“At the same time, Apple’s month over month App Store download growth over the holidays greatly outpaced the growth of Google’s Android Market by a factor of 2.5 this year, refuting the idea that Google’s last flagship phone, the Verizon/Motorola Droid, had any real impact on the iPhone during the key holiday season, or that it even helped Google to catch up to Apple,” McLean reports.
“Apple’s phenomenal growth sets up limited prospects for Google’s next attempt to deliver the new Nexus One as an iPhone alternative in partnership with HTC and T-Mobile during the post-holiday season, given that the Droid has already consumed most of Android’s potential market opportunity,” McLean reports.
“Like HTC’s previous Windows Mobile and Android phones, the Nexus One is still limited to a relatively small amount of system RAM and internal storage RAM, killing any prospects for the new model to take over the iPhone/iPod touch in terms of sophisticated apps, and in particular games,” McLean reports. “Rather than mounting any real competition to the iPhone 3GS, the Nexus One will immediately make HTC’s existing Android phones look long in the tooth, including the HTC Droid Eris Verizon is currently marketing alongside the Motorola Droid.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: By SteveJack: Betcha beleaguered Moto’s happy they “partnered” with Google, huh? Again, Google Android offers the same messy, inconsistent Windows PC “experience,” but without any cost savings, real or perceived. Windows only thrived back in the mid-90s because PCs (and Macs) were so expensive; the upfront sticker price roped in a lot of people. Microsoft still coasts along on that momentum today. The fact is: Apple’s iPhone 3G costs just $99 and the 3GS goes for only $199 in the U.S. with a 2-year plan. I’d call Android the “Poor Man’s iPhone,” but you have to spend just as much, if not more, to partake in an increasingly fragmented and inferior platform. As iPhone expands onto more and more carriers, Android’s only real selling point (“I’m stuck on Verizon or some other carrier that doesn’t offer the iPhone”) evaporates.
MacDailyNews Note: Motorola’s Droid, like HTC’s “Google Nexus One,” offers only 256 MB available for app storage. Google Android does not support installation of apps to SD cards, so developers face a very real and rather stifling limit. Many of the most popular iPhone apps (games) easily exceed 100 MB, so not very many quality apps would fit on Droid or HTC’s “Google Nexus One” (and some won’t fit at all: our Magellan RoadMate app ($59.99) alone weighs in at 1.36GB*). That’s why Droid, and likely HTC’s “Google Nexus One,” only gives users three measly panels for displaying apps; users probably won’t even be able to fill up two before they run out of app storage space.
*Droid comes with a built-in turn-by-turn app Google’s Maps Navigation likely because a nav app that wasn’t built-in wouldn’t come close to fitting into the Droid’s limited 256MB app storage space. So, Droid and “Google Nexus One” users are stuck with that one nav app forever, but iPhone offers a tremendous array of choices. Android Devices. iDon’t have anything close to enough space for apps.
SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, web designer, multimedia producer and a regular contributor to the MacDailyNews Opinion section.
Google’s not making any friends.
Verizon is still in business?
iDon’t need a Google phone.
I still can’t believe Google is allowing Android 1.6 phones to be sold. Sony’s Xperia X10, due next year, comes with Android 1.6, and it is supposedly Sony’s “flagship” phone.
Google is not just eating their own young, they are confusing the heck out of them as well. They really hadn’t got a clue how to push a platform forwards.
I have a business friend who was recently looking into a new smart phone. He was leaning toward Verizon (clever ads, he mused) when I told him that he couldn’t carry over his unused minutes from month to month.
WHAT????? he exclaimed! WHAT A RIP! he ejaculated.
He was absolutely flumoxed, to say the least. iPhone/ATT is now his best friend. (Coverage and call quality fine in this city.)
Greed gotten a hold on Goooooogle
If both T-Mobile and Google are subsidizing it, they might get some traction.
Google is doing with carriers exactly what MS did in the early 1980s with hardware vendors – playing them against one another with their OS software: ROM MS-BASIC vs MS-DOS vs IBM-DOS vs Windows vs OS/2…
Didn’t work out well for the hardware vendors then either…
I need to make a statement… <bleep> Ups, out memory!
I wish MDN would read comments once in a while, since it’s been pointed out many many times…
When developing an Android app, you just have to keep the app binary small and put the data onto the sd card. That 100MB game you reference is probably 4-5MB of app and 95MB of data (pics, sounds, etc)
Its still stupid, because now as a developer I have to go to great lengths to make sure that my data is still available, but for the most part it will be transparent to the user.
You would think that a multi-billion dollar corporation like Motorola would be smart enough to consider the potential problems of relying on a 3rd party company to provide critical pieces of your product. Instead of taking the Android source and making their own product from it, they decided to try an capitalize on the Android name for free marketing, and now they are paying the price.
@Uther P.
heheheheheh
You said “ejaculated”.
heheheheheh
Hi Guy’s,
Google is not just eating their own young, they are confusing the heck out of them as well. They really hadn’t got a clue how to push a platform forwards.
r4i software
Ok mdn dropped som knowledge on me…. But do u really think google has not caught on to complaints??? Lol they got the INOVATIVE mentality and the black hole pockets Aka super deep pockets!!
What other carriers?
Orange France offered me an iPhone 3GS 16GB for 2 € or 32 GB for 98€ for 2 years extra contract. I took the 32 GB I could not wait for the next iPhone!!!
For a new subscriber it’s 59€ or 159€. While in the store for 10mn I saw 5 iPhone sold! And it’s a small town!! I was the only 32 though. But glad I did it, my 3G 16GB was full!!