Droids - everywhere! Is Apple really even in the game any more? Reg bad-boy Dom Connor was walking the halls at DroidCon recently - this is what he saw ... DroidDrones Flyver was among the exhibitors at DroidCon 2014, where it unveiled an API that works with your Android phone to control a drone. It's also selling a bundle of sensors, battery and processor that's light and cheap enough …
That's 1200 *in the UK*, yes there are >5,000 Apple developers in the US, my point, if you missed it is that the first and second derivatives of the curve point firmly towards Android.
Think Betamax vs VHS.
Betamax was Sony alone, good kit.
VHS was absolutely everyone else in consumer electronics from Sharp to Amstrad.
VHS won.
Same with mobile O/S
As it happens I don't particularly like Android as a dev platform, but what I like and what wins correlate badly.
Also since when was a "Bad boy" ?
The problem with that theory is that devs make more money for less effort on the iOS platform, so it is still most often the first platform that an app is developed for (most devs actually want to make money from their code). Until the stats swing dramatically against that then you're not going to get the VHS/Betamax effect.
The difficulty in using that as proof is that those were incompatible formats for content. 30 years later, what would be the analogue to the movie. The app? Okay, there's some merit in that. Where it doesn't hold up is that we had video rentals and sales. Everyone up and down the chain was bothered by duplicated effort and complexity.
Today? Different stores, so no one is annoyed that they have to go and return an app because they got the iOS version by mistake. Apps are not as unique a creation as a movie. What this suggests is that "any old war movie" is not a substitute for Apocalypse Now, but any old vector drawing app will substitute on iOS if an Android developer has come up with a great art app.
The format wars were a friction on VCR uptake. The choice of mobile os was not and is not. VHS's victory was short-lived: it took DVDs about three years to disrupt, and some of that quickness was because there was no format contention. Note that we did have a repeat with Blu-Ray and HD, and notice how consumers resisted. Digital download has no format contention and is becoming dominant over optical disk.
Tapes, being physical, had significant costs for manufacturing and shipping. Guessing wrong on how many Beta and VHS tapes to make and to stock could be expensive. Over in the stores, tapes take space and rentals had to be purchased. A title being out could mean a lost sale or rental, and there are new titles every week, so old titles need to be unstocked. Clearly, as soon as there was enough demand for VHS that a store could say "Sorry, we don't have Beta," a store would.
There are absolutely no equivalents to those problems in the world of mobile apps.
And for every Beta VCR that survived the VHS victory — I was a dead-ender — there are hundreds of iOS users who buy apps. iOS is and remains far more successful than Beta was.
Now, your prediction may be ultimately correct, but it won't be easily reduced to VHS again.
Okay—I get it. We humans tend to bin groups as Us vs. Them. So now it’s iOS vs. Android, framed in the context of Windows vs Macs.
But is this really the same story? What defines Winners and Losers? If you’re out of the market, I guess you’re the loser. What if you have the largest market cap? Do you win?
As others pointed out, Mac developer conferences are also well attended. Isn’t this about two ecosystems with good support? And as long as developers are able to make money, aren’t they going to support those platforms?
There are hundreds of millions of iOS devices, and probably billions of Android devices by now. They’re not each going to disappears in a puff of smoke. Let them compete to our benefit. In our need for ridiculous analogies, let me finish by saying there are 1.35 billion people in China. It must be all over for the Swiss then.
(IUnless, of course, this is link bait, in which case, carry on.)
How do you start a Small computer company? Start a big one and wait.
How do you start a Big computer company ? Usually by accident
Many times in the IT-sphere small non mainstream projects have gained a foothold in the market and then grown almost uncontrollably to become very big. Becoming the Bastard Child that returns to haunt the parent and claim it's rightful crown. These projects are either self funded or sanctioned as a sop to the engineers involved, to make them go away and leave the big boys alone.
Think the original IBM PC business, SMS Texting, The C language, GNU and Linux and my current favourite the Raspberry Pi eco-system.
Android is certainly in this camp, it ain't the prettiest or the best (whatever that means) but it does let people get their hands dirty and play with it for a very low cost. Engineering excellence and the size of the marketing budget is irrelevant, as the piece said it's the demographics of the recruits to the cause that's vital for long term success.
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We should not forget that both Apple & Android support the mobile phone networks so, in that sense, they are simply consumer comunication platforms that additionally support apps. From the networks perspective, they could not care less which, if any, 'wins'. So this is not a Beta-v-VHS battle because the primary goal of both platforms is to make calls and send text messages and all mobile phones will do that whatever phone is used. Users will not lose out on that basic premise. It's also the case that many apps are, or can be, developed for whatever mobile platform is desired and these apps are almost entirely independent from the network choice**. So I believe there are no real losers here as long as the networks are happy to take any viable mobile device.
** yes, there are some network specific apps, but that is not the thrust of my point here.
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