“The more I read about the tech sector, the more it becomes clear that ‘analyst’ is synonymous with ‘stand-up philosopher,’ which Mel Brooks fans will know is the same thing as an artist who works in a decidedly unsavory medium,” Chris Rawson writes for TUAW. “his is never more clear than when an outlet like Nielsen releases numbers on the US smartphone market, because immediately afterward legions of “analysts” will leap to the dumbest conclusion possible: Android is ascendant, and Apple is doomed! Dead in the water! DOOOOOMED!”
“In support of that entirely boneheaded thesis, I’ve noticed a pattern: these ‘analysts’ keep using the same four myopic arguments. All four of these myths dance around a central point, that the smartphone market will only have one “winner,” and it sure won’t be Apple,” Rawson writes. “The worst part of these analysts’ outlandish claims isn’t that the arguments are so easily dismantled, it’s that so many otherwise intelligent people completely fall for them.”
The Four Myths of Android’s Ascendancy
Myth 1: Market share is the most important metric possible
Myth 2: Android is a company, not a platform
Myth 3: The smartphone market will be a repeat of the PC market, where Apple “failed”
Myth 4: For Android to succeed, Apple must fail
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I love the 4th one and I agree. There is no reason that several smart phone platforms can’t succeed. There are plenty of customers for both Apple and Google, plus business customers for RIM and Microsoft….
So when you reference “business customers”, you mean the “mentally handicapped”?
Sigh, just cannot help ourselves, can we? So, who is handicapped, the person who makes informed decisions based on business needs, or the person who slings manure at people who work for a living. I am a business user, an iPhone user [since version 1 in 2007], and I work in a mostly PC shop, but I have an iMac on my desk, and an iPad and a MacBook Air. My CIO is an iPhone user. My COO and CEO are iPhone users. But we also have a lot of Blackberry users, because the BB is actually easier to set up for access to the VPN and certain operational functionalities that some people require. That is not true of all shops, just happens to be true here. I don’t require those, so my iPhone is all I need. But if I did, it would not be enough, because the .net framework we use for file structure and retrieval, and some of our intranet functionalities is not currently accessible from the iPhone. We are looking to get there, and it’s nice to have an IS group that considers its customers’ needs. But calling them mentally handicapped is more a reflection on you than anyone I know in business. I gather you have never had to struggle with a budget, capX constraints, depreciation and amortization schedules, and delivering investor ROI, while trying to keep pace with technological change. If that is your idea of mentally handicapped, your glasses have a different tint than mine.
Cry me a river for a one-sentence quip. You sir, have issues. I suggest that you complain to your IT department with them instead… thanks!
My company seems to have no issue keeping pace with technological change, and therefore has no problems issuing iPhones out to work with their services. Please keep in mind that the world doesn’t live in your antiquated office. The “informed decisions” at your workplace has made it antiquated, not me. Please try to have a good day.
That’s nice that you have a small shop that can keep up with the times.
“Shops” of all sizes can keep up with the times.. it all depends on the people inside them.
You, sir, appear to have arrogance issues. “I Think Therefore I Mac” was verbose, but eminently reasonable in his response.
king, I’d recommend you attempt looking in the mirror for true arrogance. His attitude towards my single sentence seems way out of line. There was no inference to any particular person in my statement whatsoever. I obviously hit a chord that somehow offended him. He might be the reason why his company is antiquated in tech. That’s the only reasoning I can give to his long winded response. If the shoe fits…
I don’t have to justify myself to you, Mel. Your grandstanding on a pedestal does nothing for your non-cause.
In addition, a remark must be “witty” in order to qualify as a quip.
Sorry for using the term “quip” mister mountain out of a molehill.
Actually, business customers are moving to iPhone in a big way. RIM will continue to see erosion in their business market.
This steak’s sizzle is just boiling fat!
LOL that made my day 🙂 thanks
The net is filled with lazy writing, reasoning and misintepreted facts. We call that “an agenda.” Bias is something precious few can write without. In spite of all this Apple will continue to continue to prove the pundits wrong, suck up all the available oxygen, mind share and profits, and amaze the world. The one trend I would like to see is the end of the silly use of the word “killer” attached to any competing device. It ultimately only proves to be an embarrassment for all concerned.
No more stupid than the media and experts in regard to the whole Location snafu.
Some aren’t just lazy. Mike Schuster at Minyanville, for example, is waging a misleading and emotional holy war against what he refers to as “Rotten Apple.” He posts hateful headlines, vicious graphcs, and prejudiced “opinion” which is then picked up by financial sites all over the internet as if it were news. He pushes Android at every turn.
Any “financial site” supporting Mike Schuster (aka the flame baiting troll click whore) is not a site you should seek for investment insights. His drivel is obviously flamebait that looks like it’s created by a 10 year old fantardroid.
