(+2 rating, 8 votes)
Loading ...If Google’s Rich Miner was a developer, he’d be coding for the iPhone; however, he’s actually Group Manager for Mobile Platforms, and as such is more interested in boosting Android’s profile with confident predictions that handsets based on the platform will wildly outsell Apple’s cellphone.
“Once you have devices out there from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and so on, there’s a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone. [Apple is] a single manufacturer, it’s targeted at a particular demographic, and it falls far short of the 1 billion mobile phones sold every year worldwide” Rich Miner, Google
“There are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can’t do with the iPhone at least at the moment” Rich Miner, Google
Strong words, you could say, from a company yet to ship a single handset to a consumer; last month, Google revealed that the Android SDK had been downloaded 750,000 times since its November launch. Apple’s iPhone SDK was downloaded 100,000 times in its first four days of availability.
According to Miner, of the four main handset manufacturers signed up to Android - Motorola, LG, Samsung and HTC - one is expected to reach the market with a device before the others; industry sources suggest that will be a smartphone variant from HTC.
Still, after roundly critiquing the iPhone’s sales, sales potential and the capacity of its SDK, Miner saved some love for last:
“It’s not a competitive thing — it’s great that people are finally building tools so all of these third-party applications can be built and get out there. If I were a developer] I’d certainly be looking at the iPhone, and if you believe there will be lots of Android phones out there, as we do, I’d be developing for both platforms” Rich Miner, Google
March 14th, 2008 at 5:37 am
You can sample the Google Android m5 User Interface on Nokia & Sony Ericsson mobile phones today! Download from http://teavuihuang.com/android
March 14th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Ironically, in a recent post that looks at the potential of the iPod touch as the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform, I anticipated that friends Google and Apple seem destined to become frienemies (ala Apple/Microsoft years back) given the market dynamics.
This is the relevant blurb from the article:
This is a major storyline to watch for the year ahead; namely, in an industry where the once impenetrable walls between media, mobile, PC and Internet are crashing down, seemingly only two companies – Apple and Google – have figured out how to ‘Think Different’ enough to play the disruptor role across all of these segments.
Given their respective mammoth ambitions, are ‘friends’ Apple/Google destined to become ‘frienemies’ ala Apple/Microsoft (circa 1990), and if so, when?
Check out the full article, ‘iPod touch: take two’ if interested:
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2008/02/ipod-touch-take.html
Regards,
Mark
March 15th, 2008 at 4:00 am
Let’s see: Apple 150 million plus ipods, 25 million Macs, 200 plus stores, 4 million iphones, 200 iphone patents, Google 0. Mmmm…. I’ll bet on Apple. Ooops forgot to mention the iTunes and Apple TV.
Oops forgot mention Google Maps- but who gives a crap???
March 18th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Ugh Apple trolls.
Objectively speaking it’s probably true Android will sell more in the end; Motorola and LG will be able to make both low and higher-end hardware, and it seems Apple simply can’t do both. I think the victory for Android will sound when you see the cheap $30 phones at pharmacies running it, although that is far off it’s certainly inevitable.