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Comment by paul9290 | Hacker News Reader

Lately I feel Apple is behind Google's Android.

There are many decisions Jobs and company have made that for me has made Android look more attractive. I currently own an iPhone and have so for over a year now, but there are things I want it to do that it can not while Android can. When my contract is up Im getting a Nexus or EVO.

I want to enjoy flash, i want to truly run apps in the background, i want the ability to have voice search on home screen via click of a button, i dont want to have to go through sync process when i connect iPhone ( i dont want to find out how to stop sync), I want Google's awesome built in GPS and I want the ability for more customization.

Ive enjoyed my iPhone but playing with girlfriend's Droid X2 and her prior Droid Incredible just showed me Im on the wrong platform. Though Apple's customer service is almost unmatched - will miss that.

They have hordes of cash now but to me with what I mentioned above maybe Apple is truly headed down and destined to repeat it's own history?

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To each his own. I enjoy simplicity on my phone, excellent battery life, and the odd game, as such, I use an iPhone. It doesn't mean that either way is right, but it also doesn't mean that Apple is destined to repeat their failures.

Bare in mind that although Android outsells iPhone's, Apple still has 40% of the profit of the entire smartphone industry.

Ppl always repeat the profit of Apple, but why? What exactly is that relevant to, unless you're a shareholder or Apple employee? Is it just a comment to indicate that Apple isn't about to go out of business?

To each his own.

This is really the important statement. Phones are in a state now that I think we can actually have 3 viable OSes in the market. I know families where the dad has a BB, the mom an iPhone, and a child an Android (or Sidekick back in the day), and no one cares. It's not like PCs.

When I go and look at a WebOS device or WP7 I'm not worried about the fact that they have small market share. For the most part it doesn't matter that much to me as a consumer. Sure WP7 only has 20,000 apps. But unless you're Robert Scoble, you'll be more than happy (and if you're Robert Scoble, apps don't even count until you hit 500k).

It's a very different world, and I think we'll see things evolve quite differently.

"Is it just a comment to indicate that Apple isn't about to go out of business?"

Partially, and partially to indicate that the way Apple is doing things must be at least somewhat right and sustainable.

Why is it so hard for Android manufacturers to release updates for their phones? Because they don't make enough on them to continue supporting them. They make money on new devices sales, so they keep churning out more new handsets.

partially to indicate that the way Apple is doing things must be at least somewhat right and sustainable.

Just an odd concern for an end user, IMO. When I go to buy a car I don't look at the profits of Honda vs Ford. Sure you may not want a company that will go bankrupt, but even if they did the impact really isn't all that huge.

Why is it so hard for Android manufacturers to release updates for their phones?

Because they make deeply integrated skins. They have to reintegrate the skin with a new drop from Google -- not on their schedule, but on Google's (that's when customers start screaming for the update).

Because they don't make enough on them to continue supporting them. They make money on new devices sales, so they keep churning out more new handsets.

Everyone makes money on new device sales. The difference is if you get an iOS device -- Apple gets the profit. HTC/Samsung/Moto/LG/etc have to compete for the next sale, even if you've already decided it will be Android.

Of course you don't think about Apple's share of profit when you're buying the iPhone, but when you're discussing the iPhone's long term future, the fact it makes an immense amount of profit is very much relevant.

To me, when discussing the long term future of an OS, a very valuable metric is how many companies are using it to build their hardware.

Apple is ridding the wave, releasing kick-ass products one after another; but you never know how tomorrow will look like for Apple. On the other hand, if Samsung stops making Android devices or goes out of business, there are others to fill in.

So it's not really so cut and dry.

"Just an odd concern for an end user, IMO."

About as odd as end users concerned about which OS has a more true multi-tasking implementation. Those who mention the profitability of iOS devices as a plus are probably about as numerous as those who mention multi-tasking.

"Everyone makes money on new device sales."

I think you misunderstood. I never said Android manufacturers aren't making money, I said they aren't making enough to support the device as long as people would like:

"Because they don't make enough on them to continue supporting them."

"Those who mention the profitability of iOS devices as a plus are probably about as numerous as those who mention multi-tasking."

These are both uncommon concerns, to be sure, but they're not both odd.

The difference is that the former has no direct effect on the user experience, at best it's an enabler for continued updates.

There might well be a use for the phone in which true multitasking is desired, if you need that use then wanting the feature is no more 'odd' than someone wanting a plumber's snake because they're a plumber.

