Articles about iPhone vs Android

Well, Nielsen sure knows how to rain on the iPhone 5 hit parade. Just two days before the handset's presumed debut -- Hey, Apple has a big media even on September 12 -- an Android storm pours down on iPhone rumors. Nielsen today says that 74 percent of Americans between 25 and 34 own a smartphone, up from 59 percent a year earlier, and more likely Android than Apple. Quick, someone grab an umbrella! And a dry towel. Kleenex too!

Meanwhile, teens also are big smartphone owners -- 59 percent of 13 to 17 year-olds. Get this: 58 percent of all American teens have smartphones, up from 36 percent a year earlier. Now there's a group Apple, Android and Windows Phone makers should really want to get.

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I'm watching a video interview Bloomberg's Emily Chang conducted with Apple-Samsung trial foreman Vel Hogan three days ago. At 9:17, he makes a provocative statement: "The Android operating system, clear and of itself, was not something that infringed".

Do you believe him? I ask, because pundits fell over themselves this week claiming that the jury verdict means big trouble for Android and Google.

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CEO Tim Cook describes China as Apple's second-most important region. For good reason. IDC predicts that smartphone shipments to the People's Republic of China will pass the United States this year. There's the question, which benefits more: Android or iPhone/iOS?

"The PRC smartphone market will continue to be lifted by the sub-US$200 Android segment", Wong Teck-Zhung, IDC senior market analyst, says. "Near-term prices in the low-end segment will come down to US$100 and below as competition for market share intensifies among smartphone vendors. Carrier-subsidized and customized handsets from domestic vendors will further support the migration to smartphones and boost shipments. Looking ahead to the later years in the forecast, the move to 4G networks will be another growth catalyst".

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Just yesterday I reported that a South Korean court had found Apple and Samsung both guilty of infringing each other’s patents, and claimed that in a good patent war no one wins. Turns out I was wrong. Big time. A few hours after that story posted, news reached us that the jury in the American leg of the global Apple vs. Samsung battle returned a verdict, and a damning one for Samsung.

After taking less than three days to deliberate the case, the jury found that Samsung copied from Apple, rejected all of Samsung’s own counter claims, and awarded the American company $1.05 billion in damages.

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In the 1983 classic movie WarGames, Matthew Broderick hacks into a top secret super-computer and comes close to initiating World War III. The global catastrophe is only avoided when the computer, "Joshua", starts playing Tic Tac Toe against itself and discovers it can’t win, coming to the inevitable conclusion that "the only winning move is not to play."

It’s a film that maybe Apple and Samsung should sit down and watch together. While the jury is still out in their current big Californian patent case, in South Korea, Samsung’s home and just one of several countries where the global lawsuit is being fought, the court has just ruled simultaneously that both firms infringed each other’s patents. And, as a result, ordered them to both pay damages, and imposed sales bans on all related products (none of which are the latest models).

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Well, hell's bells. Apple sold about as many iPhones as Wall Street expected during second quarter after all. That's the big, glaring takeaway I see from phone sales data Gartner released today. The numbers also show something else: The analyst firm either has really lousy methodology (which I doubt), or Apple apologists have been wrong all along (as I've asserted for years). Gartner reports 28.94 million iPhones sold, to Apple's 26.03 million.

Gartner is the only major analyst firm tracking actual handset sales to end users, while others record shipments into the channel. Apple does the same, although every time Samsung reports smartphone numbers, Apple apologists rush to claim the figures are shipped while calling iPhone's numbers sales. Not so. Apple reports shipments, too, and corresponding revenue, which comes from sales to cellular carriers, other third parties and direct sales. As such, Gartner's numbers rarely reconcile with Apple's, but they're usually lower. For second quarter, they're considerably higher. The difference is significant, and in Apple's favor.

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Apple shares closed down 4.32 percent today, keeping with a trend started during after-hours trading yesterday. The real question: Could matters have been much worse, if not for the big carrot that came with the little stick? Apple missed fiscal Q3 Wall Street analyst consensus for revenue and income, but announced a big dividend and promise of more to follow. Performance was by no means bad, just not as good as forecast and the dividend, $2.65 per share, is something for shareholders to smile about.

But behind the magic, I have to ask: Is Apple distracting shareholders and Wall Street analysts, making them look over there so they miss the trick going on over here? It's a question I can't answer but can only speculate about. Another quarter of results will reveal much. One thing is certain now: iPhone sales are slowing. There's no if about it, but why. Are people waiting for the new model or are Android rivals like Samsung pulling away more buyers?

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A week has passed since I started up my Google I/O-issue Galaxy Nexus and updated to Android 4.1 (aka Jelly Bean). Since then, my daughter and I faced off Google's Voice Assistant against Siri (on her iPhone 4S). The results aren't surprising. Google's depth as a search provider proves its wherewithal against Apple, which calls Siri a personal assistant. But Jelly Bean's feature, used alongside Google Now, is every bit more and every bit what a digital assistant should be. Siri sucks even more, by comparison.

I will be absolutely clear: Together, Voice Assistant and Google Now represent a watershed development, living up to what Apple promises with Siri. Google has successfully presented its depth of search in a truly meaningful manner -- one that can change how people interact with mobile devices. If execution improves over time, particularly as Google Now learns personal habits, these innovations could be as important to the search giant as the development of its algorithm.

