high-end phones and then go back to low-end Nokias. Now, I'm not going back to my $40 Nokia and I'm definitely not going to pay $700+ for an iPhone that won't even have Swype.
edit: extra sentence
And, while there still is crisis everywhere, I see people selling them here on markets; they buy them from Alibaba in sets of 20-50 and sell them on a sunday market to 'fortunate but not as fortunate to pay for a $140 phone'.
Edit: added Linux phone watch, disclaimer; never tried one, but a friend did and he says it's great fun for tinkering.
Lawyers get paid, some silly patents get worked around, but that's about it it seems.
A guy walks into an AT&T store and wants an iPhone. He'll get an iPhone.
A guy walks into an AT&T store and wants a Windows Phone. He'll probably be talked into an Android.
A guy walks into an AT&T store without a clue. He'll walk out with an Android. It's the most profitable for the carrier, because it's perhaps the only smartphone left that grants the carrier full control over how it's configured and what software is bundled.
Patent attacks against individual Android manufacturers and individual models are irrelevant. Your carrier will always have a wall of indistinguishable Android phones for the next customer to choose from.
The clerk literally told him they only have display models and don't hold stock and that he'd been told not to push them. The clerk couldn't even organise for a windows phone to arrive at the store so my friend decided he'd try learning obj-c and walked out with an iphone 3G (as said dev is a jaded ex-java enterprise programmer and hates the language with a vengeance).
http://mediacenter.motorola.com/content/detail.aspx?ReleaseI...
If the manufacturers currently paying Microsoft patent fees man up and take Microsoft to Court, they could break free, too, or at the very least pay 7 times less of what they are paying now, if their other patents are just as worthless.
But seriously, how could anyone even think the current patent system is even close to being fine when most of the tested patents in Court are being declared invalid? (I believe Apple also got about 18 out of 20 of their patents invalidated in Europe). This is ridiculous.
> ...have been declared invalid.
Someone specific declared not infringing on a patent is not the same as the patent being declared invalid.
MS, as always, is about the money. There have been many articles recently suggesting that MS might be making more money off of Android than Google itself. As proof, see willingness to license.
Apple, as always, is about the art. Right or wrong, they are offended that anyone would use their creation. They will litigate out of principle. As proof, see (general) unwillingness to license.
To be clear, I'm not at all addressing the issue of whether or not the patents are valid, or whether patents in general are good; I'm just ascribing motivations.
> It's remarkable the legal lengths to which Apple and
> Microsoft are going to try to stop Android,
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/itc-initial-...
Also, if low common denominator phones are anything like my Galaxy S, then Apple is screwed ;)
P.S. Android is definitely the Windows of the smartphone world, but unlike on PC you can't replace it with the OS of your choice.
With iphones thats a well over million per day. With most people already owning a phone thats a lot of superseded devices to deal with. Thats a lot of chemical waste...
I bet there's a lot of waste, but I also bet that it's nothing compared to the waste from old American cars driving around and polluting. Think of what these new cheap smartphones mean for humanity - the ability for entire populations to pop on the internet that never have before, read wikipedia, etc. Surely that is worth the waste it is producing.
Now, however, the smart phone I bought last year is struggling to run the latest applications due to it's low CPU speed, if I didn't know how to install my own ROMs (and most people don't) I would be stuck on Android 2.1 and that means I couldn't run a lot of the newer apps. Newer phones have actual useful features being added like HDMI-out, NFC, better battery technology, etc.
I wonder how long we can go at this rate until our rare-earth minerals start reaching alarming levels.
Interesting, I've heard the opposite. My brother knows several people who started out on Android, but switched to iphone. He ended up switching from learning to do Android apps to iPhone apps.
