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iphone, meet your windows

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piratePenguin:
Apple have been doing very well with their iphone 4, yet apparently, this whole time, android phones have been outselling apple, by a lot.

http://battellemedia.com/archives/2010/07/on_math_iphones_android_and_the_100k_phone_gap.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JohnBattellesSearchblog+%28John+Battelle%27s+Searchblog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

--- Quote ---The media really, really, really loves to write about Apple and the iPhone these days. It reminds me of Google in 2004, when the media fell in love with the concept of search.

Besides the antennae story, which I find hopelessly over reported, the latest iPhone rhapsody has been how many iPhone 4s Apple has sold - apparently, 3 million as of last Friday. Friday was July 16th. The iPhone 4 launched on June 24, so that'd be 23 days to reach the 3 million mark.

3 million phones in 23 days - that's a pretty strong clip, the fastest sales of an Apple phone to date, Mashable reports. If I do the math, that's more than 130,000 phones a day.

But did anyone in the press notice Google's little announcement, the day before Apple launched its iPhone 4? This one? The one where Google said, and I quote:

"Every day 160,000 Android-powered devices are activated -- that’s nearly two devices every second."

Yep, that'd be 30K MORE phones a day than Apple. And my guess is that Android's pace is accelerating, while the iPhone 4 is probably sliding downward, given how many folks bought it at launch (Mashable reports that 1.7 million were sold in first three days, so 1.3 million the next 20 days). In fact, if you do THAT math, and divide 1.3 million by 20 days, you get 65,000 iPhone 4s sold each day, which is nearly 100,000 less, PER DAY, than Android phones.

Is that story anywhere in the press? Not that I see.

As far as I can tell, Android-based phones will far outnumber any other smart phone by year's end. Apple, meet your new Windows. It's name is Android.
--- End quote ---

Drives home how difficult googles strategy would be to beat for sales volume. When it's as cheap to buy an android as it is to buy an ipod touch (and clearly, wrt market share apple cant win), it shall be interesting to see how the app stores (one of apples most important cash cows) and respective benefits of apple/android devices turn out.

worker201:
Does Google actually make money from Android phone sales?  I think they do for a couple models - but for others they don't even get licensing fees.  From a point-of-sale perspective, Apple probably has the wider revenue stream.  For ad potential, though, it's clearly Google's game.

piratePenguin:
Yes indeed, google profit because people have google services in their pockets. Afaik, there isn't even a licensing fee for the phone manufacturers - or if there is - it may as well be negligible. Googles interest is in expanding its service use (this growth is important, and for just making some software, you can begin to see why this is worthwhile), and presumably in the Android Market where, if Android has significantly increasing market share in an expanding market, that is a serious cash cow if they have a similar strategy as Apple does (I don't know about this - I know very little about the android market, if they do paid apps etc).

Lead Head:
Its kind of like console manufacturers (save Nintendo), they make very little money on the systems themselves (often loose money actually) but make it back via software sales and subscription fees for online services

piratePenguin:
Indeed and interestingly the games market is another one Apple seems to have it's eye on, to an extent, and they may have some success here (at the moment).

Who thought five years ago that they would ever see the day, when developers are pouring into an Apple platform? Then again as I've said and said, this has happened in fact before, and the exact same competition is unraveling right before us: Android regardless of new Apple launches is still selling more units, this means it will have a bigger market place, potentially dwarfing Apple in a few years time (the future I assure you is not with the more expensive smartphone*). This attracts developers over, and Apple are on the waydown.


* I mean right now I agree that possibly most Android phones sold are trash, does this even matter to someone with 100 euro to spend on a phone? Not a hope - and that is as much money as most people should spend on a phone imo - so if Apple isn't in that range, it simply can't compete.

What Apple can do - if iAds keeps up its apparent novelty value and is successful, is hopefully cling on to the quality apps it has, hopefully keep in touch with a larger fraction of quality app devs, and keep creating a quality - if expensive - product. They will miss a major app store revenue however, if Android keeps up it's growth and developers subsequently part.

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