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I'm ashamed of Apple, and myself for giving anything to iPhone today. To celebrate iPhone's fifth anniversary, I asked BetaNews writers to offer missives based on their experience using the handset. We published Wayne Williams' story on Wednesday, another by Chris Wright early day and my own this afternoon. Two other stories are in the queue. We'll run them over the weekend, however, instead of today. There's no longer any sense of birthday celebration in these halls.

Today, US District Judge Lucy Koh gave Apple a great gift for iPhone's fifth, that I see as anything but. Apple's preliminary injunction against the Samsung-manufactured, Google-branded Galaxy Nexus is an outrage and demonstrates how far fallen is Steve Jobs' company from the innovative spirit that brought iPhone to market. The original set the smartphone market ablaze and brought Apple to unimagined success as seen from 2007. There was a time when Apple innovated rather than litigated and up-ended so-called copycats by making bold, breath-taking successor products. But that Apple is gone, buried with Jobs, who sadly left this world last year.

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Andy Rubin revealed the number late day, on the eve of Apple's developer conference. Google's Android chief disclosed the activations while dispelling rumors circulated by Robert Scoble about leaving for startup CloudCar. Rubin isn't going anywhere.

He last disclosed activations per day -- 850,000 -- on February 27. The new number means 27 million a month or 81 million every 90 days. That number is consistent with actual smartphone sales. Gartner, which tracks sales to end users rather than the analyst firm standard of shipments into the channel, reports 81.067 million Androids sold during first quarter -- again, that's smartphones and doesn't include tablets. By comparison, Apple sold 33.1 million iPhones, but the number doesn't include iPad or iPod touch.

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In March of last year, I boasted: "If Windows phone is No. 2 by 2015, I'll kiss Steve Ballmer's feet". Looks like Microsoft's CEO and I get a year's reprieve. Once again, IDC makes ridiculous, bold claims about how Windows Phone will ascend to second place in market share, now in 2016. Oh, pleeease forgive my skepticism considering how Windows Phone share has done nothing but fall like a rock -- 1.9 percent sales share in Q1, according to Gartner.

It's a year later in the forecast, so I'm making a new pledge. Since my prediction and ego would be in the toilet, I'll clean Ballmer's if Windows Phone rises like IDC predicts. It's a pledge I never expect to fulfill, so it's easy to make. Besides, in this newer forecast, IDC places an escape clause, suggesting waning confidence Nokia can lift Windows Phone so high.

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Asymco's Horace Dediu asks an interesting question today: "Trouble with the Robot?" -- referring to Android. He hones in on two seemingly convergent trends: a slight sequential dip in US Android share and sharp decline in US subscribers switching from feature phones to smartphones.

Based on his analysis of April data, iPhone sales remain fairly constant, while Android disproportionally declines. "Broken out by platforms, we see signs that the slowing in smartphone growth seems to be attributable to a slowing in Android adoption", Dediu explains. Stated differently, referring to comScore data he adds: "We see the lowest user growth for Android since 2009". The easy interpretation -- Android is now declining before iPhone -- would be wrong.

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Yesterday, during the annual D conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company is "doubling down" on Siri. Improvements are coming -- promised without admission of problems, although complaints about them are many. Then there's the lawsuit claiming Siri fails to meet advertised capabilities. You could interpret Cook's promise as concession Siri sucks or that Apple is preparing to take on Google in search. I see it both ways.

Five years ago, Apple supercharged the smartphone category with a more natural user interface. Suddenly, there was a new way to interact with a mobile phone that was seemingly magical. Humanness made the original iPhone stand apart from all competitors, and Apple used a variety of sensors to imbue the quality. Touch, and its intimacy, and the way the handset responded to your proximity gave it the human quality. But Apple has done little since, other than Siri, which does add a little more humanness to iPhone 4S. She adds personality and extends the mobile user interface to another more important than touch: Voice. Problem: There's something inhuman about Siri's often frustrating responses to questions.

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Well, perhaps I should qualify that with "almost", depending on what matters more to you as a user. On Thursday, 15 days after releasing a major Google+ update for iPhone, the Android version arrived. Timing is interesting. According to NPD, considerably more Android users access Google+ from the browser than the app -- 16 percent to 10 percent overall reach, in March, respectively. My question for you quick downloaders, will that be true for you, or is the app now preferred? It's no idle question, because the web experience is now so vastly different from the app.

Like its counterpart, Google+ for Android offers bleeding-edge photos. Pretty much everything about Google+ bleeds the edge of the screen. The effect is immersive. You just want to scroll and scroll -- and you will since so much less content fills the screen now. But the Android version has better visual flow than its iOS counterpart. Stated differently: It's snappier, more alive. "We're building for a mobile future", Google senior veep Vic Gundotra says. That's apparent from just how different the app is from the web experience -- and how immersive.

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Last week, the news broke that some of HTC's new Android smartphones, including the One X and EVO 4G LTE were being held up in U.S. Customs for potentially violating an ITC exclusion order.

HTC last Wednesday confirmed that these two phones were delayed due to "a standard U.S. Customs review of shipments" that was required as a result of the ITC order. The company said "We believe we are in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with Customs to secure approval." The customs delay caused the launch of the EVO 4G LTE to be postponed.

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