iPhone 5

[chulbert]

Got any numbers on the total market share? Apple doesn't make a non-smart phone but Samsung sells a lot of phones like the Convey II and Rugby II. The non-smart phone market isn't completely gone and Samsung is a full phone line manufacturer.

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Event...June_2012_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share

Samsung had 25.6% market share by volume for the three-month average ending June 2012.

This is a US figure, NOT worldwide.

 

[chulbert]

ETA: I've tried to be clear in what I am asserting. US & smart phone. This is getting off-topic at this point, I'm just a bit dumb-founded that someone can keep insisting that samsung doubles apple in US smartphone share.

Nevermind. I read a source wrong.

I cannot find a source for smartphone share by manufacturer (as opposed to platform).

 

[Christian Klippel]

Here is an article an German about the worldwide smartphone market according to an IDC stuy. The article is from July 2012. According to the IDC study then, Samsung has 32.6% market share and Apple had 16.9%, both worldwide, in Q2 2012.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[This is The End]

Here is an article an German about the worldwide smartphone market according to an IDC stuy. The article is from July 2012. According to the IDC study then, Samsung has 32.6% market share and Apple had 16.9%, both worldwide, in Q2 2012.

Greetings,

Chris

Those are close to the numbers I posted way back in post #3. 30% and 17%


Somewhere along the line the discussion got switched to US only because those numbers aren't as scary to Apple fans.

 

[Christian Klippel]

Those are close to the numbers I posted way back in post #3. 30% and 17%


Somewhere along the line the discussion got switched to US only because those numbers aren't as scary to Apple fans.

Personally i think that a comparison between manufacturers only isn't that good a measure anyways. Apple only makes iOS devices, Samsung uses several OS's and not only Android. A better comparison is to see what the OS market share is.

If one looks at those numbers, like in this press release from the IDC, it's pretty clear that Android is leading with 4 times the share that iOS has. With Android gaining some, and iOS losing some compared to previous Q's.

Sure, if one looks at only two manufacturers without regards to the OS used, and then even restricts that to a certain market, numbers come out very differently. But in a globalized market, with lots of manufacturers, that would be a mistake IMHO.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[Dan O.]

Personally i think that a comparison between manufacturers only isn't that good a measure anyways. Apple only makes iOS devices, Samsung uses several OS's and not only Android. A better comparison is to see what the OS market share is.

If you are going to look at OS market share, shouldn't you be looking at the whole market and not just one part of it? Both iOS and Android also run on tablets so you should include them in the stats.

 

[tyr_13]

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Event...June_2012_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share

Samsung had 25.6% market share by volume for the three-month average ending June 2012.

This is a US figure, NOT worldwide.

Thanks for the link. I didn't realize that LG did that well. I guess the combination of decent sales on their high end along with sold non-smart phones (especially the Octane) can do pretty good.

 

[Christian Klippel]

If you are going to look at OS market share, shouldn't you be looking at the whole market and not just one part of it? Both iOS and Android also run on tablets so you should include them in the stats.

I thought it was clear from the context that i was talking about smartphones.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[chulbert]

Personally i think that a comparison between manufacturers only isn't that good a measure anyways. Apple only makes iOS devices, Samsung uses several OS's and not only Android. A better comparison is to see what the OS market share is.

I would put forward that an even more interesting measure is web usage by OS.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/02/net-applications-apples-ios-web-share-hit-65-9-in-august/

The second graph by StatCounter is more relevant because it doesn't count iPads as mobile devices for these purposes. It shows that in terms of web share, iOS and Android are pretty equal in spite of Android's unit volume advantage. This suggests there are a ton of Android smartphones out there that aren't used for much more than making phone calls.

I would speculate that's because a lot of people who walk into a store looking for "a phone" walk out with an Android smartphone regardless of their needs, whereas people who walk out with iPhones walked in asking for exactly that.

 

[Dan O.]

I thought it was clear from the context that i was talking about smartphones.

You were. But it was not clear in your post why the best measure would be OS market share.

Perhaps such a measure would be important if I happened to loose my phone and grabbed one from a random person in the street, I might want to know the likelihood of the new phone being compatible with the game I was running. Or perhaps not.

Most important for the smart phone user would be things like the future availability of service, upgrades and third party apps. For both iOS and Android phones, the answer is going to be a definite yes.

 

[Christian Klippel]

I would put forward that an even more interesting measure is web usage by OS.

[... snip ...]

You were. But it was not clear in your post why the best measure would be OS market share.

[... snip ...]

I'm pretty sure that the manufacturers don't care that much if people surf a lot with their smartphones or not. What counts for them is units sold. Regarding web usage numbers, those are, in my opinion, highly unreliable. Too much depends on the sample group and size to make any useful statistics of it. Too much also depends on the actual configuration of the device.

