The big problem I have with this kind of analysis is that it's all extrapolation based on existing conditions, with the assumption that nothing disruptive will happen from here on out. You could have done the same analysis at various points in time and concluded that Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry and iOS were all going to dominate the future. The very nature of technology is disruptive and we simply cannot predict what's going to happen next.
Having said that, if this vision does come to fruition, I think it is a wonderful thing for humanity. The fact that the OS that comes to dominate the planet is free, open source and available on (nearly)equal terms to everyone from the most powerful and rich on the planet to the most poor and deprived is a truly amazing and awesome feat. A few years ago I looked at the growth of iOS and truly feared that humanity was headed for a very different future - one where the poor were separated and disenfranchised by their inability to afford access to the dominant mobile platform and the rich were slavishly bound to the constraints of a locked down and tightly controlled ecosystem where all decisions made would be in the interest of the largest company on earth. This latter future did not come to pass, and I am very glad for that (even as I admire and love using Apple products).
Yeah, when he gets into Android forecasts for 2014 with one in every four people or whatever - a bit much.
But like you I think its pretty amazing that I can put the same OS on my Raspberry Pi, any crappy tablet, my phone and whatever else at the same rate as the rest of the world for practically nothing.
"Today latest Q3 data and 20 months after Nokia CEO annoucned the premature death of Symbian, in Q3 Symbian sales has collapsed from the 29% market share it had when Elop announced it, to 2% now."
So tired of this total misuse of a statistic. Yes, Symbian had ~29% of the market when they switch to backing WP7. However, that's leaving out the fact that 29% is down from 47% in 2009, and that the rate at which people were abandoning Symbian for Android continued to increase. Furthermore, that market share was almost entirely cheap dumbphones. The reality is that Symbian was never a popular smartphone platform and was not ready for a global shift from dumbphones to smartphones, and that Apple and Android disrupted that market and split it among themselves. That whole section was littered with ranty inaccuracies. OP goes on to talk about "Windows Phone 6" as a confused combination of WinMo 6.5 and WP7.
I belong to one of the non-US markets where Nokia smartphones and dumbphones had a majority share. To be honest, abandoning Symbian was quite a shock here because, despite being slow, it was a very familiar user interface for vast majority of the population.
Rather than throw the baby with the bathwater, Nokia could retained a very loyal customer base by offering a smoother migration path. They could have even made an entirely rewritten touch based OS with a familiar Nokia UI (or as a fallback mode). It would have been a killer product in such markets. Instead Elop chose to write-off all the good work Nokia has done thus far by calling it a "burning platform".
Whichever numbers you look at today, the sheer stupidity of that decision is painfully evident.
Windows will not have lost until Microsoft goes bankrupt.
Mobile platforms are really just a fad. The future will be essentially a distributed OS, where devices throughout the home interact with a larger system to provide a much more immersive and practical experience. Few will give a fuck about iOS and Android in 10 years
Apple is going to be focusing on novel user input with their new T.V. They've already provided Airplay, etc. but other than music, streaming video, and other information provided by screens and tablets, what are they providing?
Microsoft has a head start with kinect, so if they invested in related research, touch screens, and other novel input devices like the LEAP, they might be able to compete in the future. By placing kinect-like devices around the home with some mics and speakers, you could talk to your computer like in the original Star Trek ("Computer, how hot will it be today?") or make a gesture in the air to turn on and off lights or lock doors. That would be something people would buy.
I believe, that in the end, the browser will win. The Mozilla OS on phone will go somewhere, and many many apps will move into the browser, both on the low-end phone hardware, and on high-end laptop hardware.
It turns out its easier to "sell" lots of copies of something for free. Microsoft actually sold those > 1 billion copies of windows. Google still makes almost nothing on android. This article was absurdly over the top IMO.
Microsoft makes money on the one off sale and then essentially zero from then on. Google makes zero on the sale, but then makes money from then on. Asymco has the numbers from 6 months ago:
Too much hyperbole, but I was struck by this, which I hadn't considered before:
"We often go to Amazon just to search something - to see what else Amazon recommends. We are quite literally accessing Amazon 'just to see ads'."
