It seems like everyone is trying to play catch-up to the Apple iPhone, but everyone is pretty much failing. That is what Apple exec Tim Cook pretty much said at the Apple earning report. Cook said that many of the competitors out there are still trying to catch up to their first-gen iPhone, while they’re already a few steps ahead. More like 2 generations ahead. Cook said, “frankly I think people are trying to catch up with the first iPhone two years ago . “We’ve long since moved beyond that.”
Apple had tremendous demand for their current iPhone 3GS during the September quarter, which even caught Apple themselves by surprise. Cook even said that they were forced to increase their order of components to help supply all the demand from consumers. When the first iPhone was released in 2007 it caused the competition to try and create a touchscreen smart phone of their own, but it looks like they have all failed to even put a dent in the iPhone’s sales. Google and their Android tried to steal customers away from the iPhone, but have for the large part been unsuccessful. Apple sold 7.4 million iPhone during the last quarter, which was 7 percent higher than during the same period in 2008, this brought in about $2.297 billion in revenue for Apple.
With the iPhone due out in China on October 30, we can expect those numbers to climb even higher.
Source: iPhonespies
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Saying that Android hasn’t caught up to the first iPhone is a bit simplistic a generalization.
If you look at the overall user experience, the iPhone is hands-down better than Android (I say this as an Android phone owner married to an iPhone owner). It integrates and syncs with iTunes. It looks cool. The touchscreen is extremely responsive (never does a swipe not register). All the icons look slick, and the transitions between screens and tasks is seamless.
That said, even though Android’s interface needs a little help (for example, some text dialogues popping up but in such a way that you have to manually call up the onscreen keyboard in order to begin typing), it is many distinct advantages (depending on the individual) over the iPhone.
1. Google has a Market that gets vetted but app rejections don’t seem to be arbitrary and you can easily manually install (after reading a security warning, of course) any app that isn’t approved without having to jailbreak the phone.
2. Jailbreaking a Google phone is a lot easier than doing so for an iPhone and you aren’t constantly fighting with Google over it (Apple wants to make jailbreaking illegal and also does everything in its technological power to be in an arms race with hackers who do jailbreak iPhones), and it allows you to easily install new themes, enable wifi tethering, use multi-touch, add additional home screens.
3. You can set a wallpaper. You can use the phone without iTunes (especially good for us Linux users). You can install and use the Google Voice app, which integrates well with the phone, for obvious reasons.
4. It’s easy (no extra apps needed) to set any audio file already on the phone to be a ringtone.
Basically, there’s a lot more freedom to an Android phone. The fact that it hasn’t caught up to the iPhone really has to do more with Apple’s brilliant marketing and sleek designs than actual phone features.
By: A.Y. Siu on November 6, 2009
at 10:21 pm
You raise some very valid points there. Google aren’t so strict as Apple, Apple do try to protect their Intellectual Property and they should. I think Google don’t try to protect their IP because they know they’re behind Apple still with marketing and phones and have a lot of catching up to do so they’re happy at the moment to turn a blind eye, but ultimately the more manufacturers they bring on board the more it could become a problem for them legally with manufacturers and operators threatening to leave due to the unlocking and also piracy of applications.
Google do have a lot of catching up to do but already they’ve now shoe horned themselves between Windows Mobile and iPhone, it will be interesting to see whether Palm can jump between Google and Apple or whether they’re going to be running in 3rd or 4th place over time.
By: Dave Burrows on November 6, 2009
at 10:27 pm