Re: Are the Chinese exceptionally patriottic ?

Even without being "patriotic", companies tend to do better in their own markets - e.g., the US is Apple's best market, and S Korea is Samsung's best market. Nokia's Symbian was the number one worldwide platform until 2011, but virtually unheard of in the US (which perhaps partly contributes to the ridiculous "Apple invented 'smart' phones in 2007 [even though the 1st iphone wasn't a smartphone]" from the US media, though there's no excuse for the UK media).

There are factors such as language of the documentation; distribution - whether you can buy it at all, and whether it's available on networks with contracts, which is how most people buy phones; brand awareness (people tend to be more wary of brands that they don't know); and simply being aware of the product in the first place.

E.g., one of my friends was asking about whether Symbian phones still exist to buy - they still today sell around 4 million a quarter (i.e., still better than Apple managed back in 2007!), but it'd be hard if not impossible to get one in the UK on a contract.

Or I'd love to have one of the Android tablets from Chinese company Ainol, which have excellent specs at low prices, but the only way seems to be to mail order from a company that ships from China, and hope I don't get a load of Chinese instructions or power supply. And most people won't even be aware these devices exist, with the media only covering the tablets from Google, Amazon and Apple Apple Apple (even Samsung get little coverage).

Though this is one of the many strengths of Android - it will do well worldwide, as even though different companies are successful in different countries, they will all use the common platform of Android. With IOS, you're stuck with Apple, who will struggle to have a worldwide presence.

Re: iPhone 5 still isn't released in China

Ah yes, standard Apple fan excuse - "but the next one will be more popular!" Sure, and by then all the other companies like Samsung and Nokia will have newer models and improved distribution too.

Re: How many?

Possibly due to this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Digit_grouping - in China, the comma can be used for groups of 2 digits. So I suspect it's 20,000 - though it's a bit sloppy of the Register to not use the UK style, since this isn't a quotation.

Re: Invention

"i don't think it's a pretty obvious invention at a time where touch was in its embrio phase, be honest would you have thought about it? why wasn't it invented for the windows mobile os already?"

It's more that it's not a particularly useful feature - personally I hate "bounce back". So that's why not everyone would have done it already, but it still doesn't follow that just because someone was first, they should have a monopoly on it. I mean, a grid of coloured icons was done by Amiga in 1985 (and possibly before), does that mean no one else should have that? And it was done on phones before, too (my 2005 feature phone had it, at least).

And even if you argued that if it's not really useful, it's okay for others not to have it, the problem is that that's not what happens. What happens is products getting banned, and Samsung having to give money to Apple. That's less money for our favourite Android devices, more money for future court cases.

(Also note that the other issues discussed in other cases are reasonably viewed as trivial imho.)

Re: True Facts...

The ipad was a _larger_ tablet, rather - handheld touchscreen devices existed for years (we called them other names, like PDAs, smartphones, media players). The thing that Apple did first was make one that was 10".

(If you're comparing to the older tablet PCs, that's an entirely kettle of fish - those were full blown PCs, not oversized phones. It's only now in 2012 that we finally see full PCs with the portability of a tablet, e.g. from the likes of Samsung, and even then, IIRC they're still understandably slightly heavier due to the extra functionality and power.)

Re: I love my Mac, iPad, and iPhone....

What patents are those, though? I mean, there's an argument against patents in general, but I think the particular problem here is them being due to trivial software and "design" patents. (I'm sure Samsung have plenty of patents too, but that's not the issue.)

Re: Size of market isn't mentioned

"With a couple of mis-starts (I've got an old HP tablet lying around somewhere), the modern tablet market was pretty much started by Apple."

False, the ARM based tablets were around earlier, including Android based ones in 2009, we just called them other things like "media players" or PMPs. The only thing about the ipad was the vast amounts of media coverage it got, and that appeared *before* it was even announced, so this wasn't in response to anything about the product itself. The only other new thing was making a 10" tablet. More generally, handheld computing devices have been around for years, we most commonly call them "smartphones".

You're right about the market share issue, though this is the same problem that unfairly plagued Nokia for years too - although their share fell, their smartphone sales actually increased massively, and they continued to lead.

Re: 7" tablets an easy upsell

"Plus, I think with the tide turning from iOS in the phone space (have you noticed how many S3's are about?) means that Android tablet "

Just to nitpick, note that the tide turned with Android outselling iphone several years ago. And in fact, iphone was never number one - it was Symbian until 2011, then Android.