I haven't seen a clearer demonstration of the argument that ads, properly targeted and displayed at the right times, provide positive value to the user.
People don't like most advertising because it's lying to them, or at least covering up it's faults (turd rolled in glitter). I mean, what company is going to pay to tell everything about their product. There going to show it in the best light. When people buy something they want to be informed (doesn't a free market require this?). With sites like Amazon or Newegg you get more information about the product and similar products that is supposedly neutral. They don't care 'which' product you buy, as long as you buy it from them. The customer benefits by exposure to more choices, better products, and possibly better pricing.
This does not work as well for vendors, they do not care who you buy from, as long as you buy their product.
This vision of the world feels like it was dreamed up by a science fiction author. I understand Android is growing. But, I can not help but think he is answering the wrong question. Honestly, I do not know what the right question is. It reads like a narrow view of the market, global economy, and fads. I look at my very young cousins. They are growing up with iPads and iPhones not Google products. (observations)
> I look at my very young cousins. They are growing up with iPads and iPhones not Google products. (observations)
This is true, but I think you are looking too short term. Here in every Christmas catalogue there are 3 pages of iPads and iPad accessories. But you know what is on the front page of most of the catalogues? a $99 Android tablet. The tablet probably sucks, but I think this is the turning point. Parents are not going to spend $300+ on tablets for their kids when the "same thing" is next to it for $99. These are going to flood into living rooms, then schools, and all other instutions. The iPad has a temporary monopoly in these places now but it's not going to last. In a year's time the components in the $99 tablets will be good enough that the experience will actually be good and then it's all over. Apple's fatal flaw is that their business model depends on those high margin. The often quoted statistic that Apple makes nearly all the profits in the mobile industry is as much a weakness as a strength. Apple needs those margins, their business model depends on it. They can't survive in a low-margin world but they also can't prevent it. They have to retreat and hide every time in the luxury / premium segment of the market where their business model works, but the vast majority of us do not dwell. To survive in the mass market, Apple needs to create revolutionary hit after revolutionary hit - and they've done amazingly well at that so far, but you have to ask how many times they can pull it off. Eventually they are going to falter and then their whole model crumbles.
Actually you are the one with the narrow view of the market. Look beyond your young cousins.
The rest of the world are using Android devices not Apple.
Android phones has 80+% market share in a number of countries in Europe. Worldwide, Android tablets are slowly gaining market share from the IPad.
In Africa, Android phones cost less than $100. In a few years, it might be under $50. A lot of poor people will not be able to afford a PC but a cheap phone is probably the only computer they'll ever have.
Never seen anyone use an android workstation as their main work system though. I have an android phone and a PC. I spend ~8-10 hours on the PC and probably < 1 hour on the phone.
Not saying it won't happen , but it seems a little premature to call "victory" just yet.
> Never seen anyone use an android workstation as their main work system though
Me neither, but if the hardware specs are right, it's a breeze to install a full Ubuntu userland and work from there. I don't think anyone will ever want to run a heavy IDE (such as Eclipse or Visual Studio) on any machine that was designed to be power efficient rather than fast, but I have no problem developing for Django, Flask or App Engine on my aging Atom (N270, IIRC) netbook. And, if I develop on a remote host (as I do, when I need serious computing power), all I need is bandwidth, a decent screen (all my phones have HDMI outputs), a keyboard and, maybe, a pointing device (easy, since all of my Android devices have Bluetooth).
The more people read their e-mail and manage their shared work documents through a browser, the less they need a desktop PC. Soon enough, the desktop PC will follow the path of the Unix workstation and be relegated to a niche where being able to locally process locally stored data is important. If I were Steve Ballmer, I'd retire right now and never, ever, worry about Microsoft again.
I don't get it, and I found it very hard to read meaning into all the superlatives.
