> But Apple has always missed the cue on one critical piece: access to customer data. And that is what Google has always been successful at.
> When you buy an Android phone you sign in to your Google account. Behind the scenes, Google starts recording a huge amount of data about you as a user, your preferences, your routine.
Some would say not accessing customer data is a feature. I am very careful who I share my data with and appreciate Apple's approach.
For me, the problems with Google's latest move to capture more of my data are 1. The value prop to me is minimal compared to the amount of data they are gathering, 2. There is no way to opt out.
1. All of the hardware offerings Google made are subpar copies of other products. They did the minimum viable thing to get your data. Google's Assistant, with all the data and cloud processing power in the world, is equivalent to Siri. Assistant is not a leap forward, just a rebranded OK Google.
I'd had the same feeling in the past about Google's Social efforts. It's more blatant that Google's mining my data when their product offering is just a copy.
Contrast that with Search, Maps and GMail. When those came out, it mattered less that Google was scanning my data because the products were leaps and bounds above the competition.
2. Google has taken over enough of your daily lives with Android, GMail, Search and Maps that it's really hard to opt out.
We've vilified Apple for its closed ecosystem but we ended up with an alternative much worse in Android, one where all of the data you've generated is available for everyone to harvest.
"Apple has always missed the cue on one critical piece: access to customer data. And that is what Google has always been successful at."
This is where it ends with Google and I, enough is enough.
I have to be honest the direction Google is heading in lately feels like dangerous territory, either people are going to like the invasive approach or be scared off by it, time will tell. I get the feeling people care less about search these days, Facebook etc is the Internet for a lot of people and Adblockers have to be doing some damage.
I'm actually pretty bullish on that, considering 3D TVs fizzled out pretty quickly.
Edit because I think I wasn't clear: I think setting the bar for VR as what 3D TVs accomplished is very pessimistic. VR seems vastly more promising, both moreso than 3D TVs did at their peak, and also on their own right as a very interesting and wide open medium.
I'm inclined to agree, simply because everyone I've seen review this recent iteration of VR has great things to say about it. I don't recall hearing many positive things about 3D.
Well 3DTVs looked really good, they just also hurt your eyes and you had to wear glasses, so people weren't willing to make that tradeoff. Those concerns are pretty consistent with VR's current iteration.
Could I get a little context with the VR metaphor? Perhaps my interpretation is a little off, but would you not be bearish on VR, and bullish on the concept of it being the next 3D TV?
Sorry if that was too vague. VR is an interesting technology but I am very skeptical of it gaining wide spread adoption. That is why I don't think it should be considered a defining feature of a phone.
I agree, personally I think VR has interesting applications in gaming and other areas that we haven't seen yet. But you're never going to get my mom to spend money on VR.
While most people here will probably disagree, I believe that Microsoft's approach, that is, with AR, will be more successful. Virtual Reality has yet to prove that it can be useful in areas other gaming.
Augmented Reality has plenty of use cases - in more areas than the consumer space. For example, the demo that Microsoft showed off yesterday with testing out how furniture looks before you buy it could be huge. Or how about an app that has you stand in front of a mirror and try on clothes - online?
AR is life++; VR is reinventing life. The former will almost inevitably come easier and find more success, at least initially.
The younger generations may one day enjoy Walk Around your Grandparents' House, Decorated for Christmas, from When You Were Eight Years Old
I've got no interest in VR that costs any serious amount of money, but hell, I'd go buy a VR headset and high-end video card tonight if it could offer me that. Maybe they'll come up with a way to stitch it together from old Polaroids.
Yep. But the same can be said for a lot of tech that eventually trickles down to the mainstream. Video teleconferencing was once the domain of enterprise and higher education but now your mom does video calls on Facebook or Hangouts or Skype when she wants to see the grandkids (maybe not your mom but lots of moms)
I actually think VR telepresence is a lot more intriguing to me than just playing cooler looking video games. I mean...the game stuff is the easiest thing to do first because you've already got established frameworks in place for the creation and rendering of complex 3d environments. But when you start getting into depth cams or light field cams combines with more advanced and ergonomic display hardware and high speed networks, you're moving toward having the pieces in place to allow people to virtually be someplace else and communicate with others in a way a webcam can't replicate.