Profitability has a direct impact on user experience, in that it fuels the third-party app ecosystem. A platform is only as good as its apps, and a company that is on the verge of bankruptcy is not likely to inspire confidence in developers.

The GP's car analogy falls apart here because when I buy a car, unless I'm an after-market modder, I don't plan to add more functionality to the car. Instead, I expect the car to continue to work as I bought it (aside from normal wear and tear of course), regardless of what other cars are on the highway. I expect my phone, on the other hand, to be able to run the latest and greatest apps and games, so when another platform keeps getting all the shiny apps, it impacts my user experience.

Yes, "true" multitasking might be a desired feature for some people, in which case it should be weighted accordingly. But it's not anymore odd to consider a company's profitability as a decision factor.

Profitability has a direct impact on user experience, in that it fuels the third-party app ecosystem.

Not true. Apple making a huge profit says nothing about your ability to make a profit. XBox wasn't profitable for a long time, yet game devs have made tons of money from it. In contrast the Wii was FAR more profitable out the gate, but the attach rate is much lower than the XBox360.

So XBox360 has a bigger ecosystem, better attach rate, higher quality games -- yet was less profitable than the Wii. How can that be? Because profit != ecosystem.

Again, a company's profitability says nothing about the phone or the app ecosystem. The ONLY thing it says is that Apple has huge margins which it has obtained through very good deals with the carriers. End users buying phones are paying about the same price for Android or iPhone devices. They all pretty much range from $50-$250 dollars on contract.

And while Android may not have the margins that the iPhone does, do you think anyone goes into a Verizon and thinks -- what if Google goes bankrupt?

> I expect my phone, on the other hand, to be able to run the latest and greatest apps and games, so when another platform keeps getting all the shiny apps, it impacts my user experience.

The funny thing is, nobody had that expectation until the iPhone came along. Score one for Apple.

When GM asked for bailout money, they cited a survey which said 87% of customers would not buy from a bankrupt company. IMO that qualifies as a huge impact.

If you read what I wrote, it's completely consistent with what you said, "Sure you may not want a company that will go bankrupt, but even if they did the impact really isn't all that huge."

I was saying that you probably wouldn't want to buy from a bankrupt company (psychological), which is the figure you cited. But I point out that even if you did the impact wouldn't be that huge. The impact you point out is to sales, not the actual consumer.

There are several reasons why this is the case:

1) Your warranty is almost certainly not owned by the company, but rather another company who will continue to fulfill it.

2) Service centers will continue to thrive. In fact sales are often loss leaders so that they can host authorized service centers.

3) AAA has almost all of the services provided by most car companies.

4) Parts for discontinued cars can still be made, and often/usually are.

Most people have virtually no contact with the corporation after they purchse their cars.

so yes, going bankrupt will have a huge impact on Ford's bottomline. But if you bought a Ford car today and tomorrow they went bankrupt, the impact on you, as the average consumer, will be close to zero.

>"Because they make deeply integrated skins" Not always true, and usually said skins are awful, slow, buggy crap.

I would argue that if skin development is introducing even the slightest delay into the release cycle, they should cut it out ASAP.

Because as a company profit is a very important goal if not the most important goal.

RIM collapsed this quarter but for keen market watchers its fate was clearly shown when its profit per unite slipped with no significant unit gain.

The same goes for Apple, when iPhone has to be sold at a discount but market share does not go up noticeably, Apple is in trouble. For now iPhone enjoys a better half of the entire industry profit while ARP goes up and defies seasonal fluctuation.

The 40% is relevant because it means Apple is taking most of the smartphone profits and it's just one manufacturer. I think with the long term trends we will see Android gradually replace the dumbphone market. Low end hardware, fragmented versions across carriers, and low margins of return as time progresses. Apple is aiming at the upper end of the market and I think they're succeeding pretty well if the profit share is anything to by.

It's an indicator that a developer can sell premium programs. If they can make good profit the ecosystem could follow.

Excellent battery life? My iPhone lasts just as long as my girlfriend's Droid X2 does, which is a day if we are lucky.

Currently yes the app store does have all the latest games and that makes sense as iPhone users were previous iTunes users. Unfortunately, i think Android draws more the non music buyers who used p2p and are looking for free ride - not all but a good majority. I think a useful study would be iPhone and their P2P usage(always, rarely - iTunes instead or never pirate iTunes buyer always) vs. Android users & their P2P usage(always, rarely - use iTunes instead or never pirate iTunes buyer always). I think you would see why apps are developed first for the iPhone and sometimes only for the iPhone. Even with a bigger market share Android developers are not making the mint iPhone developers have been and continue to make. iPhone owners are of a different mind-set/demographic (for the most part) i am thinking. Also Android's marketplace is a mess comparatively.