The S3 is so popular, that it is now the single best selling device (Q3 2012) - that's right, even though Apple only has one phone per generation, their one flagship is outsold by just one of thousands of Android phones.

Indeed. I mean, I recall the story of Nokia, who in the early 2000s had something like 70% share of smartphones, but this dropped as the decade went on.

In fact, their fall only actually came after 2011, with the Symbian to WP switch. Until then, Symbian was the number one OS. And it wasn't simply that sales were falling - in fact, in many years, sales continued to increase, despite market share falling, because market share is a flawed statistic to compare platforms in a growing market. In fact, even when the sales were increasing by a larger number than competitors (in absolute sales), it is still possible for the market share figure to fall, whilst those competitors increased their share.

But no, that didn't stop years of doomongering from the media about how abysmal Nokia were, and how wonderful Apple were for increasing their market share (ignoring that they were in 4th or so position by platform and by company).

So you know what? I say, fair's fair - now that Apple's in the position of being number one, having increasing sales, but having falling market share, it's only fair to ignore the first two points, and focus on how rapidly their market share is falling.

(Pedantically, they would never have had 100% market share, as tablets existed and were in mainstream use before the ipad, we just called them "media players" instead - indeed, even the first Android tablets appeared in 2009, but weren't called tablets by the media then.)

Re: When will Google realise

"Then something weird and unexpected happened: the iPhone and then the iPad showed how mobile was to be, and it wasn't the mighty Web."

Er no. Most things were done via software before 2007, on phones, PCs and other devices. And most things continued to be done on software after that.

In fact, let's not forget that the original iphone couldn't even *run* 3rd party software. Indeed, all I heard from Apple fans in the early days was how wonderful the iphone was, because it could access web pages! (Never mind that that wasn't anything special, either.)

And by 2010, when ipad came out, Android was the dominant smartphone OS, and with hundreds of thousands of applications.

Yes, there were people thinking that everything could be done on the web before 2007. Just as there continue to be people thinking that everything can be done on the web today. Sorry, nothing's changed, no matter how much you try to revise everything to be all about Apple.

Re: But.....

Perhaps. Though I note that this kind of argument doesn't seem to apply to Apple fans when discussing say, the MS Zune. Nor will it apply to the Surface.

Apple get 5%, and it's a "runaway amazing success". Anyone else gets 10%, and it's a "failure" or a "flop".

Also: you're an individual, Apple are a multinational. 5% would be amazing for an individual like you, but it is rather poor for a billion dollar multinational company, after five years of trying, and vast amounts of hype and free media coverage.

Re: @AC 14:27 - Rule 26

The fact that you just compared an apple shop to a church kind of proves the point...

Re: Apple are doomed

Because it's made by Samsung...

Neither the ipad or ipad mini are highest resolution. And anything above full hd seems pointless anyway - do you have the gpu power to drive complex AAA pc games at that resolution? How many full hd movies - let alone higher res - can you fit on that 16gb ipad anyway? That's why ultrabooks have lower res, because no one wants it, and it's a pointless marketing point.

How good is the version of apple maps that's released for Symbian, wp and android?

It would seem dumb for Nokia to give it away for free. If you want decent maps, pay up and get a better phone - the nexus 4 is a great deal!

Re: Surface?

That's a good thing in my book - i much prefer a laptop (whatever os it runs) than a pure tablet.

Re: Jumping the Shark

It's not everyone - it's apple shills in the media, apple fans, and geeks who as you say don't count for much. Sorry, i criticised ms way before our became trendy, but that also means i remember how we have this merry go round with every major ms release. It's painful to look back at the claims of how ms were doomed, years ago.

Meanwhile, the real fear geeks should have is that the future will be nothing but ipads, yet that gets a free pass. And even though i love android, i don't want it on my laptop.

Re: Jumping the Shark

It will be interesting to see what apple do though. For all the moaning ms get for being more touch friendly, even though it still works fine with keyboard and mouse, apple would rather be dominating with ipads. They've been the prime culprit for losing the idea that touch is cool, but where does that leave their mac computers?

And as opposed to building an ecosystem over a 10 year old mp3 player?

