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[Poetic.Injustice]

Apple created the modern smartphone as we know it, but Android went on to dominate the market through numerous partnerships with carriers and lower prices. In the first quarter of this year, a staggering 86% of smartphones sold worldwide ran on Android, according to data from Gartner.
Android's dominance is all the more striking considering the team was caught off guard by the iPhone launch.
"Google and Apple were working on developing the smartphone very much at the same time," says Fred Vogelstein, author of Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution.
Google had acquired Android, then a small startup, in 2005 to gain a stronger footing on mobile devices. In 2006, Google's Android team worked on designing its own software and a phone that looked like a BlackBerry.
Then Jobs unveiled a radically different device on stage in January 2007. The head of Android, Andy Rubin, was in a car when the presentation kicked off. He asked the driver to pull over to watch it online, according to Dogfight.


"Holy crap," Rubin said in the car, according to the book. "I guess we're not going to ship that phone."

"It has an army of vendors behind it creating different types of Android-based products," says Tuong Nguyen, an analyst with Gartner. "You have a lot of different people trying different things to make it interesting and differentiated."
For Jobs, that sounded like heresy. The CEO believed in carefully controlling the user experience. But the experience of using an Android could vary wildly from one device to the next.
"Android is very fragmented," Jobs said on an earnings call in 2010. "The users will have to figure it all out."
Behind the scenes, however, Jobs may have felt threatened. Microsoft previously overtook Apple by making its software available to computer manufacturers.

"I think Steve Jobs was in fact terribly worried that Google was going to do to him
the same thing that Microsoft did," Vogelstein says.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/28/technology/business/android-iphone-world-domination/index.html

 

[Joyful]

"I think Steve Jobs was in fact terribly worried that Google was going to do to him
the same thing that Microsoft did," Vogelstein says.

...and he was right

 

[sant]

Google has the marketshare but they don't have the same level of control (almost none in China) and Apple makes way more money with the iPhone. There is a reason that Google is going to start making their own chips like Apple has for years.

Apple has the better strategy and makes a better phone overall.

Google pays Apple billions every year to be the default search engine on iOS and Google apps are better on iPhone. What does that say?

 

[excelsiorlef]

Almost like offering a variety of phones and not locking you in to a very specific ecosystem is attractive to people

 

[Tom Nook Sawyer]

Apple has the better strategy and makes a better phone overall.

I don't see why one strategy has to be better than the other. Google's strategy makes far more sense for the type of company they are, whereas Apple is pretty much entirely product based, as opposed to service base, so their strategy works for them.

 

[sant]

I don't see why one strategy has to be better than the other. Google's strategy makes far more sense for the type of company they are, whereas Apple is pretty much entirely product based, as opposed to service base, so their strategy works for them.

Google is emulating it with the Pixel

 

[Spyder_Monkey]

Because it's on more phones.

 

[Vyer]

HTC, LG, Motorola, etc were probably all hoping for a little bit more from 'world domination'

 

[wutwutwut]

Google has the marketshare but they don't have the same level of control (almost none in China) and Apple makes way more money with the iPhone. There is a reason that Google is going to start making their own chips like Apple has for years.

Apple has the better strategy and makes a better phone overall.

Google pays Apple billions every year to be the default search engine on iOS and Google apps are better on iPhone. What does that say?

To be clear, Apple makes more money because it only targets the high end of the market. There are billions of people coming online today and Apple doesn't really care about them.

Android targets the whole market. Low-end Android is terrible but it's better than nothing.

 

[Souldriver]

It amazes me how Apple and Google are going head to head in the mobile market, and are arguably equal players, yet their strategy, products, market share,... are completely different.

Apple has the better strategy and makes a better phone overall.

[citation needed]

 

[Prototype Viktor]

Google has the marketshare but they don't have the same level of control (almost none in China) and Apple makes way more money with the iPhone. There is a reason that Google is going to start making their own chips like Apple has for years.

Apple has the better strategy and makes a better phone overall.

Google pays Apple billions every year to be the default search engine on iOS and Google apps are better on iPhone. What does that say?

The lack of control was by design because of Apple's strict control

They running on 2 different business models so Apple will always make more

They pay apple for search to make more than they pay. All that says is they have some numbers not in their normal reach.

 

[dofry]

Apples to Anroids, apples to androids.