Haven't there been more Linux devices than Windows devices for a long time now? For every PC that maps 1:1 to the owner's digital life, there are probably three toasters and a smart fridge running Linux. In the future, they will run Android. How does that help Google or hurt Microsoft? Apple could probably switch all their non-iOS iPods to run a modified Android and not a single thing would change.
So far, Android has only "won" the smartphone game by numbers. And in the process, Samsung has become an internal monopoly. I'm not convinced that this is the solid foundation on which mankind's digital future will be built.
The Platform of the Century will power cameras, credit cards, cellphones, computers, consoles, clocks
This is why I've decided to crosstrain from iOS to Android. I think Apple is going to continue to do well for many years but Android is going to be much bigger than just phones.
I expect solid Android experience to be very much in demand.
I do Android freelancing, and I'm starting to see requests for apps that look more like traditional embedded software than smartphone apps. Controllers for industrial equipment, personal medical devices, props in simulations. Real Technology stuff.
That's not exactly new, but my perception is that it's picked up a lot in the last few months. And I think it's just the tip of the iceberg. For anything you can imagine wanting to control with a touchscreen, putting a cheap Android display in a case and connecting up over USB or Bluetooth seems to be making a lot of sense to people.
I fully expect Android skills to be profoundly in demand in a year or two. Study up now; it's not really a quick system to master.
I wonder if this guy did the Googlezon video (that is the one where Google and Amazon merge and become a planet dominating company) people would start work at Google and then post it to the company wide 'misc' mailing list. It was almost like clockwork.
I think Android has had an impressive run. There is an interesting article about how it dominates Chinese smartphones but Google isn't getting any return on that investment (80% of Android phones in China ship with Baidu as the search provider). That is something that didn't happen with Windows.
> That is something that didn't happen with Windows.
Baidu dominates on the desktop in China as well. China is a unique situation, since the government actively encourages domestic copycats of foreign companies while preventing/making it difficult for those foreign companies trying to enter the Chinese market.
Google doesn't just make money on Android via search; they have a pile of other services integrated with Android, and they also make money from app sales and ad-infested apps.
> here is an interesting article about how it dominates Chinese smartphones but Google isn't getting any return on that investment (80% of Android phones in China ship with Baidu as the search provider).
They still maintain Google as the app-store though? So Google gets ~30% of every app/media-item sold?
The idea of doing ALL payments and transactions by mobile is a horrible future. It is the lack of privacy that cash gives us, and the complete dependence on mobile phones, corporations, and banks. What about people that don't want to have smart phones and refuse to pay via paperless? We have the ability to choose what technology to use - let's not get rid of cash shall we?
If this future comes true, maybe the situation will reverse and there will be a 2.5% cash handling fee instead of the fee some companies currently charge for credit card transactions :)
So far the vast majority of top-level comments on this thread slag the article for hyperbole.
But it is very likely true. Although the installed base of Android systems is small compared to what Windows has piled up over ten years of near total hegemony, Android's market share is growing at a rate that makes Tomi Ahonens's prediction a very good bet indeed.
Remember this prediction, and start acting on it now.
My prediction is that two years from now Hacker News will be full of posts about how nobody predicted how pervasive Android has become.
[+] [-] zmmmmm|13 years ago|reply
Having said that, if this vision does come to fruition, I think it is a wonderful thing for humanity. The fact that the OS that comes to dominate the planet is free, open source and available on (nearly)equal terms to everyone from the most powerful and rich on the planet to the most poor and deprived is a truly amazing and awesome feat. A few years ago I looked at the growth of iOS and truly feared that humanity was headed for a very different future - one where the poor were separated and disenfranchised by their inability to afford access to the dominant mobile platform and the rich were slavishly bound to the constraints of a locked down and tightly controlled ecosystem where all decisions made would be in the interest of the largest company on earth. This latter future did not come to pass, and I am very glad for that (even as I admire and love using Apple products).
[+] [-] ddw|13 years ago|reply
But like you I think its pretty amazing that I can put the same OS on my Raspberry Pi, any crappy tablet, my phone and whatever else at the same rate as the rest of the world for practically nothing.