Re: Early buyers are buying non-windows kit

I'd like a source for netbook sales falling when they switched to Windows. My understanding is this only happened later, when the market reached saturation, and hardware wasn't improved (1024x600, 1gb, still?) Plus blame the media obsession of bloody ipads whilst netbooks were ignored or moaned about.

True, ms had unfair advantages in the past, but that's nothing like the unfair hype and support apple get now.

Re: Early buyers are buying non-windows kit

Oh, and by your logic, ppl have rejected iphone, with android dominating, and they rejected mac os too. Even with ipad apple are losing market share fast to android, and there's increasingly little need for ppl to buy ipods anymore.

See, i can spin market share figures too.

Re: Early buyers are buying non-windows kit

So you're supporting a company that's pushing pure touch devices, far more so than ms. You're supporting a patent troll that sues android sellers over rounded rectangles. That's not attacking open source? I think that's just a bit more blatant attack that your tenuous link to sco. It's still a big boring faceless company with a closed source os, and worse you no longer have any choice of hardware (i love my clevo, running my choice of os, apple have nothing that comes close), and they push devices far more locked down than Windows.

You criticise ms for being closed, and then say we should love apple? Yeah, i love Linux and android, and have every respect for someone choosing that over Windows. And same for Windows users who don't like the new changes. But if there's one thing i hate, it's seeing ppl spreading fud about Windows 8, and then i find they support apple! There's something distasteful about someone thinking they're supporting openness, but actually they're shilling for apple.

Plus I'm not sure ms were ever cool -certainly not in the Windows 95 days. And no sorry, your ipad or light up apple logo doesn't make you cool either. If you want to be different, at least choose Linux or something.

As for your anecdote, the difference is that normal ppl rarely announce what products they buy, it's only apple users who tell us what some products they have, as if anyone else cares. "Posted from my iphone". I've never known anyone buy Windows - and most ppl but it with the computer anyway, especially these days with diy desktops being rare - but that doesn't change what Windows market share is.

As for crapware, if you buy from anyone decent, you don't get that - saying apple make better pcs than crap pc makers doesn't say much. Plus what's crapware? I'd count any installation of itunes and QuickTime as crapware, and you get that on apple.

And yet still, they sell more phones than Apple. We've been hearing this about Nokia from Apple fanatics for years. It's the new "Apple are going bust".

With Samsung outselling Apple so vastly, it's looking like Apple will be joining Nokia by 2020 in using nothing.

Re: I shudder to think how much abuse Apple would have taken if they had done this

Not much at all, since there are far bigger things to criticise, like maps.

Plus now we see the benefits of the staggered rollout. This fuckup affects hardly any devices, and only brand new ones, so existing devices aren't affected. Whilst the new version of IOS gets rushed out ASAP to every existing device, just because they think it makes good for the marketing headlines, meaning any bug messes it up for everyone.

This bug will be fixed soon enough. Is Apple maps back up to Google quality yet?

Not to mention that this is acknowledged as being a genuine bug. The problem with Apple is that they do these things *intentionally* - claiming it as a feature, refusing to back down. That's far more insiduous. No one has a problem with the occasional bug, all platforms have this. It's the "But Apple is better off not having copy/paste, it uses a whole new paradigm" justification from Apple and its fans that just seems odd.

Re: Simplez

How does it work now - do i have to develop separate uis for 3.5, 4, 8 and 10 inch? Having two separate sizes, as Jobs wanted, has some merits, but it's not scaleable if they then switch tactics and want to have many sizes. And why wasn't the first ipad criticised for lack of software? No, all we heard was how wonderful it was that you could run iphone apps on it.

If developers are lazy, they're not going to do well at creating whole new uis for every size anyway.

Apple don't do quality control - I'm not aware they'll disallow something just because it's not that good. Nokia have the better balance of doing checks for malicious software, whilst not banning it just because it's a competing browser or whatever. No the Google model isn't perfect, but I'd rather that then allowing apple decide what i can write it install.

It's hard to get noticed on android because there are so many apps. Apple has less users, more apps. No thanks.

You can keep your feature phone. I'll keep my smartphone platform that gives me the choice of vast amounts of quality hardware to choose from.

Re: Ads

Google maps has some advantages, but Nokia is still great for offline maps. Why on earth does Google limit me to just a few small areas? It's also annoying that i can't search the data that's downloaded, so i have to manually search for road names etc.