For example, does it go online for lots of things in the background, or mostly if the user actually wants to browse the net? How are the numbers counted? By access, during a certain time-frame, etc. An app could connect to some site several times in short time, while another may gather the same information with just one access. As said, i think that web-access based numbers are way to unreliable to give a clear picture. (Not related to smartphones, but just as an example: i know a lot of people who changed the browser identification on their Firefox to Internet Explorer, just to make certain sites with stupid browser detection work. Such thing would distorts such numbers greatly.)

Why i think that the OS market share for a given device class (in this case smartphones) is a good measure? Simply because that directly tells us what people use, and also what network carriers decide to sell with their contract bundles, and finally, what gets sold the most.

Keep in mind that, at least here in Germany, most phones are sold in connection with contracts. The more providers decide to mostly offer a certain OS, and the more people buy devices with that OS, the bigger the ecosystem around that OS, the easier to get service, etc.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[chulbert]

Why i think that the OS market share for a given device class (in this case smartphones) is a good measure? Simply because that directly tells us what people use, and also what network carriers decide to sell with their contract bundles, and finally, what gets sold the most.

Except it depends on your definition of use, as I pointed out. Given the sales and the web browsing statistics that we see, there seems to be a substantial portion of smartphone users who aren't smartphone users.

It, of course, depends on the claim you're trying to make.

Android is winning the market share race by a large margin. Apple is winning the profit share race by an incomprehensible margin. Developers earn more from the iOS platform than the Android platform and still tend to start on iOS and port to Android.

I find matters of usage, ecosystem, and profits more interesting that raw install base. But that's me.

 

[Christian Klippel]

Except it depends on your definition of use, as I pointed out. Given the sales and the web browsing statistics that we see, there seems to be a substantial portion of smartphone users who aren't smartphone users.

Uh, you are aware that these things are not called "browserphone" or "webphone", but are actually called "smartphone", right? Do you really want to tell me that smartphones are mainly to be used to browse the web? Seriously?

Developers earn more from the iOS platform than the Android platform and still tend to start on iOS and port to Android.

Aww, don't get me started on iOS development. As long as you are only doing "simple" apps, it might be OK (well, except some quirks, but then, that's Appple...). I recently had the "pleasure" to develop a device that should, one day, be used with iOS devices as well. Of course you can't do that without paying loads of money to Apple for that MFI crap. So we decided to use ready-made serial adapters (the Redpark serial cable).

No real luck there either. And the worst of all: The dock connecter _does_ have RS232 signals (with TTL levels). But guess what these are used for? Right, to talk to the MFI chip. The serial port itself is implemented through a ARM microcontroller. Total waste of resources. And you can't use the standard serial lines that are already present on the dock connector without jailbreaking...

So, yes, iOS developers earn more. Because the customers are already used to pay excess money for simplest things.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[chulbert]

Uh, you are aware that these things are not called "browserphone" or "webphone", but are actually called "smartphone", right? Do you really want to tell me that smartphones are mainly to be used to browse the web? Seriously?

I never said that. However, we can examine the usage of non-phone functions of smartphones to determine how much of the "smarts" are used. Web browsing is a headline feature of smartphones and I think it's significant that iOS leads by 3x even though it has half the devices.

One explanation is the one I gave above: there are a lot of Android phones that aren't all that "smart" and/or Android smartphones in the hands of people who use them as feature phones.

The other is that web browsing discrepancy is a huge anomaly for some reason and should not be considered a proxy for other "smart" features. I'd love to hear suggestions.

Aww, don't get me started on iOS development. As long as you are only doing "simple" apps, it might be OK (well, except some quirks, but then, that's Appple...). I recently had the "pleasure" to develop a device that should, one day, be used with iOS devices as well. Of course you can't do that without paying loads of money to Apple for that MFI crap. So we decided to use ready-made serial adapters (the Redpark serial cable).

No real luck there either. And the worst of all: The dock connecter _does_ have RS232 signals (with TTL levels). But guess what these are used for? Right, to talk to the MFI chip. The serial port itself is implemented through a ARM microcontroller. Total waste of resources. And you can't use the standard serial lines that are already present on the dock connector without jailbreaking...

So, yes, iOS developers earn more. Because the customers are already used to pay excess money for simplest things.

To be clear: by developers I meant publishers, not developer salaries. As for your final sentence, most iPhone customers are not otherwise Apple customers, so they aren't "used to" anything even if your "excess" claim were true.