Overall i was an Apple iPhone fanboy but the tons and tons of Android phones are outpacing Apple's prior innovations.

Latest comparison I've seen of smartphone btty life by Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4424/hp-veer-4g-review-getting...

edit: replaced single chart with link to page with 3 charts.

In defense of the OP he may have a 3GS which is not far from Droid X2 on these charts.

In my limited experince my iPhone 4 lasts up to twice as long as some phones of my friends. And iOS 5 sounds like it has many features you may want (notifications, wifi sync, Sync with iCloud). But speaking of todays sync: It is in the summary Tab when the iPhone is connected. No learning how to disable it, it is just there where you would guess it is.

Sounds like you have an iPhone 3GS or 3G (since you've had it for over a year).

The iPhone 4 is much better than either of those in terms of battery life and performance. Mine lasts about two days on one charge, whereas my previous iPhone, the 3G, barely lasted a day. The new phone is also much faster.

Then something is wrong with your iPhone. Many news sources[1] say the Droid X2 lasts literally hours (5 in this test), due to the multi-core processor.

1. http://www.laptopmag.com/review/cell-phones/motorola-droid-x...

It depends how you use the phone. Android phones can last between 5 hours to 3 days. It all depends on usage. Just because you heard or experienced 1.5 days of battery life with iPhone, and then you heard somewhere else that Droid X2 stayed 5 hours on a charge, doesn't mean the iPhone's battery is 3x better.

Games or heavy wifi browsing can easily eat into your battery life in several hours, regardless of the phone.

they ran a bettery test for 1 hour and extrapolated the result which gave: the X2 should last about 5 hours and 20 minutes on a charge

and one important thing in the next line: and 5:39 for the average smartphone.

So it's pretty much in line with what the parent posted...

As a consumer, why is that a good thing to you? This means that you know Apple is charging you substantially more than it cost them to make their product. Shouldn't this make you less trusting of Apple and their intentions instead?

"As a consumer, why is that a good thing to you?"

They can charge a high margin because of a lack of suitable replacements. That there is a lack of suitable replacements means the product (which consumers evidently highly value) very well might not exist if not for that company making it. Companies that make high quality products being rewarded with profit is something that encourages other companies to make high quality products.

"Shouldn't this make you less trusting of Apple and their intentions instead?"

No. My default assumption is that the intentions of every for profit company is to maximize their profits. Maximum profit determines the price a product will sell at and a company that sells at a price that minimizes profit will quickly find itself in bankruptcy court.

Due to shifting exchange rates it might cost Apple 5 bucks more or less to make the exact same ipad next month and their profits will increase or decrease accordingly but that doesn't have any impact on the buyer who gets the exact same ipad.

Your question about how this helps the consumer is well taken, but Apple is NOT charging consumers more. Apple makes most of the profit because the carriers pay a far higher subsidy to Apple than any other phone.

    >Bare [sic] in mind that although Android outsells iPhone's, 
    >Apple still has 40% of the profit of the entire 
    >smartphone industry.

Bear in mind that RIM probably has more profits in mobile than Google. Would you argue that profits as a metric is still useful in this case?

Usually, unless there are serious switching costs (see Microsoft-of-the-90s), production learning curves (see Exxon), etc, excess profits invite high levels of competition and the mobile market seems pretty crazily competitive and innovative right now. (HTC 3D?! Gimmicky? Sure. Super cool? Totally!)

40% of smartphone manufacturer profit, not the entire industry which would include the networks and Microsoft and Google amongst others who profit from Android.

And the consistent 2nd and 3rd place by this metric are Nokia and RIM, both gently falling below 20% each over the last year, who most people consider to be dead ducks.

I still use an iPhone as my primary device, but I develop for Android. After the recent WWDC keynote, I'm confident I'm now creating and delivering apps (HD Widgets, Cloudskipper music player) with features that will show up on iOS6 next year.

Apple was once the platform for innovation, but only Android offers that freedom now.

No snarky tone here, 2 honest questions:

If you don't use an Android device as your primary device, how do you know it well enough to develop for it? How do you use your own app?

Personally, I use an Android as my primary phone, but I also have an iPhone 3GS for whatever development needs I might have.