Plus it doesn't have to be about which is best, as I'd gladly have both installed. Use Google most the time of you prefer, but keep Nokia for roaming or when there's poor data connection.

Agree about apple though. And i found Nokia's satellite imagery fine.

Re: Simplez

An ipad is a scaled up phone. Sorry, you don't get to praise apple whilst criticising android for doing the same thing. This isn't like say my 10" Samsung netbook, which really does run a different ui to a phone.

Re: WHO THE FUCK CARES???

Samsung only retaliated in response to apple's attacks, which is entirely reasonable and correct for Samsung to do - maybe if iphone was banned, they'd get a taste of their own medicine.

Re: how is the T not 'better'?

I agree - perhaps they mean that can't beat on individual device sales, it's a myth that iphone has ever led in specs, either hardware, or software (where Sony will do fine simply by running android).

Also i note that Sony refer to Samsung and Apple, where as the headline strips this down to just apple's device...

Re: Want to wait?

Except here we can just as well say it's the Ferrari with the lower price.

Android has 700,000 apps now. As i say in my other post, there is no distinction between smartphone and tablet on either platform. And if Apple apps were each designed for one specific size, then it's no good for this new 8"device anyway!

And even if you use itunes, i don't see why that locks you into apple only devices. Unless you've let it scramble the files into its own format, and they're only tagged via itunes own format, in which case that's your own bad luck, that you now have to pay out £100 extra as a result.

Re: Want to wait?

Sorry, what is tablet optimised? A tablet and smartphone are the same thing, just that one has the addition of a phone. If you're referring to size, then by that logic, there are no apps optimised for the ipad mini yet. If apps designed for a 5" phone don't work well, then apps designed for a 10" ipad won't work either. Just because they label it a tablet doesn't magically make them work the same.

But android has the advantage, since there have long been many sizes of phones/tablets, developers design them to be scaled, as any competent developer does on any platform. On ios, we have apps only designed for a small iphone or 10" device. Also 7" android tablets have already been released for ages, whilst apple said they'd never do one.

Oh, and by your logic, most the iphone apps won't work well on the latest apple phone, as they were all designed for 3.5".

Re: @Tim Parker @Ben Rose : @Tim Parker Good idea, poorly executed

So itunes doesn't support an open standard, and Google doesn't support an Apple format, and you blame Google?

Re: Ironically

Ah yes, the money argument - reeks of the old "But Linux users don't pay for anything" stigma.

The flaw in this argument is free apps - indeed, it's free software that I was primarily talking about. The kind of apps that are given away for a service or website, so there's no money being made, and it's either to advertise a company, website or service, or to provide for your readers or customers. Either way, nothing to do with what people are paying.

I wouldn't mind if Apple had more of the expensive apps, because I'm not interested in those - I much prefer Android where you get it all for free. I'm talking about the free apps you see for websites/services, some of which still seem to be Apple-only.

Yes, I never understood why companies like Nokia and Samsung downplayed their own products with the "feature phone" designation (though recently Nokia did annouce that Asha was now a smartphone - not sure if they've counted this in their quarterly reports though).

Apple had plenty of earlier platforms in the mobile market too (ipods, Newton), I'm not sure that changes anything when WP is a new OS. My point wasn't about "first few quarters" being significant, I was just referring to the time when it happened, I couldn't have well said "2007-2010". And even if we do say that MS have been rather crap in the past, it's still only the first year for Nokia with WP.

It wasn't until a year ago with the iphone 4/4S that Apple's sales actually became a significant player.

Re: Ironically

I don't know the details on what's in 7.8 - are there features being held back, which would run on the older phones?

"You misread an article on how developers decide which platform to develop for and then complain about this based on your misunderstanding."

My comment wasn't based on any article. Though now you mention it - the recent article claimed that developers did pick market share as the number one reason to develop for a platform (and presumably then picked iphone first due to a delusion on which was actually most popular).

Re: From my weblogs...

Clarification: when I say "market share" I mean market share - number of devices sold, or in use. I don't mean share of Internet usage, which is rather different.

But even telling Internet usage share is notoriously hard, with different trackers showing different things - I've seen others showing Android on top, or even Nokia until recently (e.g., http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/flow/item/15620_Series_40_overtakes_Symbian_wo.php ).

Re: From my weblogs...

Well indeed, but that is even more reason why it's a poor indicator of actual installed userbase.

