I‘m not really sure where to put this, hence the Uncategorized category.
There is an interesting statistic of the installed base of iOS vs. Android and some broader criticism of Apples closed model vs. the open model of Android.
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Oh, and now another statistic regarding profitability. What can we learn? Just having a user base means nothing. What you are looking for, is a userbase, which is willing to pay and is interested in the platform in general. Apple is very good in winning such users. As long as it stays that way, I am not worried at all, since we will still have better apps and quality.
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It’s an interesting thought, but my problem with this type of analysis is it takes one metric and uses that to suggest closed is bad.
For me, as a user, I don’t actually care what the installed base is, I care about my system and how it works for me. Clearly there is some connection, but the variables are numerous.
Cheers for linking.
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I like Fred sometimes but I don’t agree with this article. Google’s goal with Android was, in my opinion, to keep Microsoft from dominating mobile as they’d done with desktop so more phones would come bundled with Google services instead, and secondarily to make it easier for hardware manufacturers to compete against Apple. It didn’t really have to do with selling hardware and the manufacturers whose devices run Android have not been overly profitable for the most part.
Smartphones are expanding globally and in most countries, iOS devices are. Android phones start at $100.
What do people care, when buying a phone:
- i can afford it
- it can make a picture
- it has “Internet”, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram
The average customer does not ask if it’s “open” or “closed”.
I had several trips to African countries last year. Didn’t see one single iPhone. Mobile growth is HUGE there, but it’s not the market for $1000 smartphones. The user base’s global growth is in emerging countries.
Well here iare some issues I have with both.
Closed as in Apple stifles low cost and innovative third party accessories. I had to make lambTracker Android because I cannot access bluetooth in iOS at the level I need to integrate an RFID ear tag reader. Apple requires that all hardware, even that which talks via a standard protocollike Bluetooth be pre-approved. Since our EID tag reader is home built and not FCC approved and operated under the same rules that allow HAM radio operators to do stuff I cannot get it approved by Apple. FCC compliance is a $150k+ operation due to testing. So I was forced into the Android ecosystem even though I’d much prefer and most of my potential users would prefer and iOS based system.
Open as in Android makes it nearly impossible for a small developer to keep up with all the various hardware options. LambTracker functions well on only a few tablets and I don’t have the time or resources to make sure that it will display properly on all screen sizes and options and across all the various flavors of the Android system. I’m a single programmer working on an open source piece of software. I can only do what I need to to make it work for me and that limits its usefulness to other shepherds.
As a user I fnd the iOS system easier to use. I like the standards on the UI stuff and get caught often with issues with UI interface options in Android.
Android has some really quirky display things. For example I can’t do some types of dynamic displays in LambTracker because of limits in how many dynamic sections I can have on a screen. That is a huge issue and limits the feature set of LambTracker.
Lastly, Installed base is not everything. if it was Windows would have killed Apple and Linux years ago.