 

[ZeoVGM]

Because it's on more phones.

So was Windows Phone.

 

[Nothing1016]

It amazes me how Apple and Google are going head to head in the mobile market, and are arguably equal players, yet their strategy, products, market share,... are completely different.


[citation needed]

Google paid Apple $1bn to be default iOS search engine in 2014

Going to try and find more updated numbers

 

[massoluk]

Google has the marketshare but they don't have the same level of control (almost none in China) and Apple makes way more money with the iPhone. There is a reason that Google is going to start making their own chips like Apple has for years.

Apple has the better strategy and makes a better phone overall.

Google pays Apple billions every year to be the default search engine on iOS and Google apps are better on iPhone. What does that say?

That company wants its softwares to reach as many people just like how Apple is putting it music service on Android and iTune on Windoes

 

[Goodlife]

Still don't get why some apps are iPhone only, or release first on the iPhone,

Is there just more money to be made than on Android, despite the lower market share?

 

[whitehawk]

Still don't get why some apps are iPhone only, or release first on the iPhone,

Is there just more money to be made than on Android, despite the lower market share?

My best guess is that for multiple device owners, it's harder to pirate/hack on iOS, so that releases first.

 

[wutwutwut]

Still don't get why some apps are iPhone only, or release first on the iPhone,

Is there just more money to be made than on Android, despite the lower market share?

iPhones are disproportionately used by rich people.

 

[Toki767]

Still don't get why some apps are iPhone only, or release first on the iPhone,

Is there just more money to be made than on Android, despite the lower market share?

Pirating apps is much easier to do on Android apparently.

 

[Pikelet]

Still don't get why some apps are iPhone only, or release first on the iPhone,

Is there just more money to be made than on Android, despite the lower market share?

Correct.

 

[Turin Turambar]

...and in the end Appple makes more money. Which is what matters to them.

/shrug.

 

[Futurematic]

Still don't get why some apps are iPhone only, or release first on the iPhone,

Is there just more money to be made than on Android, despite the lower market share?

Yes. iPhone customers are much more valuable. Also it's much easier and cheaper to make an iOS only app given Android OS fragmentation and vast number of hardware models.


Edit: lol beaten. Always remember to refresh first .

 

[DBT85]

For me Android won because I had more choice at a variety of price points. Also larger screens much earlier.

 

[Kthulhu]

"Holy crap," Rubin said in the car, according to the book. "I guess we're not going to ship that phone."

It's sad that the dude who created the T-Mobile Sidekick was smart enough to figure this out immediately, but Microsoft, Palm, and Blackberry were not.

Still don't get why some apps are iPhone only, or release first on the iPhone,

Is there just more money to be made than on Android, despite the lower market share?

Harder to pirate apps + easier to develop for due to a limited number of devices,

 

[kinoki]

Isn't Apple at >90% of all profits for the entire smartphone sector? I don't know about domination but when you make more than 90c for every dollar in profit I don't think anyone else can really claim dominance.

Apple has been smart about focusing on the profitable consumers. Better to get the 10% that's willing to spend a lot of money than the 90% that only wants a cheap phone.

 

[Zeyphersan]

If hardly anyone (read: one company, Samsung) is making money off their Android phones why does market share matter?

 

[Qblivion]

I prefer iPhones, but Apple pretending competition doesn't exist and being a few years behind on standard features can be really frustrating.

 

[excelsiorlef]

Isn't Apple at >90% of all profits for the entire smartphone sector? I don't know about domination but when you make more than 90c for every dollar in profit I don't think anyone else can really claim dominance.

Apple has been smart about focusing on the profitable consumers. Better to get the 10% that's willing to spend a lot of money than the 90% that only wants a cheap phone.

Sure if you think only wealthier people should have smart phones

 

[Dynomutt]

Only way to win is to develop a revolutionary service or hardware feature that cannot be duplicated. Easier said than done but that is what's needed for one to win. Create it push it and get a chokehold. Tech is so stagnant now. Google is winning quantity over quality especially outside the big 3 HTC, LG, Samsung.

 

[RiccochetJ]

If hardly anyone (read: one company, Samsung) is making money off their Android phones why does market share matter?

Google is.

 

[Kthulhu]

If hardly anyone (read: one company, Samsung) is making money off their Android phones why does market share matter?

