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Old 04-29-2009, 10:49 PM
Rocco Augusto
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Default Has Google Already Lost The Smartphone Wars?

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,281...,2345789,00.asp

I recently ran across an interesting article written by Sascha Segan from PCMag.com asking an interesting question, "Has Android Already Failed?" Personally, like Steve Mueller from Mobility Site, I feel it is way too early to write the Android platform off. Let's face it, when Google and HTC teamed up to release the T-Mobile G1 (HTC Dream) the handset wasn't really built around the needs of the average consumer. Sure the HTC Dream is a great little handset on its own, but you would have to be blind to not see that this device was built for the sole purpose of having development hardware on the market for individuals interested in the platform as a whole. It is, after all, a dream device for the open source junkie in your life. You can build almost anything you want for it or install any of the various homebrew Android operating systems out there in the digital realm that are ready and waiting to be flashed to the handset.

What annoys me about these articles however is just the assumption that Android is a failure because it has sold so few handsets over the course of its first six months on the market. I personally consider selling 1 million handsets a success and I seem to remember all the Windows Mobile fanboys out there, myself included, shouting from the rooftops when the HTC Touch Diamond sold its first million handsets. 

There are other points in these articles that bother me as well such as assuming Android is a failure because everyone has announced a handsets to be released on the platform and only HTC has produced one at this moment in time. Handsets take device manufacturers a while to build. HTC didn't build the Dream in only one day and I bet their second Android handset, the HTC Magic, was in development either during the development of the Dream or shortly after its release. New Android handsets will come and when they do I would not be surprised to see them come in bulk from different carriers and ODMs at once and chances are non of them are going to show up before Google officially releases, what everyone considers, to be the first consumer ready version of the operating system - Android 1.5. That is just how the mobile game goes and we see it happen all the time with Windows Mobile handsets.

All of that above though is just speculation and opinion, just like the article that triggered this response, so as to not flood the Interwebs with even more speculation and opinion based stories, here are the reasons as to why I think Android is a sleeper success story that should have Microsoft, Apple, and Palm shaking in their boots, if not paying really close attention to the next upcoming 6 to 12 months.

iPhone Sales Figures

I have heard a lot of talk lately comparing the 6 months sales figures of the iPhone to the G1 and just assuming that it means the iPhone trumps all other man-made creations eight ways from Sunday. This isn't the case and here is why:

According to Ars Technica in the first 6 months the iPhone was on the market we saw sales that were generously estimated to be between 3.5 and 4 million handsets sold. These numbers are incredibly impressive, sure, but you have to keep in mind that iPhone was released nationwide on the AT&T network.

T-Mobile however severely limited the availability of the T-Mobile G1 during the initial launch to only markets that were running their newly installed HSDPA towers, which meant that it was released in only 21 markets. The T-Mobile G1 continued to only be sold in those 3G markets until January 2009 when it was finally released in non-3G markets. While spending over half of it's shelf life being sold in only a tiny fraction of the country it is a miracle the device even made it to a million sold handsets so quickly. Can you imagine how many HTC Dream handsets would be in the wild now if T-Mobile launched the device in every market available back in Q4 2008?

Carrier Subscription base

At the time that AT&T sold roughly 4 million iPhones in January 2008 the carrier had a customer base of roughly 70 million subscribers. If you do the math that means thats roughly 5.7% of AT&T's subscriber base owned an iPhone within the first 6 months of its release. Those aren't numbers to laugh at and it is easy to see why AT&T has wanted to keep the iPhone on its network exclusively for so long.

T-Mobile on the other hand, which only has a meager 32.8 million subscribers as of January 2009, has managed to put this handset - which sold in such limited conditions - into the hands of over 3% of its subscribers.  That isn’t too shabby seeing as how AT&T has over 46% of the subscribers then T-Mobile has. What does that mean? That means AT&T had 37.2 million more oppurtunities to sell the iPhone than T-mobile did to sell the G1. On top of that T-Mobile also reports that the G1 makes up for over 40% of the HSDPA enabled devices on their small but rapidly growing 3G network. Impressive indeed.

