Tag: apple

Android Activations Reach 250 Million

Tell any iOS fan that Android is doing just fine, and you will get all kinds of negative responses, eventually calling you an Android troll or something. But numbers can speak for themselves and numbers show that indeed Android is not a weird underground product, but something which eventually can destroy Apple’s kingship in the smartphone world.

The activations of Android OS devices seem to grow on geometrical scale. Recent update from Larry Page gives some clarification on how fast the Android “virus” is spreading all over the world. He says as of November last year only 50 million handsets were activated with Android, now that number is 250 million. It is assumed 700,000 activations are happening daily and with 3.7 million activations done only during Christmas period alone.

In addition to this, 11 billion downloads have been already done through Android Market. To make things clear by comparison, look on Apple’s App Store, which is older than Android Market by 3 month and has reached its 18 billionth download last year in December. Pity no information is available as to which percent from those downloads was done for paid apps and which for free.

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January 23, 2012 | 0 Comments More

74 Percent of Americans Own Google or Apple Device

A brilliant image of what is happening in the mobile world in the US was given through a survey organized by Yankee Group, a market research company. The latter has asked 15,000 respondents in the US to find out their preferences related to smartphone brands. The results can be shocking especially for those manufacturers who are standing at the brim of disappearance from the market.

Yankee Group survey thus revealed the 74 percent of all US smartphone potential buyers will opt for either Android or Apple iPhone device. The 39 percent of those asked said they will go for Android OS handsets, and the 25 percent – for the iPhone. Yes, but what about the others? It should be noted that after these two, RIM’s BlackBerry got the third place. The others were spread with 9 percent wanting a Windows Phone device and 2 – Symbian OS (still alive?). The survey further disclosed that nearly half of US phone users already own a smartphone, and the 58 percent said they are going to change their ordinary handset with a smartphone in the near future.

This means that manufacturers, say like HTC, need more innovation and marketing genius to come close to Google and Apple, and the war for the tiny percent of customers in the US will be waged even more fiercely. Katie Lewis, an analyst at Yankee Group expressed this in this way, “Opportunities within the smartphone market abound, but we’ve reached a critical point where graves could be dug for several OS vendors, decisions made in the next three years are likely to seal the fate, good or bad, of many OSs. Now is the time for these vendors to fight for survival.” I think no further comment is needed.

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January 18, 2012 | 0 Comments More

Android as a Gaming Platform

The main players in the current smartphone market are Apple and Android. Each company has its own principles and strategies and there’s no sense in comparing them with each other. All we can do is to keep the track of their actions and make our predictions. At the moment I want to talk about the Android operating system and its opportunities of becoming the best mobile platform in terms of gaming.

Not in vain I talked about Apple at the beginning, as it’s currently offering most of the mobile popular gaming abilities. It comes to Game Center, which is Apple’s gaming service and is included in iOS starting from September, 2010. Moreover, iDevices also have OpenFeint, a social platform and application for the iOS recently available for Android as well. Despite its popularity Game Center is not devoid of defects, and Android can seize this good opportunity and leave Apple behind. So let’s see which Google’s main mistakes are in terms of developing Android as a gaming platform.

Firstly, Google must revise its pricing strategy, because unlike iOS games, the games developed for Android are usually very expensive. The prices for the majority of popular Android games make up around $2-$4, while the prices for iOS games make up an average of $1. Moreover, Android’s multiplatform games have very high prices –“Need For Speed SHIFT” is priced at $9.99 compared with iOS’ $4.99. In this regard, analysts think Google should try its luck working with publishers like EA Mobile to make the Android marketplace more competitive. The abovementioned doesn’t refer to all games, as there are several free ones, for example the Angry Birds. But that’s another story, folks.

Secondly, Google must pay more attention to the promotion of Android games. I’d say the tech giant is ignoring this, while it should be concentrated not only on developers, but also on the Google itself.

Thirdly, Android is an open-code platform with its cons and pros. Nevertheless, all similar platforms have the same problem — their app market is filled with fake apps and malwares. So Google must “clean” Android Market of such apps.

And lastly, gaming as a social experience is the future of game marketing, so Google must make a better marketplace and involve more developers. Unlike Apple, which offers one product in each sphere of tech market, this is something necessary for the company. Android devices are quite different and third party developers may solve the fragmentation problem.

We can talk for hours on what Google has to do, and all our suggestions can be right.  But it’s Google’s philosophy that very often hinders the company itself. I mean Google always thought its every action should be transparent and every developer and user should have its role in its actions. This prevents Google from creating exclusive products. Though that said, I remember Minecraft was created solely for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. Yeees, this was the biggest exception of all phones. On the whole, this phone makes Android outstand — playing classic games is enjoyable due to the controller built in, though we can’t say the same about the touch-based games.

However, Google’s future in terms of gaming is bright. The Ice Cream Sandwich is being rolled out and in the near future, when all Android smartphones, tablets and other gadgets run on the same platform, it’ll make Google a king in the market. Developing games, which can be played on any device will definitely leave other manufacturers behind. Presently the company is considering whether to make an exclusive game service or to remain devoted its strategy “all for all.”

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November 18, 2011 | 0 Comments More

Google Prompts Developers to Update Their Apps for Ice Cream Sandwich

The next version of Android is going to be launched soon, though no exact dates are known yet. Usually, unlike Apple, Google doesn’t like to keep information in secret, so in this aspect Apple and Google are very different — Google is open for everyone, while Apple carefully chooses with whom to work. Now when the Ice Cream Sandwich launch date (whenever it is) is becoming closer, Google has published a tutorial for developers on how to port their Honeycomb apps to Ice Cream Sandwich and vice versa.

Ice Cream Sandwich will merge Gingerbread and Honeycomb, which means the apps developed only for smartphones or only for tablets must be reprogrammed to run on both. This means Google wants developers to update their apps developed for Honeycomb tablets to be compatible with Ice Cream Sandwich devices.

As Google said the software developers kit for Ice Cream Sandwich is coming soon, and it will offer a full set of tools for Android 3.2, so there is much work to do.

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September 22, 2011 | 0 Comments More

Android Leads in US Smartphone Market in Q2

Yesterday NPD Group posted its next report where we can find many interesting facts about Android. We have already investigated many reports showing how popular Google’s operating system is: Verizon Still Dominates in Android Market with 41% Share; Android 2.3 Taking 24% of Android Devices; Android is the number one platform in 35 of 56 countries; Android Tablets Getting 30% Market Share and so on.

Now NPD Group’s report gives a new reason to all Android fans to be proud of their favorite platform — Android has accounted for 52 percent of the U.S. smartphone market in Q2.

The best selling smartphone in the U.S. at the moment is the iPhone 4, leaving behind the iPhone 3GS, the HTC Evo 4G and the HTC Inspire 4G. So here we can say, though HTC yields to Apple, Android is in the leading positions.

Well, let’s return to Android’s success. According to the report, 52 percent of the smartphones sold in the U.S. during Q2 ran Android, 29percent ran iOS, 11 percent ran RIM’s BlackBerry OS, and Windows Phone 7, Windows Mobile, webOS have less than 5 percent of market share.

What is interesting, 44 percent of all Android handsets sold in Q2 were manufactured by Motorola, and now when Google is going to buy it for $12.5 billion we see its market share drops to 22 percent. The main “culprits” of this are Samsung and LG. Though Google and Motorola’s fans have no reason to worry about, as Motorola has 12 percent of the smartphone market in Q2.

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August 23, 2011 | 0 Comments More
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