If there ever was an example of yellow journalism, it’s Minyanville – pure crap and zero substance. Yet Yahoo Finance gives him Top listing on it’s Apple Yahoo Finance page and so do other hit whore websites. (write the managers)
Newspapers, magazines and other media outlets still wonder why they can’t get readers to pay for content? These news outlets have zero credibility, public respect or trust (rightly so), because they willfully print lies, misrepresent fact and truth, while blatantly disregarding the ABCs of journalism, which require investigation, verification and double verification of fact, truth and copy before it hits the press.
In their rush to be first with any news, they loose all objectivity, public trust and faith and ultimately have no one to blame but themselves for not being able to get paid for their trash.
I am not worried about Apple. I am a longtim eMac, iPod touch and iPad user. However, my carrier doesn’t offer the iPhone, so I picked up my first Phone running Android. Guess what? Android isn’t terrible. It’s not perfect, eithrer, but it’s good enough (I have Froyo 2.2). The OS seems fine, usable, and yes, even snappy. The phone I selected is a mid-lower range LG, and the build quality is fine and the 600mHz proc is fine. Also, i’m not stuck in a two-year deal with my carrier, a plus for me. Month to month, baby! All hail Virgin Mobile!
I have yet to pay for an app or feel the need to pay, so that’s a negative for developers. Also, Android Market feels like the wild west. It seems that most devs are individuals, and not serious publishers.
I think Apple should quickly get onto T-Mobie and Sprint – and Sprint’s famiy of carriers – to diffuse Android handsets.
Go, AAPL, go.
“I think Apple should quickly get onto T-Mobie and Sprint – and Sprint’s famiy of carriers – to diffuse Android handsets.”
I full-heartedly agree.
If Apple could get the iPhone on a pay as you go plan, their sell rate would absolutely skyrocket!
I would rather have 20% market share and 80% of the market profits than the other way around. If that is a failure I’d like to read their definition of success.
As overstated as the Android “threat” is, Apple would still be much better off without it. Without Android there would be no clear iPhone alternative, and every Android sale is one less iPhone sale.
I disagree with you on that. I don’t think that every Android sale is one less iPhone sale. Every Android sale is one less RIM, Windows, or flip phone sale. I think only 10% of Android handsets appeal to the same iPhone demographic. The rest are middle to low-tier bogo and free bottom dwelling handsets. iPhone won’t win them all, even on every carrier.
You do realize that every Android sale is a Java phone sale, right? That Android is filling the vacuum left by WinMo and replacing the feature phone?
I do not want a single OS developer, or phone provider to “win” it all.
Seriously I hope Apple and Google battle it out for many many years trying to top one another with iOS vs. Android.
The moment one of them ‘wins’ we’ll see innovation grind to a crawl.
As it sits right now the consumer is seeing major benefits to the newest platform ‘war’.
Clearly you are out to lunch.
Was it competition that inspired Apple to create the iPad? There was -and still is not- a tablet market, there is the iPad.
Was it competition that inspired Apple to create iPhone? The iPod? I could go on but I think you get the point. Apple=innovation. It is in the DNA someone once said.
Myth 3 is especially stupid, because it tries to make comparisons to a totally different market, but even if you could make those comparisons it completely ignores the more recent “mp3 player” market which Apple was the winner in – a market which is arguably more relevant to the phone market as they’re both portable devices.
Chris Rawson has it completely right: Idiots writing articles for morons, that’s the tech news business today.
Back in 2002 I started playing the stock market with some 401k rollover money. In a year or 2 I had managed to grow it 60% mostly on buying into the NASDAQ qqq stock and aapl.
Finally after missing the boat on many aapl price jumps I went in long. The stock has grown 6 fold since then.
Even though the stock has performed exceptionally well it still has a modest PE. Compared to amazon and Netflix it is a steal. A lot of this is down to the brokers and media downplaying apple at every turn. The company does not operate like others and this confuses and scares them to hell.
This BS is the norm and is part of the game the market plays with aapl.
Actually “This BS is the norm and is part of the game the market plays,” not “with aapl,” but with impressionable, emotionally driven investors. Rational investors see through the BS.
I have issues against “Applogist” articles like these because:
1. they sound defensive of Apple when it isn’t yet warranted. It unnecessarily burdens the Apple brand with a defensive stance from its pro websites.
2. this type of reasoning helps paint the competition rosier with momentum they have yet to corner.
3. the exact opposite (Android must lose for Apple to win, or it’s not a sprint but a marathon à la Rubenstein now somewhat picked up by El Dediu) is more than often desired by the Apple fans (admit it, go ahead); even SJ has publicly predicted that Android is too fragmented to succeed in the long term. The memo of when we have effectively given up on that cause hasn’t yet reached many of us.
