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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

iOS is starting to regain marketshare from Android. Now that Apple is making serious downmarket moves with the 5C, it may soon be time to rethink whether Android was ultimately successful at competing with Apple.

Within two years, non-iPhone smartphones will be niche players with partisan user bases, but the bulk of mobile development will be once again for iOS.

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The saddest thing about this viewpoint, is that even Apple doesn't want to achieve it. You are living in a fantasy universe that even the company you idolise doesn't see as desirable. Apple doesn't want to cater to the low end. If they were ever going to do it, they would have with the 5c. It's never going to happen.

And further, the large mainstream bulk of consumers are never going to want luxury, high end devices. So Apple is never going to reduce the other players to a "niche". The big question is largely around whether they try to occupy the top 50% of the market or the top 25% of the top 10%. But they've made it extremely clear that they have no interest in trying to hit the top 75%, let alone the top 100% of the market.

> If they were ever going to do it, they would have with the 5c. It's never going to happen

The 5C is $100 and it can already be found for $50 in various large stores.

If this is not catering to the low end, I don't know what is.

The US is not the world. In the world the 5c is as expensive as the top og the line Android phones.

The 5c costs over 800 usd in Europe, if that's catering to the low end, I have a bridge to sell you ;)

Americans frequently forget that they are a 4% minority on Earth.

On the other hand, perhaps not so extreme, Americans are generally unaware that they way they purchase cellphones, subsidized by the carrier and attached to a contract, is not the way people in the rest in the world do it.

And yet 19% of the GDP (by PPP) on Earth.

Dude, I'm an iOS fan, but you sound kind of like Baghdad Bob.

Absent a major schism between Samsung and Google, or the sudden rise of a competitor (Amazon?) who competes very hard at the low end, Android/GooglePlay is here to stay - it's Google's second major platform (other being Adwords/Adsense)

What is more likely is that the talk about iOS going the way of Mac because Cook != Jobs will dissipate, as Apple continues to successfully compete.

At $550 out of contract, the 5c is not a serious downmarket move. It may be the illusion of one, though. I paid roughly that for my Nexus One in 2010 and paid $350 for my Nexus 4 almost a year ago.

I'm pretty diehard Android fan, but I don't believe for a second that they've sured up the market for good. I think all companies involved will have to continue competing vigorously and I like that just fine.

No one in the US buys phones out of contract, least of all downmarket customers.

Based on that comment, you have no idea what a downmarket customer is (even in the US). They aren't people who get phones "free" on contract. Downmarket customers don't have contracts. Sometimes they can't afford the guaranteed monthly expense. Often no one will give them a contract, usually because of poor credit. They're the ones who appreciate $99 or cheaper smartphones because, as limited and out-of-date as they are, they're still a big step up from the feature phones they were getting.

Yeah, I don't see Apple selling as far downmarket as, say, Tracfone. But they'll capture the midrange to low end of the contract market which is downmarket from where they were before.

I'm pretty sure the directly sold Nexus 4 did quite well in the US, to the point that google had problems with availability.

Nexus isn't a downmarket brand. And it's available through carriers.

The availability problems are probably because they made a nice phone, sold it for cheap off contract and never made enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_4

Units sold 1 million as of February 2013[3] 3 million as of 2Q 2013[4]

iOS is starting to regain marketshare from Android.

They just released a new iPhone. It's probably fair to say that that will be a short-term bump that will flatten in good time.

I think it's seriously disingenuous to describe the 5C as a "serious downmarket move". It's a token move at best, and doesn't get anywhere near the price point a "downmarket" device would require.

I don't think it either a "serious downmarket move" or a "token". I think it is the iPod mini for the iPhone generation. It is the hint at the iPod strategy moving to the iPhone after all this time. I would imagine we are a generation or two from the actual downmarket move.

They gained share on Android last quarter, which doesn't include their newly launched phones. Horace Dediu raised the idea that Android has peaked in the US a few months ago, and the latest numbers seem to back him up.

http://9to5mac.com/2013/10/04/comscore-apple-gains-on-androi...

https://twitter.com/asymco/status/386207186801917952/photo/1

Based on the pricing we're seeing on the 5C (some offers for $50 or $100 less than announced price) Apple is putting some flexibility in its wholesale pricing to give third parties more wiggle room with the 5C. So it's by no means a "cheap" phone, but it's not as expensive as it first appears.

As for Apple gaining market share in the US, I think what we've seen is that Android is starting to run out of feature phones to replace, so it's now in a fight for the high end space with Apple, which will probably see movement in both directions for a while. I suspect a significant portion of the iPhone market and a larger portion of the Android market is really just phones with touch screens -- these are people who don't buy apps or use most of their phones' capabilities. The "network" effects that will determine the fates of the ecosystems depend on people using their phones as computers rather than merely phones.

In Europe recently Windows phone (i.e. Nokia) is doing very well. It will be interesting to see how that plays out too.

> iOS is starting to regain marketshare from Android.

There is zero evidence of that and plenty of evidence that it's the opposite. Android is activating more than twice as many phones as the iPhone every day, it's a gap that the iPhone will not be filling for at least five years, if ever.

The reference was to the US market, google comscore smartphones numbers for the last 18 months.

In the US it has been happening, and is a fascinating anomaly. Apple has grown to 40.7% of all US mobile subscribers - and that was before the new launch.

That's massive, and completely different from the rest of the world.

http://9to5mac.com/2013/10/04/comscore-apple-gains-on-androi...

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