From the article.

Google recently hit two billion monthly active Android devices. That helps ensure Google's moneymaking products like Gmail, Google Search and Google Maps dominate on smartphones just as they have on desktops.

But Google is not primarily a hardware company. It's an advertising company. And Android does position Google for more mobile ad revenue.

"Apple is trying to sell you phones or tablets," says Nguyen. Google, by comparison, just "wants your attention."

I'll add to this by saying that it's good for consumers.

 

[grandjedi6]

It's pretty obvious that most people didn't bother to read the article as it already brought up the profit objection as part of it's argument:

The real answer: The smartphone war has worked out pretty well for both.

Google recently hit two billion monthly active Android devices. That helps ensure Google's moneymaking products like Gmail, Google Search and Google Maps dominate on smartphones just as they have on desktops.

Apple, meanwhile, continues to capture nearly all of the smartphone industry's profits by owning more of the high-end market. And it makes far more money from iOS than Google does with Android.

But Google is not primarily a hardware company. It's an advertising company. And Android does position Google for more mobile ad revenue.

"Apple is trying to sell you phones or tablets," says Nguyen. Google, by comparison, just "wants your attention."

 

[Henrar]

From the article.



I'll add to this by saying that it's good for consumers.

Mining you for all your data is somehow good for you?

 

[DiscoJer]

Sure if you think only wealthier people should have smart phones

I dunno. I think what Apple did was create an image that people would pay outrageous prices for, just to be part of that image. To be cool. Sort of like what is done by shoe companies. If you don't have the right shoe, you're a loser. If you don't have an iPhone, same thing.

It was Blackberry that catered to the rich/elite.

 

[Diprosalic]

i'm glad both exist and thrive

 

[MrCunningham]

It was the same strategy that Microsoft used with Windows to create dominance over Apple's home PC's and anyone else. Though this time iOS devices are a lot more resilient.

 

[Tom Nook Sawyer]

Google is emulating it with the Pixel

...which is a single line of phones. It'll barely be a blip relative to the Android ecosystem

 

[Always-honest]

World domination?

 

[FutureLarking]

Most of the android Marketshare is on cheap shit devices to be fair to them, which are anything but impressive. There's a lot of compromises for that Marketshare - Microsoft's approach to a manufacturer ecosystem for phones was better for the end user imo than Google's

 

[Kthulhu]

Mining you for all your data is somehow good for you?

1. I was referring how Google having a massive chunk of the market has resulted in good competition

2. It is if you use Google services.

 

[Rur0ni]

It's pretty obvious that most people didn't bother to read the article as it already brought up the profit objection as part of it's argument:

Ding ding.

 

[spelen]

Andriod= win for consumers
Apple= win for corporation

 

[MrCunningham]

World domination?

That statement is not that far off, Android is the most used OS in the world right now.

 

[excelsiorlef]

I dunno. I think what Apple did was create an image that people would pay outrageous prices for, just to be part of that image. To be cool. Sort of like what is done by shoe companies. If you don't have the right shoe, you're a loser. If you don't have an iPhone, same thing.

It was Blackberry that catered to the rich/elite.

The post was literally arguing that it's good not to make more affordable phones.

 

[aspiegamer]

World domination?

I agree that it's an exaggerated statement in terms of total revenue, but an 86% market share is pretty fucking dominant. "But there are so many more Android phones!" you'll say, and, yeah, there are, but that's Apple choosing to deliberately only release one super-premium model every year and pretending that anything other than top shelf and top price is worthless electronic waste.

 

[Vuze]

Andriod= win for consumers
Apple= win for corporation

lmao, thanks for the laugh.

 

[Any Questions]

It amazes me how Apple and Google are going head to head in the mobile market, and are arguably equal players, yet their strategy, products, market share,... are completely different.

Just shows how overpriced apple is. That and making sure your hardware is sluggish and crap after a couple of years so you need a new one also explains a lot.

 

[rekameohs]

Andriod= win for consumers
Apple= win for corporation

Bwaaahahahahahha

 

[IrishNinja]

Apple has the better strategy and makes a better phone overall.

nah

Almost like offering a variety of phones and not locking you in to a very specific ecosystem is attractive to people

yeah

 

[Renekton]

It's disgusting how much cash Apple holds.

I feel small 😔