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Comment by DonnyV | Hacker News Reader

Yeah and they had a couple year lead with the iPhone and we saw what happen with that. ;-)

It's the dominant phone on the market. It worked out well for them.

It never ceases to amaze me the contortions that people will go through in their pursuit of bashing Apple.

Totally agree, I love my iPad, yes the first version didn't have a camera and would've been cool with the retina display but come on, there isn't one Android tablet out there that does as good a job for the price.

It's fundamentally changed the way I do things too, I no longer buy a daily paper, i just grab my Times subscription every morning, read books on it and stream shows/films via Air Video Server and a host of other fun stuff.

Find me an Android tablet that can compare and I'll consider that.

But it doesn't run the dominant phone OS on the market. And that fact is actually quite important. It's true that no single Android phone is close to the sales of iPhone, but it's most certainly true that from an OS perspective, Android is leading the way with iOS in second place.

Android isn't really leading, it is just allowing carriers to release "smart" phones in the free to-$199 price range, which is what most people expect to pay for a phone.

If there was an iPhone available for every carrier and it cost $20, then nobody would be using Android except the hard-core Linux hackers (like myself).

I am not complaining about this situation at all, as I love Android and hate Apple, but let's be honest as to what is actually going on. Cheap crap = sales.

If there was an iPhone available for every carrier and it cost $20, then nobody would be using Android except the hard-core Linux hackers (like myself).

That might well be true, but it ignores the reality of the facts that there isn't an iPhone available for every carrier for $20, and that Android devices are presently outselling it.

Cheap crap = sales, but you don't get to pretend that those sales don't count just because they involve cheap crap.

Apple has never competed in the bargain basement.

Cheap crap = sales, but you don't get to pretend that those sales don't count just because they involve cheap crap.

I wouldn't count them as much, though. A really large number of Android phones get sold to people who don't want to buy apps.

Or maybe that doesn't matter if you're not a mobile developer. But was there some other relevance to the whole iOS vs Android spiel that was brought up in the parent comment? Because attracting developers is the only thing I can think of that would make OS marketshare matter at all.

No, Android phones are currently selling faster than iPhones (in the US). In terms of absolute numbers (and also counting iPods and iPads as iOS devices) it's think it's quite close (if you find trustworthy numbers, let me know).

But never mind Android, the dominant phone OS is still Symbian although nobody would say it is "leading the way".

"And that fact is actually quite important."

Important to who and why? I'm not disagreeing, but I don't think it hurts apples profits much at the end of the day. I'm waiting to see how android manages to cope with the divergence of devices that will be running on it.

Seems like they did pretty well, especially when you consider that they only released with one carrier and there are large barriers to users jumping carriers that are totally unrelated to the quality of the iPhone.

With iPad, there's no such issue. Essentially nobody is trapped in a long-term contract they'd have to break if they buy an iPad.

...yet still can't come to universal agreement as to how it should be spun. :-)

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