 

[Christian Klippel]

The other is that web browsing discrepancy is a huge anomaly for some reason and should not be considered a proxy for other "smart" features. I'd love to hear suggestions.

I can think of many, many reasons for that discrepancy. See, browsing the web isn't that much fun on such small displays. People prefer to get the information they want in an easy way. There are multitudes of ways to get information from the web without using any browser at all.

Once you don't use a browser to access the web, it becomes rather tricky to near impossible to get valid statistics about what device/OS accesses that information. In the case of smartphones, apps are the little things that add methods of accessing the web without a browser. If you have an ecosystem that makes it cheap and easy to develop and distribute apps, you will naturally have more apps available to access the specific things you are interested in. It is rather awkward to use a smartphones web browser to surf to a weather forecast site to get a forceast for where you are. Using an app makes that much easier and comfortable. But it also potentially hides the method of access, since there is no browser signature.

And that's just one of the many things i can think of. And apps play an important role when you compare iOS to Android, see below.

This is why "access by browser by OS" isn't a suitable measure when it comes to mobile, extensible (by apps) devices.

To be clear: by developers I meant publishers, not developer salaries. As for your final sentence, most iPhone customers are not otherwise Apple customers, so they aren't "used to" anything even if your "excess" claim were true.

So, publishers are now developers. I guess that red is blue as well. And about paying premiums to be involved in the iOS ecosystem. Well. To develop an app there you need a Mac. You also need the actual dev-environment, that not only runs on the Mac, but also requires the latest OS-X. It's not enough to have just some old OS-X Macintosh somewhere. If you want to be in the game, you have to pay for the latest OS.

Then, once you got around to write an app, you have to play the Apple-lottery: Will they allow your app in the appstore or not? And even if you managed that, a not-so-small chunk of what the users pay for the app goes to Apple. So, to make up for all that you have to increase the price, which makes it more expensive for the user.

In case you ever have the idea to develop some hardware to connect to an iOS device, you have to wade through a lots of red tape and paperwork, and then pay many thousands of dollars to Apple just so you get into the MFI program. These are upfront costs before you even thought about your actual device. And guess who has to pay that in the end? Not to mention that this is blocking a lot of small businesses from developing hardware for iOS devices, since they simply can't afford that.

Oh, and even if you manage to get into the MFI program, it's far from certain that you can really provide apps through the Apple appstore to use that hardware. See the Redpark serial cable for example.

Compare that to the Android ecosystem. You simply download a virtual machine image, for free (well, except the cost for the internet traffic). You start the virtual machine and are ready to go. Everything is there, ready to use. You write your code and publish the app, that's all. If you sell it, only very little of that money goes to anyone else.

Plus, you write apps in Java, as far as the language is concerned, which means that a huge developer base has almost instant access to the ecosystem.

And _that_ is the biggest reason why Android is so popular. More choice, more relaxed environment to get your stuff marketed. Users have way more freedom and choice, which is what they like. Vendor lock-in never worked that well in the end.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[chulbert]

I can think of many, many reasons for that discrepancy. See, browsing the web isn't that much fun on such small displays. People prefer to get the information they want in an easy way. There are multitudes of ways to get information from the web without using any browser at all.

Once you don't use a browser to access the web, it becomes rather tricky to near impossible to get valid statistics about what device/OS accesses that information. In the case of smartphones, apps are the little things that add methods of accessing the web without a browser. If you have an ecosystem that makes it cheap and easy to develop and distribute apps, you will naturally have more apps available to access the specific things you are interested in. It is rather awkward to use a smartphones web browser to surf to a weather forecast site to get a forceast for where you are. Using an app makes that much easier and comfortable. But it also potentially hides the method of access, since there is no browser signature.

And that's just one of the many things i can think of. And apps play an important role when you compare iOS to Android, see below.[/QUOTE]

Keep thinking because nothing you stated could explain the discrepancy. Nothing about using apps in lieu of the browser or small screens is unique to Android so it has no explanatory power. In fact, if what you suggest were true then I would expect Android to be over-represented due to their average larger screens.

Like I said, either web usage is a proxy for non-phone usage or, if not, we need a super-Android-specific reason why those users browse the web 1/6th as much.

So, publishers are now developers. I guess that red is blue as well. And about paying premiums to be involved in the iOS ecosystem. Well. To develop an app there you need a Mac. You also need the actual dev-environment, that not only runs on the Mac, but also requires the latest OS-X. It's not enough to have just some old OS-X Macintosh somewhere. If you want to be in the game, you have to pay for the latest OS.

Then, once you got around to write an app, you have to play the Apple-lottery: Will they allow your app in the appstore or not? And even if you managed that, a not-so-small chunk of what the users pay for the app goes to Apple. So, to make up for all that you have to increase the price, which makes it more expensive for the user.