(And if we're including large 10" devices as "mobile", the line becomes even more blurred - what about Windows ultra-portable laptops/netbooks?)

I'd also be curious to see a citation for the claim about most "mobile" (non-Windows) browsing being on ipads. I'd say people are accessing websites all the time on mobile devices, whilst the minority of ipad owners keep them at home. Plus I thought the split was pretty close on non-phone tablets, 60/40 at best.

It's a descendant of S40, not Symbian - some info at http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/flow/item/15790_Nokias_Asha_Touch_now_official.php . (True, it's arguably not "brand new", but previously had yet to be classified as a "smartphone", and indeed most S40 phones still aren't, only the new full-touch Asha ones.)

Re: From my weblogs...

If those are the figures you get for IOS and Android, all that tells us is that the hits for your website aren't anywhere near any kind of reliable indicator for market share.

Re: Ironically

From what I hear, you'll be getting all of the features that the older hardware supports, just like is done on Apple. It's just that MS are being honest and clear by calling it "7.8" instead of "8", whilst Apple pretend it's the latest version of the OS but disable features.

(Same point when people moan that old Android phones don't get upgraded after a certain point.)

Lack of applications is indeed a problem. It's unfair that Apple has always been catered for first, when it's never been the number one platform. It's ridiculous that even Android is still lacking support from some places, despite the overwhelming lead it has over everything else. (Though personally I'd rather that companies simply provided decent websites that worked on mobile devices, rather than using closed proprietary exes that only work on some kind of devices, a solution even worse than the Flash it was meant to replace.)

Re: "If you had bought a Google device that's network agnostic..."

"How is that any different to this situation numbnuts?!"

Yes exactly, it's not any different - Apple isn't any better than Android (or MS for that matter) in providing to older phones, they just mislead people with the version numbers, where other platforms are clear and honest.

Re: Fragmentation fragmentation fragmentation

"Only Google devices get the latest, leaving the other users in the lurch. Were they just used to generate license fees and data to feed the Google phone dev?"

No, the other manufacturers choose to build their own OS on top of Android. So they still get the latest version of the OS the moment it's released, it's just that "OS" isn't the same as basic Android, so there's no reason for the releases to be in sync with the Google releases.

If you want to run basic Android and get those releases straight away, get a Nexus device. If not, stop whining. If you're not even an Android user, stop whining.

I suspect most users don't even care - perhaps because the phones do so much already anyway, and they don't have to wait years for even basic "feature phone"-level features like copy/paste, video calling, or even apps.

"The platform is controlled. If I see reports of devices being "rooted", that implies the same problem and the same solution as iOS to break it."

That's a property of the device, not the OS, and no - Nexus devices are designed to be easily rooted, and doesn't require taking advantage of security flaws, as is required for IOS.

"There is far less quality control on Apps as far as I can see, so how is your average end user going to know what is safe? Ah, anti-virus? What, doing a Microsoft to plaster over the problems?"

I don't see this. Applications should be safe by design (i.e., the security model not allowing them to do things without permission). I don't want so-called "quality control" - I want to run what I want. Apple's "quality control" is routinely used to block anything they don't like, such as alternative browsers. As a developer, I can't stand "quality control" that in practice ends up being petty hurdles to jump, often administered by idiots.

"I would not be surprised if someone eventually creates a really Open version of an Android alike platform."

There already are open source forks of Android, e.g., Cyanogenmod. Easier to just get a Nexus device though, if you're worred about that.

If you mean open source platforms in general, there have been various Linux based OSs over the years (Maemo, Meego, Tizen).

Re: Worth pointing out...

Won't wp7 software also run on wp8? Or not sure what you're referring to?

Re: Fragmentation fragmentation fragmentation

If you're a developer and you need Android 4 specific features, the Android 4 userbase is still massive, likely still bigger than all of iphone, and still growing quickly.

It would be a shame if the Nexus S doesn't get 4.2, though the reasons are unclear yet - whether it's just not at the moment, or if they'll skip 4.2 and wait until the next version, or if they don't have sufficient hardware requirements.

Re: It's called competition

"an may well have been genuinely caught out by the demand which does imply what many have been saying for a while: good Android devices are considered to be as good as I-Phones."

Android has massively outsold iphone for years (as did Symbian throughout its lifetime), so indeed, it's long been true that most people consider them better.