Definitely interested to see how that field looks in 10-15 years.
There is an episode of The X-Files where Mulder teleconferences with the lone gunman and they make a whole huge deal about the amazing high-tech capabilities they are using to project their voice/image in to the specially set up conference room.
The way the writers even notice the technology compared to it's transparency/ubiquity today is quaint.
My mom would never buy lots of stuff that has succeeded spectacularly. She'd never buy video games in general. I don't think this "mom metric" is very useful or meaningful.
You have a legitimate point but that is tangential to the parent comment which says that Anroid (an operating system) wins over iPhone (a hardware) because Android has more market share. I was merely asking if market share translated to money. If so, what was the difference and how did Android win?
This isn't even a well formed question. How would you compare the two? There isn't even one Android phone to point to as the basis of comparison, or one corporate bottom line.
Do we count the money lost by Samsung in this last flub? Do we count Xiomei even though their economics are quite different from Apple?
Everyone is so eager to justify the idea that Apple "won" a war of some sort. Jaded tech writers on their throne of paper and blood pronouncing it "done" because they're bored, while the stuff we've seen in Microsoft and Google's R&D demos suggest it's just getting started.
I think this article underestimates the power of brand loyalty. Tons of customers have almost a decade of iOS under their belt, and convincing them to learn something new is often impossible because they don't care. Their iPhone is working for them. Tech people think they can list off android-only features and convince people, but it usually doesn't work that way. Only when/if their iPhone really lets them down will they look elsewhere. I say this as someone in that situation. I'm not super interested in my phone, and the iPhone works for me, so here I am.
Yeah, it's my case too. I'm really satisfied with the iPhone. I upgrade it every 2 or 3 years without even looking at the competitors.
In addition to your comment: iOS was THE platform for mobile gaming during years. Some people on NeoGAF have spent $100, $200 or more in games. I personally have several Square Enix titles (games at $15-$20) and dozens of games at $5. You don't even think to move to Android when you have invested so much.
This is my personal experience. So it is not going to match anyone else's experience. From my personal experience this is not true at all. I am student and I do see a lot of people. Everybody , I mean Everybody (other than 1 people I know personally) would prefer iPhone over Android without question, the only problem for them was high price of iPhone, there is no competition, they chose android just because of price of it. That was the only reason they were using android phones or service. If they have money to buy it (most of them were student , and short on money) they would change to iPhone in heartbeat.
Exactly - I've been trying to think of what could pivot the market, and unless someone makes substantial breakthroughs in battery life (and has the budget and PR clout to convey it) and can make it substantially cheaper and subjectively better, it's not going to move the needle much.
Agreed. Samsung are the ones with Google's target on their back. Until people stop thinking of the two types of phones as Samsung/Galaxy phones (meaning Android) and iPhones, Google can't have their target on Apple.
Also (and I know this is anecdotal evidence), in the past 3-4 years anyone I know who jumped ship went from iPhone to Android and never went back. Not a single person switched away from Android.
In my opinion (which is mostly backed by fact, but I'll keep it as an opinion) iPhone is quickly becoming a niche product, and there's nothing Apple can do to change that.
I do not understand how anyone reads this article and comes away with the impression it is even remotely correct.
I could barely finish it, it was so poorly written, full of questionable ideas deliberately glossed over, and ideas that just do not add up to the conclusion.
> Google is, has always been, and likely always will be, a search company
Nope. Google is and always has been an advertising company.
It affects how they implement search, Android, and everything they do.
All knowing AI, however clever, from an advertising company may start to move some more onto Apple. That Apple isn't putting personalised data into everything is becoming a marketing feature that they should be shouting about.
Edit: Not sure what's controversial to cause lots of up and down votes, I guess some don't believe Google are an advertising company. I wonder where they get their revenue from.
I was looking for a new phone recently as mine is 5 years old. It still works but I was just comparing around mostly for fun.
