“Facebook are looking for employees to switch to Android from iOS, presumably so they can improve the Facebook experience on the smartphone platform with the largest market share,” Ewan Spence reports for Forbes. “In black and white terms, that’s a smart move by Facebook, but it also illustrates one of the biggest challenges that Android has a platform.”
“The decision makers in large Silicon Valley companies are predominantly iOS users, and that means the cool toys are going to make their debut on the handsets in their pocket,” Spence reports. ” When you are starting a company it’s advisable to solve a personal problem… and that means your personal tools will be the platform of choice for the initial application. Android may have a global market-share in excess of any of the competition, but volume does not win hearts and minds. If there are resources for a second platform at launch, or a follow-up release after a successful iOS exclusive period, then Android is the obvious choice, but when the decision on one device has to be made, it tends to be iOS.”
Spence reports, “Thanks to a raft of low-end low-margin smartphones, Android is established as the dominant consumer platform around the world. But it is not established as the dominant platform with the people who will drive development forward. The people who will bring smart ideas to the app economy are not following the consumers, they are following the platform that lets them express themselves.”
Read more in the full article here.
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“Android may have a global market-share in excess of any of the competition, but volume does not win hearts and minds.”
– See: Microsoft.
“Android is established as the dominant consumer platform around the world. But it is not established as the dominant platform with the people who will drive development forward.”
– Android is established as the dominant platform with the people who will NOT SPEND MONEY.
And maybe does not have money to spend!
And if they want to make a profit, they write for the platform that generates revenue!
The biggest issue is Androids fragmentation. Yes it has a dominate share of the mostly low end gingerbread OS cell phones. Google & Android OS are so much akin to Micro$haft it’s amazing! Gingerbread is like XP it will refuse to die but at least M$ has made profits from XP. Lol
The word “dominant platform” seems to me to be an inappropriate substitute for “larger customer base” since to dominate is to have great influence over and I cannot see how Android has a dominant influence over a iOS or Apple, only a larger customer base. Not larger profits or larger influence on new trends or technologies or style or mind share. Certainly not “dominance.”
yup. Android is hardly a global platform. basically, it has replaced the last generation of cheap Symbian feature phones. telcos around the world sell them for $0 plus a low price limited data contract to people who just need a cell phone, plus texting, and to take snapshots. Facebook and map apps come next. and a game or two. and cheap/free music for under 30’s. i bet over 1/2 of Android users don’t do anything more with them at all.
technically these are all “smartphones,” but they are being used dumb.
the “smartphone” category is so broad it has become meaningless as a definition. besides these “dumb” basic smartphones, there are, starting at the opposite extreme, the “productivity” group, the “media player” group, the “gamer” group, the “information access” group, the “communication/social” group, and maybe some more.
how “smart” your phone is really reflects what you use it for.
and the heart of the Apple ecosystem is home media of all kinds (the iLife/iTunes complex). while the heart of the Google ecosystem (not all Android) is communication. otherwise, all brands offer mostly the same apps for the rest.
If it were truly a dominant platform, wouldn’t we see more evidence of that when you look at which devices are used on the internet ?
They are selling devices that have a capability, but in reality that capability is seriously underused compared to IOS devices. That may be to do with the usability of it, the type of customer, or many other factors, but it’s quite clear that Android devices are not being seen to be used to anything like the extent that their claimed sales figures would suggest.
They are being used to the fullest extent of their capability. The mistake you are making, and a lot of other people are making is assuming that Androids are smart phones. They are not. They are simply feature phones with larger screens.
http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/26/the-android-engagement-paradox/
They are falsely being compared to iOS as if there is an equivalency relationship. There are a very small subset of all Android phones which are purchased and used as smart phones, but that number is vastly lower than the number of iPhones sold.
Doesn’t look like Mark likes his employees.
Question is: Is he willing to lead by example. Banish iPhones from the executive suite and the minions will follow.
I wonder with the millions Facebook makes that Fuckerberg (as someone here so eloquently posted) why he could not get them the handsets? I mean Facebook does not even need to spend big money on the “higher end” Android phones, he can get those cheap Huan Wei chinese phones.
It’s probably this- Facebook is STILL considering coming out with a facebook branded phone. What OS will they hack together to make it- android.
Uh, folks, MS still dominates business and personal computing by a still huge margin. I have to use that crap,at work, which keeps it alive, peddling Herron to addicted users that can’t quit. I work for a US government Department now finally upgraded to 7 from XP!
Google took the same path as Gates, and has won. Because Apple has always been about huge profit margins and serving wealth no differently than BMW to others that focus on certain groups. Apple has again lost. Get over it….
If Apple makes more money than both MS and Google, then what exactly have they lost?
The difference between MS and Google is that MS wanted to totally dominate the software market and tried to with monolopy and illegal exclusion clauses to hardware vendors among others. Google isn’t making money off of Android as a platform and doesn’t intend to, so there is no battle for Android to crush the competition that can be proved in court. For Google, their money is in their search and ads. Android is a “loss leader” for Google, and this brings up a different scenerio that doesn’t directly compare to MS and Apple’s battle some years ago.
“Guys, how does this feature work on Android”, Mark asks to the sound of chirping crickets. “I need you to start carrying around Android phones so we can see how our application can further exploit our products”, Mark dictates to the sound of chairs being emptied.
Facebook has updated their android app multiple times and its pretty feature packed at this point.
How does Facebook or Twitter actually make money.
Same as Google: primarily advertising, secondarily in data mining it’s users to sell to marketeers.
Remember kids, if you use a service and it does not cost you anything … you are the product.
GROCER’S APOSTROPHE
I wish iOS would stop turning its into it’s — without asking
Grr…
Better would be if they allowed you to use a swipe gesture to undo auto-correct on the fly. Requiring you to tap on the word as you are typing is very disruptive to type-flow.
Your idea is outstanding; the issue is something that not enough people are speaking intelligently about. I am very happy that I stumbled across this in my search for something relating to this.