“Google and Apple have battled each other for years for primacy over mobile users. Apple has proferred its superior devices, like the iPhone. Google has fought back with its Android operating system and a series of mobile apps ,” Brian X. Chen reports for The New York Times. “On Tuesday, Google underscored that strategy with the release of its latest mobile app: Duo, a video-calling app that is a direct alternative to Apple’s FaceTime.”
“People can only use FaceTime to call others who have Apple devices. But Duo lets you place video calls between Android and iPhone users, and sizably increases the universe of people with whom you can hold a video conversation,” Chen reports. “All of this feeds into Google’s strategy to attract iPhone users over to Android. Google’s apps generally work better on Android devices than on iPhones, so the more that people get hooked on Google’s core apps, the less incentive there is to stay loyal to Apple.”
“Last month, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, repeatedly highlighted that the rate at which people were switching from Android-based devices to iPhones was the highest the company had seen,” Chen reports. “‘Our year-to-date iPhone sales to switchers are the greatest we’ve seen in any nine-month period,’ Mr. Cook said in the call, without disclosing precise figures.”
“For now, FaceTime is just as intuitive as Duo so I see no compelling reason to use Duo over FaceTime to call iPhone users,” Chen reports. “But if I had to video call an Android user, I would use Duo over other video-calling services like Skype or Facebook Messenger, which have more cluttered interfaces than Duo’s single-button approach.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Video calls from single-wides are set to skyrocket.
So, how long until Our Lady of Transitory Endeavor pulls the plug on this beta?
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