Android will beat the iPhone in the long run, for the same reasons that PCs became more popular than Macs. PCs are more diverse, more open, and therefore have more applications; they are capable of becoming more specialized and therefore more useful in many different scenarios.
Android phones will be more complex and people will complain about that, they are more complicated, and they have too many options and too many flavors – but they will be more popular.
Apple will have a small share of the market but will be considered very successful nonetheless; we are talking about 4 to 5 billion devices in this market, and even a small fraction of this number is huge (Yes, I believe that all phones will be smartphones in a few years and I also believe that the mobile internet will be “the internet” for half of these people).
There is no doubt that we will live in a world where 100% of the population will have what we today call cell phones. I do not know when this will happen, but it will happen.
In 2009 the total number of cell phones in the world will reach 4 billion. One day all these devices will have internet access – there is no way in such a diverse world that one device can fit all needs. Having a diverse ecosystem is really the major strength of Android over the iPhone. This diversity is one of the reasons that Nokia has one billion customers.
The real question is: how many mobile OS’s are enough? Is there space for Symbian (All flavors S60, UIQ…), Android, iPhone OS, RIM, Windows Mobile, LIMO, … I don’t think there is. Some of these OS’s will fail and disappear, just like Amiga or Commodore.
But the diversity of devices on which Android runs, will ultimately help it to beat the iPhone.
Developers, Developers and Developers are what count. So your ecosystem has to big enough and “friendly” enough for them to create great products that provide utility to the consumer.
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October 9th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
A friend of mine has a really good article about that, using the same approach, check it out: http://webinsider.uol.com.br/index.php/2007/11/06/android-e-o-pc-20-a-versao-mobile-do-ibm-pc/ – sorry guys, it is in portuguese
August 18th, 2009 at 1:08 am
Some useful info, could be slighty more detailed but thank you, is always good to learn