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Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

The comparison isn't of the hardware product, it's of the operating systems. Developers want to know what the installed base and rate of change for users of each OS is so they know the target market size to make decisions like which OS to develop an app for first. Consumers want to know what other consumers are doing because they don't want to get stuck with a device (like a Blackberry) that the market is abandoning and no one is making third party apps for.

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If that's the case, then should we be including Kindle in the Android basket?

Amazon pretty much owns its own fork, and is substantially different.

Probably, but good luck breaking out the numbers on those.

Maybe. It's still a lot easier to get an existing Android app to run on a Kindle than it is to get it to run on an iPad.

It seems like kind of a moot point anyway. The Kindle has less than 5% market share. Even if you take it out, what really changes?

These numbers are kind of useless when Apple is weeks away from refreshing their iPad line-up. You'll see Apple back in the lead in market share after that. Developers will continue to target iOS first because of that and because iOS users pay for apps.

Notice that the post I was originally responding to was questioning why this information was useful. The answer is that some people rely on data in preference to speculative assumptions.

>These numbers are kind of useless when Apple is weeks away from refreshing their iPad line-up.

These numbers are the latest numbers. If you think they'll turn around then you can feel vindicated if they do, but for now the facts are the facts.

They're the latest numbers but still useless for any developer to make an assumption based on. Market share will obviously drop off going into the new refresh cycle. It's happened every time.

There is a difference between subject to change and "useless." The numbers are still quite valid to use to compare to the numbers present just prior to the previous Apple refresh cycle, which obviously tells us that Android has been gaining ground.

> You'll see Apple back in the lead in market share after that

So, at least we've come a long way from "There's not a tablet market, there's an iPad market".

I think one of the more useful measures of where we are at could be "the types of comments used by Apple fans to justify why Apple is still leading" metric.

The flood of lower end devices always made this a matter of when. What matters to developers is what to develop for first, and that will remain iOS for a myriad of reasons. Apple will be leading in this one measure once they release new iPads. In other important measures that developers consider, like how much iPads are used compared to the rest, it's not even close.

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