Besides a bit faster hardware, some more DPI and "assistants" it is mostly the same. My gen 1 Moto G which I got for $170 a while back is still mostly ok. The hardware still looks the same. Anyone remember the jump from flip phones to smart phones? That was a huge difference. Something completely new. The upgrade felt like I was buying something completely different.
I guess I was expecting something more by now. Modular hardware, can plug more memory or more hardware into it. A different shape. A ridiculous battery life.
The only exciting thing I saw is made by a Chinese company I never heard of: Xiaomi (don't even know how to pronounce it). It is this phone: https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/25/xiaomi-mi-mix/ it doesn't have a bazel, looks square and slick, 256GB memory. I can see buying that. I don't see shelling $700 for a Pixel or for an iPhone.
Then I noticed Project Fi by Google. That would save me money every month. However given Google Fiber winding down, I am worried as soon as I jump on Project Fi, it will be shut down as Google does with many of its products. So the initial excitement there has kind of waned.
Does only one company need to win? I don't think so. 91% of smartphone profits go to Apple! I had no idea it was that high. http://fortune.com/2016/02/14/apple-mobile-profit-2015/
Of course that doesn't account for profits from web activity, which is dominated by Google.
Apple will continue to make incredible profits on hardware, while google will do the same with advertising on the mobile platform.
It's getting to a point that I hate any device prefixed with the word smart. I don't want my device to suggest, hint, or predict anything with regard to my behavior. I don't need an advertisement disguised as a smart phone. I just want a smart phone that lets me search the web, make calls, stream music from shoutcast servers, and take pictures. I really just wished Google and Apple would just stop trying to wall off content they can't monetize.
A long time ago (20-30 years ago) there was a somewhat analogous situation with Microsoft (Apple) and IBM (Google).
IBM was the "diversified" company particularly after it acquired Lotus which was suppose to make IBM compete with Microsoft directly on the office front.
I'm not saying the same thing will happen but I bet Apple will have another revolution in the next 20 years much like Microsoft did.
> If you take market share as a determiner, Google has basically crushed Apple
I believe you mean that Android has dominated iOS in terms of market share. But when one company gives their OS away for free to everyone and the other restricts their OS only to their own devices, that's the only result you could ever reasonably expect.
Google as a company has had little to no involvement in the creation of specific phones. And when they have had involvement, they've outsourced much of the work. That's actually partially why this article exists -- the Pixel phone represents their first foray into making their own phone, software and hardware together, like Apple does.
So to me the statement that Google has crushed Apple makes little to no sense because until now Google hasn't even attempted to compete with Apple directly, and Apple has intentionally limited the scope of iOS's distribution.
If we're going to compare Google-created phones to Apple-created phones, how many Pixel phones do you see daily vs. iPhones?
Hm. I'm not really sure that's a good way of looking at it. I think comparing manufacturers is a more apt comparison. How does Apple compare to Samsung to HTC to (now) Google?
but even if you want to look at the market share by operating system, I think you should then look at revenue. Seems like Apple makes a lot more money from it's market share compared to Google.
When people think about buying a phone, it's always between an iPhone and something else. Something else is the entire rest of the world, iPhone being the reference for the consumer.
> When people think about buying a phone, it's always between an iPhone and something else.
Not really. When my dad wanted to buy a phone, it was either a Samsung or something else. iPhone never entered the conversation. When my mom wanted to buy a phone, she just got the same thing as my dad so they could help each other. Same thing with my sister and her husband.
My wife used a Samsung Galaxy S3 and then an S5 for the last five years or so. She never even thought about getting an iPhone until recently when I convinced her to do an experiment with me.
You know what every single one of those people that I just mentioned cared about most in their phone? "Having a big screen." And when they first started looking, iPhones all had tiny screens, so they didn't even consider them.
I personally also never even considered an iPhone until very recently when I decided to just try it out for kicks. It's a decent phone. I miss that back button though. Navigating back in iOS is tedious and I think iOS is total shit in a lot of ways, like not letting me absolutely position the home icons or even letting me replace the home screen.