- Windows Mobile (Motorola Q)
- Various BlackBerry Devices (Curve, Storm, Torch, etc)
- Android (Nexus One)
- Windows Phone 7 (Samsung Focus)
- Android (Nexus One, again) + iPad 2
- iOS (iPhone 4S)
Having dabbled in J2ME, BlackBerry, Android and iPhone development, and having used all devices for a minimum of two months, I can tell you that,] if for some crazy reason, I decide to jump off the iOS boat, I will be going straight to Windows Phone 7 and not Android.
In terms of overall UX/UI and general happiness, I've found that the top three platforms are represented as follows:
1. iOS
2. WP7
3. Android
With regards to overall ease-of-development and awesomeness of API, as well as general happiness from developing for particular platforms:
1. iOS
2. Android
3. BlackBerry
Obviously just my own perspective, but I think this gives me enough authority to recommend a platform to a particular user when asked.
I think that's conventional wisdom- and I think it's wrong. I went from Android to WP7, because I am a weird UI obsessive. But my girlfriend has an Android and is due an upgrade- and she's sick of it. She's likely going to get an iPhone.
Android is the default choice if you don’t want an iPhone. It’s the default and generic smartphone. All people who have Android phones I know don’t care about the OS at all. They may like the phone (Look at my nice new Samsung smartphone! Isn’t this HTC phone cool?), they know nothing and don’t care one bit about the OS.
Selection bias alert. I have an android phone that's nearly two years old, and I bought it specifically for the OS.
I know a few people who are sysadmins with android, but I also know more sysadmins with black berries. I don't know anyone who isn't a sysadmin that has an android phone, most people I associate with tend to be in sale or design... so probably no surprise all of them use iphones.
Wow.
There's a lot of families that use hand-me-down phones.
Consider the scenario where Mum gets a new Phone every 2 years and Dad gets her old one when she's done. The phone has a 4 year life.
Averaging it out (over the richest 1billion people in the world) and 3 years is possibly a pretty close figure.
There is just no incentive for Google to change the developer tools to be more developer friendly, to be more powerful when developers are forced to release an Android application simply because it is the platform with the most users on it. Despite the fact that from a development standpoint it is a nightmare due to differing hardware/software to the point that shops that want to develop for Android have to have 30+ devices just for physically testing. The Android emulator is absolute crap because of timing difference a bug can manifest itself in the emulator and not on the phone and vice-versa.
Not only that but the quality of applications on Android devices is simply not up to par with the quality of the same applications on the iPhone. It says a lot when Twitter and Facebook wholesale take their UI designs/decisions and put them on Android devices from their iPhone counterparts.
With iOS, it's simple -- if a million iOS devices were activated today, I'd know they all ran the exact same version of iOS 5.x, and none were customized or bastardized by OEMs. At least on that front, I'm thankful to Apple (I can write a whole other rant about iOS' crappiness too, but that's not relevant here)
PS: Here's an example of how Android EMs screw over apps/devs: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5358014/android-httpclien...
It's a pain, and we've had issues with bugs only cropping up on one device but not another (even if they have the same Android version).
Estimations from China:
- In my office, a Web company: Android vs iOS is maybe 30 - 70
- In the subway, Android vs iOS is more like 80 - 20.
At a contract site I work at, out of 15 people on the team, only 1 has an iOS, the rest have some kind of Android variant (with 1 having a BB) two have switched from iOS to Android in the last 12 months. I wouldn't say there's significant peer pressure to switch, they just go to the store and end up with an Android device, so I expect carrier pressure is the source.
An inspection of the rest of the organization (about 500 people), shows it to be about 70/20/10 Android/BB/iOS.
At my startup we're 100% Android, but considering getting a couple iOS devices for development, but not day-to-day usage.
I have 3 friends who are Apple diehards, you'll get their iDevices out of their cold dead hands. But the rest are currently Android users, with one switching up phones every so often just to see what the other side has.
Coffee shops and trains around here (D.C.) show mostly Android phones and iPads. Very rare to see an Android tablet in the wild. iPhones are not too uncommon, but seem to belong to the younger, hipper crowd.