Mobile Web

Not too long ago our very own Ed Hansberry reported on the browsing habits of mobile web users. In the graph that was shown during the first few months since its launch Android managed to capture a little over 6% of the mobile web market which was just a tad bit under Windows Mobile which had over 20 million devices on the market and only managed to caputre 6.9% of mobile web browsing at the time the graph was put together.

Mobile Internet browsing is the next big thing, there is no doubt about that, and browsing the web from an Android device has been nothing short of pleasant. Mobile WebKit is an exciting piece of technology and as we see newer versions of the iPhone, WebOS and Android platforms hit the market we will see that browser engine evolve to the point where a majority of your web browsing could be done from your handset instead of sitting in front of a computer screen.

Conclusion

Google's Android platform is far from being a total failure. It is easy for companies such as Apple and Microsoft to ignore the platform. After all, out of all the smartphone operating systems out their Android does come in dead last in the looks department and if you never use the handset yourself all you really know about it is how it looks in the images you see.

What Android is capable of however is nothing short of magical and what Android has accomplished so far - in spite of being severely handicapped by T-Mobile at launch - is astonishing. For any carrier to have 3-5% of their installed user base using one handset in such a limited amount of time, when that carrier could have literally hundreds of older and newer handset models on their network at any given time is nothing short of a feat of the gods and nowhere near failure status. I also shouldn't have to remind anyone that it isn't even May yet. We still have another 8 months to go before we're in 2010 so maybe we shouldn’t start harping on manufacturers for not releasing Android devices as quickly as the Interwebs would like. I would rather have the ODMs take their time and release a quality product instead of dropping a bunch of dung on us.

I shot an email off to my friend Tim who works for T-Mobile to see if I get them to comment on this article but unfortunately he was unavailable and told me "Sorry, we can't respond to your email right now - we're too busy swimming around in the gigantic pile of money the G1 is making us."

Rocco Augusto is the Managing Editor of Smartphone Thoughts and owns and operates Skimbee Studios – a small Web Development studio based out of Portland, OR. When Rocco is not up to his elbows in gadgets and technology, you can usually find him trying to keep up with his incredibly peppy and energetic daughter or wasting hours away on Twitter.

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  #2  
Old 04-30-2009, 02:38 AM
virain
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I don't see Android as a failure yet. I own G1, can't say that I love it very much thou. In the news you see more and mopre Manufacturers and carriers picking up on this platform, so do independend developers. The biggest danger for Android, IMHO, is that it can be customized and changed to the point of no recognition. And I believe this is exactly why Open Source didn't become main OS neither in a consumer nor business markets. Look how many flavours Linux has! And there's no compatability standard for them! That means software that runs great on Ubuntu will not be running on Fedore, or something else... So, it may be not a big problem for Tech Geeks, but your average not that tech savvy customer would rather go for something that he or she won't have to spend more time and money to make their computer working if they decide to change a flavour, or learn how to use it if they change their jobs. Of course, there's great unexpansive soft s.a. Open Office, etc... but still...
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Old 04-30-2009, 03:40 AM
Pete Paxton
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Interesting article. I've been contemplating an Android device. I currently have an iphone but to be honest, the greatest thing I find about the iphone is the app store. There are just so many apps that make the iphone cool but the device itself though cool in ways, isn't the reason I'd keep it. What I don't like about the iphone is its dependency on itunes which means I have to use it on a mac or windows machine. I've been using Ubuntu almost exclusively and love it. I can get any windows pc laptop I want and reformat it with Ubuntu so I can have the security of a solid unix system without having to pay apple's ridiculous laptop prices. The only reason I use apple or windows currently is because of my iphone. But if I can update, transfer software and integrate an android device with my ubuntu lappy, I may just make the switch. So do any of you know how well they integrate?
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Old 04-30-2009, 03:53 AM
Rocco Augusto
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete Paxton View Post
But if I can update, transfer software and integrate an android device with my ubuntu lappy, I may just make the switch. So do any of you know how well they integrate?
You would be golden with an Ubuntu and Android combo. Since all of the syncing is done via the cloud with the Android, there is no desktop software to manage the device. As for putting music, movies, images and other things on the device - when plugged in via USB the handset will read as a removable harddrive as long as an microSD card is installed.
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Old 04-30-2009, 08:42 AM
Stinger
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From what I've heard, the G1 took three years to develop. That explains why the G1's design looks so dated compared to the latest HTC devices. As HTC gets more experience with Android, I'm certain that we'll see more compelling devices.