4. offering partially covered logic, that can be argued by the detractors until the completed explanation is offered while the damage is done. Cynics can even have a field day on that Market Share not being the most important metric and yet exert future standardisation weights around, say WebM, all day and who is to arbitrate what’s most important factor to whom then.
5. they give their competition like Google/Android equal mindshare as Apple. It only adds brand value to the competition while lessening a bit of Apple’s hard earned brand’s worth. STOP talking about your competition anywhere near enough you ought to talk about your brand and its future.
I think krquet wrote the most valuable comment here today as of yet. thank you.
Writers that trash Apple get the biggest amount of hits in the tech industry. Have you seen the discussion forums below Henry Blodget´s articles claiming Apple is dead in the water? Endless and meaningless discussions for and against Apple. My guess is that Henry is not as dumb as he seems. He just knows how to get hits. Even if he does not believe a word he is writing.
Next time don´t even bother reading his stupid articles and/or posting comments there. At the end, we end up promoting Apple trashing when we read his posts.
Profit = revenue – expense.
Is there a more relevant equation in a for-profit company that I’m not aware of?
In Google Android terms, profit = advertising – expense. If advertising < expense, that is still counted as profit in the sense that Larry Page sees it as a profitable venture funded from other parts of Google's PC search engine revenue. In other words this is an exact analogue of Microsoft's approach towards the development model for the XBox – $8 billion in the red & counting – and ultimate failures like Zune, Kin exacting untold amounts of cash.
Long may Android prove to be a drain on Google's resources – the faster this ship sinks on the idea of 'volume makes up for losses' the better.
“the idea of ‘volume makes up for losses'”
Echoes of Enron…
All sounds good but I’ve been in several meetings ad networking events. All I see are various Android powered devices. A few iPhones here and there. Mostly Android now. Google is flooding the market with their free POS and so far it seems to be working folks.
Google pays apple to be on every iPhone. Google gives away Android and does not have to pay to be on every Android phone. Google’s business model is like a Rube Goldberg device – why don’t analysts make fun of that? Who can name a handset maker besides HTC that is really benefitting longterm from Android? The Moto XOom – how’s that Honeycomb 3.0 lead albatross around your neck?
Just like RIM was a fad, android too may be a fad – cheap starter smartphones, later upgraded to an iPhone.
I would like to add a fifth myth:
5) All smartphones are equal, implying that any Android phone is the equal of the iPhone 4 (or 3GS).
Just because a cell phone has an operating system and a touch screen does not make it smart (or useful). You need the apps and the supporting ecosystem. Apple routinely improves functionality and performance over the life of its devices. No other vendors come close in this respect.
The biggest myth by far is that android has a substantial user base. At least in the cities of London and New York it’s a rare day you’ll see more that one or two iPhone knock-off fandroid phones in use. Supposed sales figures for the imitation iphone are a fabrication and an outright lie.
I’d love to post a snarky conclusion, but the author, Chris Rawson, says it best:
“What can we take away from all this? Basically, anyone who pounds away at market share while ignoring every other metric is an “analyst” in name only.”
Anal-ist versus Analyst.
What really matters?
1) Quality. Android loses. Apple will remain the master.
2) Profit. Android has none. Only the box makers profit, and that’s spread all over the industry. And at this point, as a collective, they make nowhere near Apple’s profits.
3) Security. Android: What security? After-the-fact malware removal? Better late than never? Have fun with that. Oh, and then there’s Google tracking you everywhere…
4) App Market. Android: Fewer apps, fewer app sales, lower profit, low incentive for developers to bother. AppLack is going to prove to be an Android killer.
5) App Compatibility. It’s a whole new world of ‘Plug and Pray’ on Android boxes. Have fun with that.
6) Future. What kind of a future does an Android box have when you can’t even update the Android OS? Oops.
Competition is critical in business. But when will Google and the Android box makers get seriously competitive? Not this year! Better luck in 2012 guys.
Only Apple thing I use is Macs was a big iPhone fan, but in all honesty I got the HTC Thunderbolt and it blows away the iPhone. Anyone saying Android phone sucks hasnt clearly played with the super A.droid phones. They arent bad phones by anymeans and MDN its not a fake iPhone, better.customization options.
Market share doesn’t matter if you already have all the profits.
Here’s a quick quiz.
What percentage of the profits–not market share but profits– in these markets is captured by Apple:
Smartphones
Tablets
Laptops
Music Players
Mobile Applications
In each of these the answer is over 90%. Don’t believe me? Google it yourself. The most remarkable category, of course, is laptops. Apple sells over 90% of the laptops over $1,000 and that’s where all the profit is.
It’s like a game of poker. It doesn’t matter how many hands you win if you still end up with all the money in the pot.