Articles about Android vs iOS

I've gotten off my purest high horse and come to look at Android differently. Starting with my purchase of the HTC-manufactured Google Nexus One in January 2009, I used pure Android smartphones, untouched by hardware maker or cellular carrier mods; no skins, no extras. Pure Android was the best, I believed. But over the last couple months, I've come to realize that the best thing about Android is what third parties -- and not Google -- do to make it better. Go ahead, eat that Ice Cream Sandwich on Galaxy Nexus. Gingerbread is good enough for me.

Pundits of all types harp about fragmentation -- that it holds back Android and makes competing against iPhone harder. Oh yeah? If 550,000-plus Android activations a day is a problem, give it to me. What a failure to have. At the end of September, Android smartphone OS share, as measured by US cellular subscribers 13 or older, was 43 percent in third quarter, up from 39 percent at end of June, according to Nielsen. By comparison, iOS continued a year-long trend of no growth, with 28 percent share.

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Google said that it will assist partners in defending against lawsuits surrounding the Android platform Wednesday. While Google is not offering monetary support, it is sharing information, expertise, and access to the Mountain View, Calif. patents, Reuters says.

Chairman Eric Schmidt is on the last leg of a three-city Asian trip, meeting with its partners in the Far East. Schmidt made his comments in Taipei while meeting with HTC, but had been in South Korea the day before visiting with representatives of Samsung and LG.

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A new version of Android will be available in November, initally on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Much of the analysis of this Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android is focused on the implications of it running on both smartphones and tablets, where older versions of Android ran on one or the other (1), as well as shiny new gimmicks such as face recognition to unlock a handset.

This unification of smartphones and tablets is a red herring. Other things matter much more for Android. Android tablets are failing in the market, while Google’s smartphones sell in enormous numbers. This is a major issue for Google.

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Do I even need to ask?

Let the debate begin. Google and Samsung delayed their planned Android 4.0 operating system and Galaxy Nexus smartphone launches until today in Hong Kong instead of October 11 in San Diego. They claimed the delay showed respect for Apple cofounder Steve Jobs who died two weeks ago. Some members of the Apple Fanclub of bloggers and journalists insist that reason is a smokescreen for software or hardware problems. Unlikely considering nothing ships until November. Looking at what Google and Samsung unveiled today, the companies had plenty of good reasons to announce before iPhone 4S sales started October 14. It would have been the competitive equivalent of launching a nuclear strike.

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It's no secret iPad owners love their devices. The American Customer Satisfaction Index and NPD both report unusually high satisfaction rates for iPad. Just in second quarter, Apple sold more than 9 million tablets, generating $6 billion in revenue. Despite the best efforts of competitors, most of which offer tablets running Android OS, nothing has yet put a dent in iPad’s dominance among consumers. The fact of the matter is that, if you own a tablet right now, it most likely is iPad.

There’s  another group equally smitten by iPad: higher education. I’m not talking about students, faculty or university administrators that own the tablets (I would lump these people in with the consumer category), but rather the growing number of  higher-ed institutions around the country that currently issue iPads to their students.

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Amazon's unveiling of the Kindle Fire on Wednesday took the eReader ever closer to becoming a full-fledged tablet device. With the move, Amazon will now have its devices ever-more increasingly compared to tablets rather than other e-readers in its class.

The most obvious comparison is price. At $199, Amazon is clearly aiming to get as many Fires in the hands of consumers as possible. It could see the device as a loss leader, hoping to make up any lost margins on the sales of content from its music and entertainment services.

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Android's recent success in the tablet market seems to have hit a minor roadblock, as increased competition from RIM's PlayBook and now HP's fire-saled TouchPad chip away at its slice of the pie. Apple seems unaffected for the time being, with its market share increasing quarter-to-quarter.

Apple took a 68.3 percent share in the second quarter, up about 3 percent from the previous period, according to research firm IDC. Android tablet share on the other hand dropped significantly, falling to 26.8 percent from 34 percent in the first quarter.

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Apple cofounder Steve Jobs has repeatedly talked about the post-PC era. But he resigned last week as Apple's CEO. The post-Steve Jobs era has come, and Android is doing just fine whipping iPhone in his absence. This week, comScore put Android's US smartphone share way up against iPhone's minuscule gains, and today Nielsen added supporting stats, including some startling buying intention trends.

"What?" You ask. "Jobs has only been gone a week". Yes, but as I explained over the weekend, his influence waned long ago. Tim Cook, while only CEO since Thursday last, has been running Apple since January. How's iPhone doing against Android, during the Tim Cook era? Certainly not bad, but not as well as many people believe. I was talking with a neighbor tonight about phones and he was sure that iPhone outsells Android. I hear this often.

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