In case you ever have the idea to develop some hardware to connect to an iOS device, you have to wade through a lots of red tape and paperwork, and then pay many thousands of dollars to Apple just so you get into the MFI program. These are upfront costs before you even thought about your actual device. And guess who has to pay that in the end? Not to mention that this is blocking a lot of small businesses from developing hardware for iOS devices, since they simply can't afford that.

Oh, and even if you manage to get into the MFI program, it's far from certain that you can really provide apps through the Apple appstore to use that hardware. See the Redpark serial cable for example.

Compare that to the Android ecosystem. You simply download a virtual machine image, for free (well, except the cost for the internet traffic). You start the virtual machine and are ready to go. Everything is there, ready to use. You write your code and publish the app, that's all. If you sell it, only very little of that money goes to anyone else.

Plus, you write apps in Java, as far as the language is concerned, which means that a huge developer base has almost instant access to the ecosystem.

And _that_ is the biggest reason why Android is so popular. More choice, more relaxed environment to get your stuff marketed. Users have way more freedom and choice, which is what they like. Vendor lock-in never worked that well in the end.

What does this have to do with anything? I stated that app developers tend to target iOS first because it the most fertile market. You can moan and groan all you want about the entrance fees but that's not really relevant.

 

[Christian Klippel]

Keep thinking because nothing you stated could explain the discrepancy. Nothing about using apps in lieu of the browser or small screens is unique to Android so it has no explanatory power.

[...]

What does this have to do with anything? I stated that app developers tend to target iOS first because it the most fertile market. You can moan and groan all you want about the entrance fees but that's not really relevant.

Hahahaha. Dude, just take a few minutes to read what i wrote. Then take a few more minutes to actually understand what i wrote. And finally, take some time to re-read your reply.

If then you still can't see why your reply is just hilarious, then i can't help you. Right now you are just confirming my suspicion that Apple folks live in a really strong RDF.

Hint: If there is no entry cost to make apps on platform X, more apps for platform X show up. Which in turn means that more of those apps are used. If apps access the information on the web, any measurement that relies on browser identification is void.

On the other hand, if i make it expensive and awkward to create and publish apps, less apps are available. Meaning that less people can use apps to access the information they seek. Which in turn means they have to use a browser more often. Which is then what those browser/OS statistics measure.

Seriously, are you trying to be obtuse on purpose, or do you have a mental block that prevents you from acknowledging simple mechanisms and facts?

And about your statement that app developers tend to target iOS first, i guess you can present some solid evidence for that, right? I mean, it surely sounds funny that people start to write apps for an OS that has only a quarter of the market share of Android, only to later switch to Android.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[The Dark Lord]

Does the iPhone 5 still have the shatter prone glass on the back?

 

[kajata]

Does the iPhone 5 still have the shatter prone glass on the back?

Nah. Now it's just like every other smartphone and just has shatterprone glass on the front.

 

[chulbert]

Hahahaha. Dude, just take a few minutes to read what i wrote. Then take a few more minutes to actually understand what i wrote. And finally, take some time to re-read your reply.

If then you still can't see why your reply is just hilarious, then i can't help you. Right now you are just confirming my suspicion that Apple folks live in a really strong RDF.

Hint: If there is no entry cost to make apps on platform X, more apps for platform X show up. Which in turn means that more of those apps are used. If apps access the information on the web, any measurement that relies on browser identification is void.

On the other hand, if i make it expensive and awkward to create and publish apps, less apps are available. Meaning that less people can use apps to access the information they seek. Which in turn means they have to use a browser more often. Which is then what those browser/OS statistics measure.

Seriously, are you trying to be obtuse on purpose, or do you have a mental block that prevents you from acknowledging simple mechanisms and facts?

iOS and Android both claim approximately 600,000 apps in their stores.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/27/google-play-hits-600000-apps/
http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/11/app-store-hits-650-000-apps-30-billion-downloads-5-billion-do/

It does not appear that Apple's walled garden keeps out too many developers. Not to mention both numbers are high enough that you're unlikely to find a completely unserviced niche on either store.

In addition, here are statics on actual app usage:

http://gigaom.com/2012/06/26/apps-get-better-at-retaining-users-ios-more-than-android/

Seems like the "Androids use apps" myth is debunked.

And about your statement that app developers tend to target iOS first, i guess you can present some solid evidence for that, right? I mean, it surely sounds funny that people start to write apps for an OS that has only a quarter of the market share of Android, only to later switch to Android.

Of course!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/jun/10/apple-developer-wwdc-schmidt-android
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/.../why_do_developers_choose_ios_first31?lang=en