The week has opened with a barrage of stories about the high sales figures for the Droid, Verizon’s Android device launched last week. According to reports, the company shifted 250,000 Droids during this first week, which is a strong figure by anyone’s standards. But can it keep that up long enough to be considered real competition to the iPhone?
More importantly, does it even need to? Let’s have a little look.
The Droid had a comparatively limited release:
The figure of 250,000 units isn’t gospel, but it’s a very decent estimate. According to the same stats from Flurry, it’s over 7 times less devices than iPhone sold during it’s opening week. Droid would need to maintain those opening week sales over an extended period before it comes close to the iPhone.
But Droid has only been released in one country. It remains to be seen how successful it is overseas (I for one would queue to buy one if they release it in Ireland).
Not only that, but it’s relatively late to market. iPhone will never lose the status it gained from being the first proper smartphone as we understand them today. When the iPhone launched there simply wasn’t anything else like it in anybodies pocket. And that is something Droid can never compete with.
The Droid is part of a bigger movement:
If you read reportage of the Droid, you’ll notice something interesting. In a lot of cases, the device isn’t being reported on by it’s own mertis, but rather as a representation of Android as a whole. Droid is now the poster boy for Android, and it’s sales are being regarded as a volley in the Android vs. iPhone war. The question is whether it matters if Droid sales plummet after week one, as long as it successfully pushes Android as a platform? I would say damn straight it does. Once the operator gets its cut, Apple pulls in 100% of the profit from iPhone – which gives it incredible financial leverage for marketing. The same can’t be said of Android. In the case of Droid the profits are going mostly to Motorola and Verizon. But if another Android device does well, those profits are going to drop. Which brings us to the next point…
The Droid has bigger fish to fry than the iPhone:
Some of the biggest competition Droid has to face is from other Android devices. The HTC Hero was the big Android on campus until Droid came along with it’s slick ad campaigns and blew everyone out of the water. And Droid will suffer the same fate. At least when an old iPhone model is made redundant, all the upgrades are still buying devices straight from Apple.
Another problem with this is application consistency. As a friend of mine said to me in an email today, “it’s still really hard to make a consistent user experience with apps on android, because you can’t guarantee any features.” Different Android devices will have different technical specifications and capabilities. So you’ll have developers that have to develop multiple versions of the same app for one operating system, and given the number of Androids we’re looking at over the next one to two years, that could be a lot. Or you’ll be looking at great apps that are only developed for one model of Android – which is the kind of thing that really annoys consumer.
What we think?
I think it’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Android. But I simply can’t claim I’m confident that it will ever really provide huge competition for iPhone. I foresee Android remaining a profitable force in the mobile marketplace for a long time… but one of the major problems for that market is fragmentation. The mobile industry is still running in a hundred different directions at once, and in many ways Android is going to be further fragmenting it’s own little corner of that market. The ability of Android to adapt to any niche, and release a device to fit any segment of the mobile buyer demographic is simultaneously a huge advantage and a huge disadvantage.
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most of the iphone user had no idea about windows mobile….
windows mobile had multi tasking before 1st iphone
windows mobile had the touch screen (may be not the multi touch)
windows mobile had GPS since 2004 or 2005
windows mobile 6 had far more apps and features than the first iPhone
many windows mobiles had physical keyboard
windows mobiles had options to replace battery
even old windows does so many thing that are still not available in iPhone ‘the iDont’
so u can’t say that there was nothing before iPhone
iPhone has become a real smart phone after opening the app store
but android will cross iphone with the help of many hardware manufacturers, many application developers, Google’s integrated services and various missing featurres of iPhone
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Droid touts multitasking but is crippled because it can’t do voice AND data.
Also, it uses internal memory only so regardless of how much external GB you plug in, you’re limited to a 512mb sandbox for apps.
In the US, the issue really is Verizon’s fabled but antiquated CDMA network.
The real question will be how Verizon will hold up if they get the same traffic that ATT has with the iPhone.
One BIG Verizon negative is that Verizon/CDMA can not handle simultaneous Voice and Data (like ATT/iPhone can). So much for the multi-tasking benefit – iPhone trumps Droid here.
PS: Verizon’s CDMA network will soon to be replaced with LTE (making current Droids obsolete) but at least then allowing real multi-tasking with phone and other applications.
No simultaneous voice and data is only a minor con imo. Multitasking stretches way beyond voice/data…things like listening to Pandora while browsing the web.
As long as Android can keep the fragmenting under control, it will be fine. And the iPhone wasn’t that great when it launched. Just because it was very simple to use for the average person doesn’t make it the best phone ever. Remember the iPhone didn’t launch with an app market, that took a year and it lacked basic things smartphones have/had…like 3G and multitasking.
1. Motorola Droid racks up some big sales because they came out with the best hardware for Android (at that time Nov 2009).
2. Motorola and Verizon pair up to create a big advertising campaign that brought some real attention directly to the phone but not Android itself. The average folks are clueless when it comes to what Android is. Everyone knows about iPhone because it is easier for one company to market one phone with one OS.
Can it last?
Nope, I don’t think so. This is because the Android phones are too competitive. Many phone manufacturer are fiercely competing with one another to produce the next best Android phone. It is amazing to see how many different Android phones are coming out. I found this web site list most of the Android phones under their ‘cellphone’ tab:
http://androidcompare.com
In the addition the above site also give an excellent Android vs. iPhone comparison list.
The fragmentation you speak of is exactly the same criticism that is levelled against linux – and yet 19 years later it is still going stronger than ever. Sure, its not taking over the world, but you were saying android would die out due to fragmentation, and i’m using this example to show that it wont…
In fact if you think about it, android has a very clear and defined feature set as far as what hardware it works with. Every phone manufacturer will absolutely make sure their phones support every one of these features. You mention as a developer you dont know which features each phone will have. Here’s a tip: “all of them”! There are many android phones in development and every single one has bluetooth, gps, internet, digital compass, accelerometer, touch screen, camera, and much more. Ever written software for windows? Exactly the same issue applies, and yet windows is much more successful than osx.
Android vs iphone is like Microsoft vs Apple. Google is now in the position of Microsoft – in that they make the software but leave it up to OEM’s to do the rest. The result will be the same as windows vs mac in terms of popularity.
Apple, although popular with the iphone and ipod etc, is still a niche, and will always remain so until they change their business plan.
If you use a “smart phone” for business then simultaneous voice/date capability is not just important, but paramount. If I’m on a call with a client or colleague about an important document, and they send me their comments to it, or their newest version of it, in order to discuss, I need to be able to access that email and attachment simultaneously; I can’t hang up, retrieve, open, then call back. Its not only unwieldly, inefficient and unproductive, but embarrassing. If Verizon can “hear me now,” then they will join the 21st century in this regard.