[+] [-] bicknergseng|13 years ago|reply
So tired of this total misuse of a statistic. Yes, Symbian had ~29% of the market when they switch to backing WP7. However, that's leaving out the fact that 29% is down from 47% in 2009, and that the rate at which people were abandoning Symbian for Android continued to increase. Furthermore, that market share was almost entirely cheap dumbphones. The reality is that Symbian was never a popular smartphone platform and was not ready for a global shift from dumbphones to smartphones, and that Apple and Android disrupted that market and split it among themselves. That whole section was littered with ranty inaccuracies. OP goes on to talk about "Windows Phone 6" as a confused combination of WinMo 6.5 and WP7.
[+] [-] sounds|13 years ago|reply
What other "ranty innacuracies" would you like to point out?
Windows Phone 6 was a (mild) typo for Windows Mobile 6. (Not WP7)
[+] [-] arocks|13 years ago|reply
Rather than throw the baby with the bathwater, Nokia could retained a very loyal customer base by offering a smoother migration path. They could have even made an entirely rewritten touch based OS with a familiar Nokia UI (or as a fallback mode). It would have been a killer product in such markets. Instead Elop chose to write-off all the good work Nokia has done thus far by calling it a "burning platform".
Whichever numbers you look at today, the sheer stupidity of that decision is painfully evident.
[+] [-] genuine|13 years ago|reply
Mobile platforms are really just a fad. The future will be essentially a distributed OS, where devices throughout the home interact with a larger system to provide a much more immersive and practical experience. Few will give a fuck about iOS and Android in 10 years
Apple is going to be focusing on novel user input with their new T.V. They've already provided Airplay, etc. but other than music, streaming video, and other information provided by screens and tablets, what are they providing?
Microsoft has a head start with kinect, so if they invested in related research, touch screens, and other novel input devices like the LEAP, they might be able to compete in the future. By placing kinect-like devices around the home with some mics and speakers, you could talk to your computer like in the original Star Trek ("Computer, how hot will it be today?") or make a gesture in the air to turn on and off lights or lock doors. That would be something people would buy.
[+] [-] watmough|13 years ago|reply
I believe, that in the end, the browser will win. The Mozilla OS on phone will go somewhere, and many many apps will move into the browser, both on the low-end phone hardware, and on high-end laptop hardware.
[+] [-] solnyshok|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clarky07|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rogerbinns|13 years ago|reply
http://www.asymco.com/2012/05/14/the-android-income-statemen...
Also note that the more recent the version of Android, the higher they monetize:
http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2012/10/24/androids-jelly-be...
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
No, it didn't. A very large portion of those 1 billion copies were pirated.
[+] [-] moistgorilla|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huggah|13 years ago|reply
"We often go to Amazon just to search something - to see what else Amazon recommends. We are quite literally accessing Amazon 'just to see ads'."
I haven't seen a clearer demonstration of the argument that ads, properly targeted and displayed at the right times, provide positive value to the user.
[+] [-] pixl97|13 years ago|reply
This does not work as well for vendors, they do not care who you buy from, as long as you buy their product.
[+] [-] fumar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zmmmmm|13 years ago|reply
This is true, but I think you are looking too short term. Here in every Christmas catalogue there are 3 pages of iPads and iPad accessories. But you know what is on the front page of most of the catalogues? a $99 Android tablet. The tablet probably sucks, but I think this is the turning point. Parents are not going to spend $300+ on tablets for their kids when the "same thing" is next to it for $99. These are going to flood into living rooms, then schools, and all other instutions. The iPad has a temporary monopoly in these places now but it's not going to last. In a year's time the components in the $99 tablets will be good enough that the experience will actually be good and then it's all over. Apple's fatal flaw is that their business model depends on those high margin. The often quoted statistic that Apple makes nearly all the profits in the mobile industry is as much a weakness as a strength. Apple needs those margins, their business model depends on it. They can't survive in a low-margin world but they also can't prevent it. They have to retreat and hide every time in the luxury / premium segment of the market where their business model works, but the vast majority of us do not dwell. To survive in the mass market, Apple needs to create revolutionary hit after revolutionary hit - and they've done amazingly well at that so far, but you have to ask how many times they can pull it off. Eventually they are going to falter and then their whole model crumbles.