I agree that it's too early to judge Google's mobile operating system. There are a lot of companies out there who have committed to Android. Even if half don't make it to release, the marketplace is still going to be awash with Android handsets. Momentum usually builds slowly.

Quote:
T-Mobile however severely limited the availability of the T-Mobile G1 during the initial launch to only markets that were running their newly installed HSDPA towers, which meant that it was released in only 21 markets.
The G1 was also launched in most of Europe. Please don't fall into the trap of viewing smartphones as a purely American thing. Most smartphones are still sold outside of North America. The Nokia N73 sold 22 million units without ever reaching American shores.
 
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Old 04-30-2009, 12:42 PM
mrp0428
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Default G1

I have owned the G1 since it's release day in October. I was a winmo user with the shadow and dash before that. I feel the phone was introduced about 6 months too early with a battery that needed more capacity. The operating system itself is fine. It was missing some key features such as ability to store applications on the card and sterio bluetooth.

To me T mobile has done a poor job in keeping users in the loop about going forward with the device. It was clearly a financial decision to force sales into the 4th quarter with a device that was barely past testing. As far as the battery is concerned they all but lied about the expected performance. I was never more disappointed with t mobile than when I called about battery performace and was given a list of all the features that I should disable to enhance the battery and the first feature mentioned was the 3g service. That was one of the main selling points being t mobiles first 3g phone and then they tell me not to use the service. In the future models the info leaked always points to higher capacity batteries.
 
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Old 04-30-2009, 04:25 PM
Damion Chaplin
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An excellent article, Rocco.

I agree that it's too soon to write off Android. To me, Android is much closer to Windows Mobile than the iPhone's OSX, so I'm expecting a similar evolution of the operating system to take place. If you recall the first Pocket PC Phone Edition was pretty ragtag and barely functioned at all. Windows Mobile isn't really that much further ahead than it was oh so long ago. For Bob's sake, my HTC Fuze only sounds the ringer about 30% of the time when I get a call! So the fact that there are still a few features missing from Android means nothing. I imagine it at least rings when it's supposed to...

That said, I still prefer WM to any other mobile OS out there. When Android becomes fully fleshed-out, I expect it to give WM a serious run for it's money. The iPhone will always be the iPhone and I'm not sure anyone will ever be able to compare a non-Apple handset to it without venturing into apples vs. oranges territory.
 
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Old 04-30-2009, 08:11 PM
Rocco Augusto
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Stinger View Post
From what I've heard, the G1 took three years to develop. That explains why the G1's design looks so dated compared to the latest HTC devices. As HTC gets more experience with Android, I'm certain that we'll see more compelling devices.
I am pretty sure Android took closer to 5 years to develop but I could be wrong. Internet connection is buggy here so I cant bring up Wikipedia. The new HTC Android device has a very slick user interface. There are already builds of the ROM ported over to the G1 with the new graphical changes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stinger View Post
The G1 was also launched in most of Europe. Please don't fall into the trap of viewing smartphones as a purely American thing.
Don't worry, I'm not. The 1 million mark is only in the US. Sales figures for the UK and other parts of the world have not been announced yet.
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Old 05-01-2009, 03:20 AM
Rocco Augusto
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Looks like Motorola and Samsung have announced a total of 3 Android devices to be released by the end of the year. See, if you give it time the handsets will come!
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Old 05-01-2009, 12:10 PM
CaptainColin
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Default Question Mark over the name "Android"

It seems that there is a question mark over the use of the name "Android" when it refers to software as a company had already registered the name before Google decided to use it for its phone software.

It may be that Google has to rename "Android" to something else!

See this article: http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/30/and...ogy_newsletter
 
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