Sewn Up?

The best figures I've seen for Apple are 7% computer market share, 25% smartphone market share. So over 90% (the vast majority of them running some Microsoft OS) of computers are not Apple computers, and almost 75% of smartphones are not iPhones (in fact, 40% -- 1.6x as much as Apple's -- are Blackberries).

So there is simply no definition of "sewn up" that I know of that applies to Apple with respect to the IT market. He may be on another planet, but you've clearly been drinking too much kool-aid.

Fail

Apple might be new to phone, but they have been developing OSes for 30 years now, Google has been developing OSes for what 4 years only. Already Android has beaten Microsoft Windows Mobile another 30 year old OS developing company. Apple is next. Apple might retain a significant chunk of smartphone industry, but it is not going to dominate it, thank god for Google. Android will remain a viable competitor.

You're counting a Blackberry as a smartphone?

This discussion is about Flash usage. The Blackberry has a lousy web browser and effectively isn't much cop for surfing. Similarly the Windows mobile internet exploder thingie.

It would be a lot better if you sub-divided "smartphones" into them that browse (iPhone, Android), and those that don't.

Using that, Apple have a much greater proportion of smartphone browsing devices.

hmm

Apple has had a big advantage with the iphone far superior to other smartphones as a web device

that is quite subjective. The iphone is useless for me. Oddly enough winmo still works well enough for my needs and apps. My android phone is relegated to a backup.

Good Luck...

...replacing a laptop with an iPad.

IMO most people getting iPads are of the "ooooo shiny" brigade.

They blew it

Part of Microsoft's success was not restricting what developers could do or how they did it, thus making it easier/possible to give users what they wanted. Apple are gradually pushing developers away, of course, to paraphrase an old popular beat combo "there's still time for apple to change the road they are on".

Android requires understanding Windows?

> However, that gives Android a better life span because the growing generation don't need the easy UI of Apple, they can understand Windows.

I've got my android phone and a windows desktop in front of me, I can not see one thing the have remotely in common from a UI perspective.

Not a bloody chance....

Apple have an excellent business model, but it's based on a loyal user base willing to pay a premium for the design characteristics that they embody (and before the fanbois start yelping, I mean that in both the artsy external design and the hardware/software design, both of which they do well).

This premium allows Apple to make profit margins per unit that most other hardware manufacturers can only dream of, but it also means that they will always have a limited share of the market, which has always been primarily cost-driven. Add to that the disadvantages of a closed system for some markets, and I confidently predict that Apple will always remain a niche player in the wider market. Which is almost certainly where they want to be, so that's not a criticism, just an observation.

GJC

Actually....

Windows Mobile is quite a nice browsing platform, on the right phone. The HTC Touch Pro 2, for example, works very well for general Web access.

GJC

RE: Stevie says it's not a computer

"They can't use windows because they have to go to the start menu to stop it"

Back in the 90s when I was doing my computer science degree, we had a course in human-computer interaction. Part of it was around UI design.

I can tell you this much for nothing - having the "stop" function (shutdown) hidden inside a menu called "Start" is pretty counter-intuitive.

@Joel Womansford

News flash: your opinion != fact

@Geoff Campbell

Niche player in the wider market? I've no idea what that means. I would never dare to call the second-largest company on the S&P 500 Index in terms of market capitalization a niche player. Never.

As for loyal user base, iPhone and the iPad has gone after (and won) new consumers that previously had *never* bought Apple. There is no loyal user base they drew on for these products.

Correcting a few points

Just wanted to correct some minor issues with posters in this thread. Firstly, Apple themselves only claim that they have 16.1% of the worldwide smartphone market. They did very very well in the US, but outside the US they haven't done anywhere near as well. And in fact, in their prime market (the US) the first quarter of this year saw Android based phones outsell Apple varieties. So let's be honest here. Apple are far from having "sewn up" any market other than portable music players.

Apple will survive remarkably well because they are sat on a huge cash-pile and would have to have a number of devastatingly bad product releases before this position would be remotely affected.

Mac OSX is nothing more than a niche product. More people are still using IE6 for web browsing than use OSX. The iPhone, unless they get it off AT&T in the US pretty rapidly, has built a good position, but is already starting to lose it. The iPad will be no more than a niche product. The key product which they have which is dominant is definitely the iPod (and iPod touch which should always fall in the music player category and not the phone category that Apple would like you to think of it in).

@AC - Some Definitions

Niche player: A company with a small number of products all defined by an over-arching design or technical philosphy, and a market share that is in the lower quartile.

Wider market: The technology market generally.

Loyal user base: Those who will look to a given supplier first, then only to others if they cannot find what they want from that supplier.

All three seem to me to cover Apple nicely. They are very, very good at what they do, as I said. But they are only dominant in MP3 players, not in any of the other markets they have products in.

GJC

It is now

According to one of the Android sites, voice dialling via Bluetooth is available in the new Ver. 2.2 (Froyo).

Hm...

Maybe because call by voice is the most unimportant feature of a phone?

In reality it is faster, when I make one touch with my finger on my favourite list on my HTC Desire than try to communicate with my phone to make it understand what I want (and every voicecontrol on any phone didn't work flawlessly)

So it is definitely not important and IMHO they can go on to ignore it for at least another 10 years...

Voice dialling over Bluetooth is in Android 2.2, released yesterday.

I am pretty impressed with the speed and focus of Android development, in fact. If I were Microsoft I'd be very worried by what this says about the relative agility of the two companies.