[+] [-] dannyr|13 years ago|reply
The rest of the world are using Android devices not Apple.
Android phones has 80+% market share in a number of countries in Europe. Worldwide, Android tablets are slowly gaining market share from the IPad.
In Africa, Android phones cost less than $100. In a few years, it might be under $50. A lot of poor people will not be able to afford a PC but a cheap phone is probably the only computer they'll ever have.
[+] [-] kumarm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|13 years ago|reply
India and China aren't the only places where Apple is losing (relative) mobile marketshare.
[+] [-] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
Not saying it won't happen , but it seems a little premature to call "victory" just yet.
[+] [-] rbanffy|13 years ago|reply
Me neither, but if the hardware specs are right, it's a breeze to install a full Ubuntu userland and work from there. I don't think anyone will ever want to run a heavy IDE (such as Eclipse or Visual Studio) on any machine that was designed to be power efficient rather than fast, but I have no problem developing for Django, Flask or App Engine on my aging Atom (N270, IIRC) netbook. And, if I develop on a remote host (as I do, when I need serious computing power), all I need is bandwidth, a decent screen (all my phones have HDMI outputs), a keyboard and, maybe, a pointing device (easy, since all of my Android devices have Bluetooth).
The more people read their e-mail and manage their shared work documents through a browser, the less they need a desktop PC. Soon enough, the desktop PC will follow the path of the Unix workstation and be relegated to a niche where being able to locally process locally stored data is important. If I were Steve Ballmer, I'd retire right now and never, ever, worry about Microsoft again.
[+] [-] gurkendoktor|13 years ago|reply
Haven't there been more Linux devices than Windows devices for a long time now? For every PC that maps 1:1 to the owner's digital life, there are probably three toasters and a smart fridge running Linux. In the future, they will run Android. How does that help Google or hurt Microsoft? Apple could probably switch all their non-iOS iPods to run a modified Android and not a single thing would change.
So far, Android has only "won" the smartphone game by numbers. And in the process, Samsung has become an internal monopoly. I'm not convinced that this is the solid foundation on which mankind's digital future will be built.
[+] [-] pacala|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cageface|13 years ago|reply
This is why I've decided to crosstrain from iOS to Android. I think Apple is going to continue to do well for many years but Android is going to be much bigger than just phones.
I expect solid Android experience to be very much in demand.
[+] [-] Dove|13 years ago|reply
That's not exactly new, but my perception is that it's picked up a lot in the last few months. And I think it's just the tip of the iceberg. For anything you can imagine wanting to control with a touchscreen, putting a cheap Android display in a case and connecting up over USB or Bluetooth seems to be making a lot of sense to people.
I fully expect Android skills to be profoundly in demand in a year or two. Study up now; it's not really a quick system to master.
[+] [-] ricardobeat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tnuc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
I think Android has had an impressive run. There is an interesting article about how it dominates Chinese smartphones but Google isn't getting any return on that investment (80% of Android phones in China ship with Baidu as the search provider). That is something that didn't happen with Windows.
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
Baidu dominates on the desktop in China as well. China is a unique situation, since the government actively encourages domestic copycats of foreign companies while preventing/making it difficult for those foreign companies trying to enter the Chinese market.
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e12e|13 years ago|reply
They still maintain Google as the app-store though? So Google gets ~30% of every app/media-item sold?
[+] [-] Executor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] medell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cageface|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|13 years ago|reply
But it is very likely true. Although the installed base of Android systems is small compared to what Windows has piled up over ten years of near total hegemony, Android's market share is growing at a rate that makes Tomi Ahonens's prediction a very good bet indeed.
Remember this prediction, and start acting on it now.
My prediction is that two years from now Hacker News will be full of posts about how nobody predicted how pervasive Android has become.
[+] [-] politician|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Roybatty|13 years ago|reply