Forecast: Android has peaked, Apple's iPhone still growing

I can't believe that this was from CNN. I think I would have expected a more thorough analysis. That graph in particular is hilarious, starting at 2013 and going forward. The theory also that "since Apple users have stayed with Apple all these years, that they will do so forever" is fundamentally flawed. Just look at what happened to the Blackberry in the past (and Palm and Winmo6 before that). I suppose there hasn't been a compelling reason to switch from iOS in the past, but that is changing fast. Apple hasn't released anything really special in the last iteration, and they need to really scramble to keep up with the Galaxy line.

To someone in Hong Kong, this doesn't ring true at all. iPhone users are abandoning the platform in droves in favour of Android, in particular the Galaxy line.

Upvoted for solid analogy. No idea whether it is true or not.

This is unlikely for at least three reasons:

1. Apple will be loathe to give up high margins. I think there will be a lower cost iPhone, but not that much lower cost.

2. "Other" should do fairly well. Jolla is going to be a credible player. Mozilla has launch partners lined up. Samsung will make a Tizen phone, though I'm pretty skeptical Tizen will thrive with Samsung and Intel having joint custody, and even Ubuntu could make a dent, though I expect that to be more in tablets than phones.

3. An Android-based onslaught on the low-end is just beginning. There is no reason the cheapest phones won't run Android. Less-than-smartphones will become a specialized market. Touchscreens and chipsets will plummet in price at the low end. Android was initially designed for lo-spec devices, and, except for requiring (and that's not a "hard" requirement) a GPU now, it hasn't bloated too much. Android retains all the technical capabilities that enabled it to stuff a multiprocessing Java-based runtime into a 400Mhz single-core system. Those cheap phones will have much better specs than that.

4. It is possible some platforms will fail. Windows Phone could fail outright. So could Blackberry.

Android has peaked? It has 1.5 million activations per day now, from 1.3 million a few months ago. And iPhone's market share dropped from 20% to 17% globally. Android's potential for growth is so much bigger globally than iPhone's.