Even though I like the iPhone and the apps available on iTunes, I think high-end Android phones are just better. For example I made the switch basically because on Android I can block unwanted calls and even make it do various tricks related to that and even if the API itself is not public, there are apps in Android's marketplace that do this (though eventually I ended up cooking up my own app, for fun). To do the same on iPhone, you have to root it and use Cydia.

This is one example of freedom the Android gives you that is immediately useful to some end-users that couldn't live without blocking some calls or SMS messages.

I imagine by using the emulator:

http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator...

On Android you need to deal with a greater variety of screen resolutions and other features. Thus, even if you have a device, testing on it alone is not sufficient.

I have a Droid2 (from a conference) and a borrowed Galaxy Tab 10.1.

I really want to use my music app, but it's still really new and doesn't yet have autosync to keep my content up to date. Once we get that, who knows?

I think there's a good chance you'll get your Android then come back. All of the controversial technical decisions Apple has made have proved well-founded, whether it was excluding Flash or limiting background activity. (Their legal decisions have been less well-founded, but they've been willing to change course very quickly there.)

I own both the iPhone and the Nexus One and, IMHO, iOS still beats Android despite all its limitations. It's just so slow and buggy...

Agreed, iOS isn't perfect and other mobile OSes have features I want. Jailbreaking fixes that most of the time, but it would be nice to have those features without having to hack them onto the device.

I don't think Apple is headed the way of 90s Apple. That was a disaster because Jobs left the company and left a bunch of clueless idiots in charge of everything. I'm sure Apple will decline, but I don't think 90s Apple will be back anytime soon.

And even though you've probably heard this a million times, I'm going to type it: Apple makes features really nice. For example, they weren't the first with Cut/Copy/Paste, but they made it really nice and usable. That sounds really fanboy-ish, but it's true. Multitasking, notifications, even the iOS design itself.

Google is strong with services in the cloud, Gmail, Google Maps, Voice recognition they are all of the same category. And Google is not platform neutral, it want unrestricted reach on every mobile platform but reserve the best for its own, which is just business, and sometimes, especially with iOS, it is hindered by the platform vendor.

Flash, customization et al can be personal preference. I don't even want custom ringtone and wallpaper is silly to me. Oh and flash is fading, even Adobe knows it.

iOS multitasking leaves a lot to be desired. So is Android's approach(modern smartphone battery life sucks period, Android sucks spectacularly, largely due to its Laissez-faire multitasking and widget management.). The same for notification systems, now they are pretty much the same and I'll still say they both kinda suck, iOS went from sucks hairy dunkey balls to just suck a little less than Android.

Lately I feel iOS busy plugging holes and Android becomes more and more desktop-esque and hateful (feature wise even Honeycomb didn't bring much to the table). I still prefer iOS and find WP7 more interesting than both of them, for now. Though I dislike Metro's animation abuse with a passion.

I think the difference is Google built Android with a cloud first mentality (and still pursues that) whereas Apple approached with an App first mentality. Subsequently, Google owns in the cloud (until we see how iCloud turns out) and Apple does better on hardware because they make their own hardware and Google farms it out (some better than others). Gradually they're moving towards the middle where Apple expands into Google's territory and Google starts imposing hardware requirements (and OS software improvements) onto manufacturers to improve hardware performance.

i dont want to have to go through sync process when i connect iPhone ( i dont want to find out how to stop sync)

Just thought I'd mention that iOS 5 has fixed this. iTunes sync no longer locks the phone. Also, iCloud and OTA updates mean you'll probably never have to connect to iTunes again if you don't want to.

Yes Apple seems to be stupid in their own ways, and that a big reason why Android is overtaking them. No one can argue that Apple is a successful company, but I believe they could have had a de facto MONOPOLY on smartphones right now.

First, there's only THE iPhone. When Nokia was the biggest manufacture of mobile phones in the world they released 10-20 phones a year. There's a reason for that, people have different budgets and people don't want to have the same phone as everyone else. That's such an important point I can't believe they are still ignoring it.

Next, they really need to open up the system. iOS would have had wireless sync 2 years ago if APIs were more open and there weren't any AppStore restrictions. The walled garden is supposed to for the benefit of the users, but - to be really honest - that kind of ideology has been proven, time and time again, to not work very well.

So I'm kind of disappointed in Apple they didn't take the opportunity, they had, to truly own the mobile market, and instead let it slip, because of what, stubbornness?

You're disappointed? Unless you're an Apple shareholder I'm trying to think why anyone would want a single company to have a monopoly in such an important market. A monopoly with a control freak like Steve Jobs would have been scary, thank goodness for Android!

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