Android at 10: How Google Won the Smartphone Wars

DPI said:
Depends on your definition of money.

Apple has today's AAPL stock price which is subject to change without notice, Google has an Android global install base that passed 2 billion active users back in May, and it's probably closer to 2.5 by now.

If Apple has a bag of money, Google has a money printing machine. Install base is king because data analytics is king.

But hats off to Apple, they've accumulated enough wealth that they never have to innovate again.
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2 billion active users, also most of them are trash android phones... lets be honest here. I love using Android, but between the fragmentation and lots of crappy phones, I'm not surprised how many people are "android" users.

You're not wrong that data analytics is pretty important though. Google Assistant is also much better than Siri imo.
 
Not another Apple vs Google thread. I don't give a shit which platform you use or like. Just buy the ones I have invested in so I can make money from you. Thanks.
Going way back in time - I used to argue with people about how superior the Amiga was (let's be honest, it was the best personal computer when it came out...too bad Commodore had the reigns.) Later, I got into big arguments about how 3DFx was the best (which was true for a while). Nowadays, I don't care to argue with anyone. What's the point? I'm going to use what I like and you will use what you like.
I own several systems - Windows, macOS, Ubuntu, BSD, iOS, and several devices running Android. They all have their uses.

From a long term strategy, I don't see it as the hardware or OS vendor that wins. It's who controls the data. Google dominates with search and maps (Google Maps, Waze - they might own others?). Social Media (which I am not a big fan of): FB, Snapchat, etc. All of these services support both platforms.

IMHO, a major flaw of Apple is their closed nature. Siri only supports Apple products - and they are behind other companies. Apple Maps? Please - I use Waze on my iPhone. No Apple search engine. As a company, Apple needs another product as they make about 90% of their revenue from the iPhone. Makes them a slightly risky investment - what if they had the battery issue Samsung did last year? Their stock would be wrecked.
 
MV75 said:
Up until about android 6, it sucked. Really really sucked. Ironically I felt the best os for phones was windows 8.1 / 10. But the stupid idiots abandoned it and didn't license it out, yet kept the interface for mainstream desktop. Stupid stupid stupid.
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Gonna have to call this out as just wrong. The garbage filled versions from the carriers sucked until android 6 and that was more a product of the hardware getting powerful enough that it wasn't noticable to most. The actual OS itself in a clean vanilla install was just overwhelmingly better than IOS in pretty much every way from 2.2 and up. The biggest problems Android has had is due to its open nature it gets slapped on some of the lowest budget, shittiest hardware imaginable. That again would be like saying Win 7 sucked after you installed it on a Pentium 200. Apples biggest advantage with IOS in terms of performance is that it is always installed on fairly premium hardware for any given generation. Where Android hardware can range from absolute shit to premium and everything inbetween.
 
I'm an Android user and I've given up worrying about what version of Android I use. Each version is lauded as a major fix and improvement and yet when (and hilariously so often...if) you get it, the result is...meh!

Meet the new Android...same as the previous Androids.

Now as long as my phone 'works' and runs the 16 or so apps I use regularly then I'm done.
 
^^ The practical perspective :)

I ran 8.0 on my nexus 6p and for a brief time on a Pixel XL. Liked it. Now I'm on a mate 9 with 7.0 and zero cares given. Runs fine, looks fine, etc..
 
I love android, I do. I use it as my personal phone and have for the last 3 or 4 phones, but I don't understand why I don't get more than 1-2 years of updates. Yeah Yeah, blame the manufacturer...I keep my phones 2 years minimum and I don't spend more than $200-$250 for a phone yet never get 2 years of updated out of them. I"m on a Moto X Pure, which has been promised an upgrade to Nougat since last year. Not holding my breath. My wife has an Iphone 6 & still gets updates and it's older...

Next phone is probably going to be a used Iphone 6 or iphone 7. Will still use android for games on tablet & stuff but not as a phone.
 
I had a Samsung Galaxy S Captivate back in the day. Absolutely horrible phone. It was bad enough to put me off Android forever.
 
Android is supposed to be working on making updates easier but for now getting a Nexus/Pixel device is the best way to go.
 
All Blackberry had to do to print money forever was make a Blackberry App for Android 8 years ago, License their security chip to be put in Android devices for cheap, set the chip to only interface with the Blackberry app, and continue to improve their RIM servers. It would have been win-win for Blackberry and Google... Google would have taken complete ownership of the corporate world, and Blackberry would have made money hand over fist on their servers. Also, iPhones actually might not even exist anymore if this had happen since a LOT of their early success was due to their easier and slightly more secure use in the corporate world. Apple would have had to crawl on their knees to Blackberry to get the chip and their own App too if this had happened.
 
drescherjm said:
I just ignore all calls from a number I don't know. Let voicemail answer it.
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I do that as well, also have unknown callers auto routed to voicemail and for those calls the phone doesn't even ring. Now I'm getting more and more text messages with links in them instead of calls
 
IIRC Android 1.6 was like Blackberry OS without the stability.
 
Dermen said:
I've never had an iphone but I did have an ipod touch. Requiring me to use itunes to add mp3 files to it is what made me get an android phone over an iphone. I wouldn't add music that often so when I did I of course didn't know my itunes password and had to reset it. What should have taken 1 min max to drag and drop a file would end up taking 20 minutes.
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But that security is what allowed iTunes, and digital downloading, to become an accepted form of content distribution by the studios. The studio's aren't going to just let you buy a song for $1 and let you do whatever you want with it, all pristine and perfect.
 
westrock2000 said:
But that security is what allowed iTunes, and digital downloading, to become an accepted form of content distribution by the studios. The studio's aren't going to just let you buy a song for $1 and let you do whatever you want with it, all pristine and perfect.
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Yeah, well, it's not necessary now - So lets move forward and treat the device like a USB mass storage device and transfer data quickly and easily using the file manager.

iTunes sucks balls.
 
BulletDust said:
Yeah, well, it's not necessary now - So lets move forward and treat the device like a USB mass storage device and transfer data quickly and easily using the file manager.

iTunes sucks balls.
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I can drag and drop just fine using both iTunes and an iPhone.

Back in the XP days iTunes was garbage as it was experimenting with security and different protocols to allow renting but that hasn’t been the case in a while.

Plus iTunes isn’t required anymore, hasn’t been for a while.
 
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