GJC

^^above

I see we're busy concentrating on the actual point of the article (Flash) and not just trying to berate the phones we don't have in a flurry of drooling fanboism.

Except... it does.

Well, considering that your [perhaps below] average internet user couldn't tell you what flash is, instead it is 'internet video' or the thing that plays music on myspace, or that powers the games on Facebook, it may annoy people who purchase their half-a-grand piece of whizzkiddary and discover they can't do a lot of the things they WANT to do, that they COULD have done on a £200 netbook.

I find that the denizens of El Reg, much as how I love you all, forget that they are often above averagely tuned into what goes on in the intertubes. The problem with Apple is that they seem to have taken a dislike, and turned it into a disadvantage. Until HTML5 and h.264 are on equal - if not higher - terms of use on the internet, then there is no point in continuing the boycott.

If you need a car every day, but your car is slow, you don't then scrap that car and wait a year to save up the money to buy a faster one. You slog it out, until you can afford to change...

I never thought I'd say this but...

... I used to be a WinMo user just because of the functionailty and connectivity that it's had since the original SPV phone I bought back in 2002.... this Android OS though has seriously stopped me in my tracks, next contract renewal is going to be an Android phone, my non-techy missus has one and she loves it, seems I'm the one behind the times compared to her.

"meet a million of the best and most creative Web Developers in the World"

If you're using Flash, you're NOT a web developer. You're a *Flash* developer.

That's kind of Apple's point, really. Flash is a platform in its own right.

Frankly, any web designer who insists on using Flash should be taken out and shot. Flash is a plug-in, not an integral part of the web standards.

here that?

that would be the point wooshing past you.

Google wasn't saying "Flash is open" google is saying "Android is open."

So, you want to run flash apps on you phone? Google doesn't care, It's your phone, you paid for it! OTOH Apple does care, because they think they still own the phone you paid for.

And yes, if people actually use X not supporting X is pretty damn stupid. You can still support Y that less people use if you want, but that doesn't exclude also supporting X. (We call what you did there a "affirming a disjunct") You also are setting up some quite well-crafted strawmen, in the implicit assumption that the only usage for flash is for videos (it's also used to make stupid online games, that could eat into Apple's profit from their apps store if they allowed it), and that Yahoo's refusal to implement something you want has any baring on Google's willingness to implement something you don't.

Same Same

Saying that only flash kills your machine is either luck, or else you just visit different sites.

The two things that crash my Firefox are, in order...

1) crappy javascript - mainly on fb apps like mafiawars (and no, its not the flash bits).

2) crappy flash video players on porn sites.

Opera, by the way, works perfectly for me with flash, and only crashes (rarely though) on facebook javascripts.

It's not the tools, it's the completely crap and unqualified shite-thick developers that tout their CVs through BS recruitment agencies that couldn't tell the difference between a burger-flipper and a 5* chef.

Most of the javascript developers and flash developers I come across are people who in a previous generation would be chopping wood or cutting hair. These ubiquitous imbeciles are exactly the people that are the first to put 'I Can Do HTML5!' on their cvs.

x

RE: here that?

"And yes, if people actually use X not supporting X is pretty damn stupid. You can still support Y that less people use if you want, but that doesn't exclude also supporting X."

I think a more realistic analogy is that certain companies are fed up with horse-based travel and are about to release automobiles. It looks like the company that makes the most horse-drawn carts (carts which crash all the time btw) are being ditched more and more by roadside inns who are starting to mull over selling petrol instead of hay...

"You also are setting up some quite well-crafted strawmen, in the implicit assumption that the only usage for flash is for videos (it's also used to make stupid online games,"

Yep. There are inevitably more on-line videos played through flash than there are games. One simple reason for this is that any fool can upload a video to YouTube. Also, as you rightly say the games are "stupid" so they get few players...

Hardly takes a genius to draw a conclusion there.

"that could eat into Apple's profit from their apps store if they allowed it)"

Umm, so let me get this straight.

Releasing an application for free on the internet is somehow different from releasing it for free on Apple's store because Apple won't make a profit?

Adobe will though - their development environment is £1679.08 (in Adobe's own store). Last I looked you could buy just about every Apple development environment available for less than that (the OSX one is free and the iPhone one is less than £100!)

letters and/or digits.

There was no analogy. This is the situation. More end-users use flash then HTML 5. More sites use flash then HTML 5. X is flash. Y is HTML 5 video tags. Not supporting what everyone is useing is stupid.

Your analogy is quite awful, probibly the worst I've heard all year (congradulations!). There is not enough room in this forum to address everything wrong with it.

I would be perfectly content to retire on the profit made on Newground's flash games page. While they may be stupid, they are fairly popular, and there is money to be made.

Nothing is free. the free apps on the internet are paid for with ads. free apps on Apple's site are to entice you to buy the paid product the developer is selling, for that privilage it's less than "£100!" PER YEAR, plus 30% of any sales revenue (ie if you sell your fart simulator on the iphone store for £1 (common) apple gets £.3 and you only get £.7). adobe's flash development enviroment is £653.30 (note: at this price i can keep useing it as long as it suits my needs), plus no additional fees. If I make a flash app that I sell access to for £1 dont give anything else to Adobe. In addition, unlike the iPhone SDK I can use the flash for more then one platform. The iPhone is a closed platform, and it's tool is a one-system-only tool.

Choppy Playback?

I have not noticed any choppiness not due to the download speed on both an AMD 2700MHz and a Twin core AMD (4800 I think). Maybe it's time you tried again.