IPhone User? 90% Chance You’re On The Latest OS. Android User? 0.4% Chance
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Apple takes the attitude that if you give users what they just discovered they wanted, they will give Apple money.
Apple considers this more important than its relationships with the carriers, which is why AT&T got an exclusive: None of the other carriers would play ball with a phone that the carriers can't control to the point of making their users miserable.
I am not making a value judgment that this is good or great or a revolution, just stating what I believe to be Apple's business strategy.
Google works the other way, it makes an OS that in theory is just as good as iOS or even better, but in practice Google's business strategy is about getting as many copies of Android out on as many handsets as possible. Take your pick, this is to get as many search clicks and/or other data aggregations into Google's hands or to suck the oxygen out of the market from their arch-rival Microsoft, or possibly both.
To that end, they give the carriers what the carriers want, and the carriers want to make their captive market miserable.
This plays itself out in a myriad of different ways, and it always seems to come down to the same thing: Android is more open in theory, but the gap between theory and practice is smaller in theory than it is in practice, and the cause of the gap is the carriers and Googles perfectly sane business strategy of appeasing them.
I am not saying Apple's strategy is better or worse than Google's. It is possible that each strategy is a local optimum, and the poor companies between Apple and Google--like Microsoft, RIM, and so on--are between a rock and a hard place.
But I do think each strategy is valid given its company's goals, and therefore I do not expect to see anything change unless there is a seismic shift in the industry. Until then, Apple will make a lot of money off a smaller number of handsets, and Android will dominate the numbers but its users will be hostage to the carriers.
These don't get updates either, despite (or because) the device manufacturer is in control, not the carrier.
Maybe in the USA, it is not common to buy phones unlocked and unsubsidised, but here (Germany) many carriers offer rebates if you don't buy a subsidised phone and bring your own.
Google originally started selling a phone directly to consumers with no carrier involved, but gave up on the idea because they weren't able to sell enough units.
But I can directly buy phones from HTC or Samsung here (well, of course through retailers), and some people do. Electronics stores offer a big selection of unlocked smartphones (I got mine through http://www.amazon.de/).
I always get a bit pissed when people from the USA ignore that the rest of the world is not just inhabited by dragons.
Of course, it's hardly the fault of the Android users. If it wasn't for cyanogen and a couple hours of work I wouldn't even be on 2.2.
One of the big advantages android has is the lack of app approval. However if curated stores like amazon take off and users prefer it android will loose that advantage too.
From a users perspective it is great to know you can get 3 years of new features out of an iPhone vs ??? From an android device.
Remember back in the day.. if you wanted a Nokia phone that played MP3's, you got the special model the played MP3s. That model didn't really surf the net or have games. If you wanted to play games, you had to buy an NGage, and if you wanted to surf the net (poorly) you needed to get the net surfing phone (can't think of the model). Then there were the E series black berry knock offs.
And once your phone's model year was up, that was it. You were stuck with what you had.
I like my iPhone. It does 97% of what I want it to do. I could get the other 3% of features by getting an Android, but the Android doesn't match the 97% the iPhone has -- it's more like 80%.
Plus, in Canada, my phone has to last 3 years -- that's the contract term up here. 3G's are 3 years old and can run iOS4. Let's see an Android that you buy from Telus or Rogers today run the latest Android in 3 years (even if it doesn't have 100% of the features).
If you are keen on OS upgrades - you just need to have bought the right phone - Nexus line or some of the HTC ones or even the original Droid. I am running Cyanogenmod 7 which is Gingerbread on my N1 happily.
I happen to know many iPhone users at my office - they don't use iTunes and don't even know there is an upgrade - they are running the version of the OS their device shipped with. Only the Mac/iTunes users (which there are few) tend to upgrade to the latest.
So yeah - big numbers but not much practical significance in comparison.
A bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy if developers are targeting old Android OSes because the newer releases don't have critical mass. I'm reminded of the Vista debacle.
Not many developers need to target latest AOSP release - that's my point. Almost all apps can target 2.1 and benefit from under the hood improvements in 2.3 like faster VM. Few apps that rely on 2.3 specific features like NFC/SIP/Multiple cameras also rely on hardware features being available - so software features are a moot point there and then the problem is not unique to Android.
iPhone 5 comes with new NFC and iOS 5 - developers have the same problem - they have to wait for enough people to upgrade to iPhone 5 and iOS5 and if they target iOS4 they lose the iOS 5 features. How many apps will be impacted - not many. Same thing.
Android 2.3 first available: December 16, 2010 (one month ago)
So, really, a release seven times older than another one has more adoption? Stop the presses!
Android revision takeup on disparate hardware is a real issue, but as usual this is just cheap fanboyism in its presentation.
It doesn't change the fact that headlining "90% vs. 0.4% LOLOL" is just yet another episode of sports team like boosterism.
Or did MG write an article titled "apple tablet crippled by lack of OS upgrade strategy" 30 days after 4.0 shipped that I missed?
I'm writing this from a phone with Android 2.1... And HTC already declared there will be no more updates. Even the update to 2.1 came with 6 months delay, here in Germany! (HTC Hero.)
> there are hundreds of different devices that already exist that have to be updated
That's exactly the problem. Also the problem is that those manufactures don't really care of those hundreds of devices, maybe they care of the latest 2 (two months product releases the most), because most likely they will have to push a brand new device the week after.
It looks like you're not denying the facts, just concerned that the facts don't favor Android (and you seem to acknowledge that hundreds of existing devices cannot be updated to the latest Android version)
In general, do you not want your headlines to reflect the facts ?
[edit: the parent comment was at 6 points when I wrote my response. Now, more than an hour later, it seems to have been downvoted down to 3 points.]
"When Apple releases a new version of iOS, it often comes with a new phone and a $200-$400 price tag."
- When Android 2.0 was announced, it was available on only one device, the new Verizon Droid ($199 w/ contract). Even the Verizon Droid Eris released the same day did not have the latest OS. (It missed out on 1.6 and 2.0, was upgraded to 2.1 six months later, and will never see supported upgrades to 2.2 or higher.)
- When Android 2.1 was announced, it was available on only one device, the new Nexus One ($529). When 2.2 was released, buying a Nexus One was still the only way to run it at first, although some other devices did get updates a short while later.
- When Android 2.3 was announced, it was available on only one device, the new Nexus S ($529 or $199 w/contract).
Many Android devices never get updated to the latest major release. New devices are released every month or so that ship with year-old versions of the OS. Meanwhile, Apple provides upgrades for every one of its older devices, for at least the next few releases.
Among other things, this means developers must decide whether to cut off half their users by taking advantage of new OS features now, or wait a couple years for enough old devices to be updated or thrown away. I work on Firefox for Android, and a bunch of features in the Gingerbread NDK would be perfect for us... if we could actually use them any time soon.
That being said, my roommate has a Nexus S and I have an HTC Evo and would trade HTC Sense for quicker updates to the latest releases (without having to load custom ROMs).
Majority of Android phones are on 2.1 and up. For him that's not enough so he had to break it down to specific releases (2.1, 2.2, and 2.3) so he can prove his point.
There may be significant difference between 2.1 and 2.2. However, after playing with 2.3 for a month, there's not a big difference from 2.2.
Step 2. See the article is written by MG Siegler
Step 3. Find something else to read
Device manufacturers fiercely compete to get people to buy THEIR phones. They get customers by adding custom extensions, and by always having fresh phones in the pipeline. Customers do not seem to prioritise promises of timely updates.
Porting customizations costs money that the device manufacturers prefer spending on new models.
Apple customers on the other hand are loyal enough to (now) buy phones from mod 2010 or even 2009 - of course only with the latest iOS. Of course these phones get updates.
It would actually require a great deal of work to get new OS updates into the many varieties of Android phones in the way users are accustomed to their phones’ experience.