I'm guessing you are in the US where people are a bit more exposed to other phones marketting. In Europe, in still not much the case. Although I'm happy finally some brands are breaking this silly iPhone cult.
Even for companies, latest Google flagship was described as an attempt to pass iPhone quality. Everybody still wants to out-apple Apple; which says something.
I think the author only brings that claim to make a point. Which is, Apple put companies like Blackberry (RIM), Nokia, and Motorola on life-support several years ago after the introduction of the iPhone.
Fast forward to now, market share of the iPhone is in decline worldwide due to the proliferation of the multiple brands offering Android OS on their "Smart" handsets. [1] The author is merely painting a portrait of things to come.
I think apple has actually lost the "smartphone war".
Android market share is somewhere around 85%, ios under 15%.
It doesn't matter who manufactures the hardware if you control the software and this is true especially if profit from the phone hardware manufactured by you is not really that important part of your profit stream.
Control of the software is one of the things the article points to. Google is putting their name on phones to increase the control they have over software. The OEMS and carriers have demonstrated that they will mostly do a shit job of it.
The sale of smartphones? Concrete numbers seem hard to come by, but it seems unlikely that there are as many Pixel/Nexus phones out there as there are iPhones. Google has a lot more 'copycats' to contend with.
Didn't Google, years ago, already fully control its own phone, both hardware and software?
In addition, doesn't Google's track record of dalliances make the Pixel something to be discarded and forgotten at the inscrutable whims of higher-ups?
If it's just a hardware competition then Apple doesn't "crush" anyone in this regard. Apple's (formidable) strength is the intergration of their software with the hardware. Android can't compete with that aspect (yet).
It's not just hardware, though... Personally, even if another company were producing better laptops than Apple (doubtful, but possible), I'd still definitely not want to be running Windows on them. AFAIK, Linux support on laptops is still patchy...
With smartphones, sure, there are other companies that are pushing technology forward (Sumsung's Galaxy phones are often beyond what an iPhone can offer), but with Apple, I don't have to worry about hardware failing (walk into the neares Apple store, get it fixed/replaced), and I don't need to worry about the software not being updated anytime soon (I can't trust Samsung any more with their updates, and even Nexus 4, Google's flagship phone released in 2012, stopped receiving updates more than a year ago - compared with iPhone 5, also released in 2012, that's still updated today).
If you look at the numbers right now, Google isn't close.
In Q4 of 2015, Apple generated about 63% of it's revenues from iPhone sales [1]. That's almost 2/3rds of revenues for a $605B company. Google is nearly as large in terms of market cap (~$550B) but revenues from Android don't even come close (never-mind hardware sales, which are negligible). It's estimated that Android has brought in around $31B _total_ revenue [2] since it was launched in 2008. The numbers by year aren't publicly available, but even if we're being very generous, it's unlikely that Android accounts for more than 10% of Google's revenues in any given year.
So yeah, in terms of smartphones, one company (Apple) is basically a smartphone manufacturer with a few things it does on the side (laptops, etc.) and the other is a search engine with smartphones as a side business.
Personally, I prefer Android. I've been an Android user for years and I can't bring myself to switch. I broke my Nexus 5x phone recently and I've been using my wife's old iPhone for a few weeks now and I can't wait to go back. But I roll my eyes every time I read an article about how Google is on the verge of taking over the market from Apple. Sure, if you look worldwide, the number of Android phones out there exceeds the number of iPhones, but if you look at the high end of the market--which seems to be where all the money is made--iPhone are still quite dominant. When I start to see Google's numbers get into the same _ballpark_ as Apple's for Pixel sales vs. iPhone sales, then I'll be intrigued.
I don't think Google has to personally get to the level of Apple to have "won". When comparing the two it's better to look at the whole market instead of just Google vs Apple because there's so many manufacturers for Android and only one for iPhones.
I totally agree. You can be much smaller than Apple and still win. My point is that Apple's iPhone is a behemoth, and until now, Google's Nexus phones have been a niche product. Now, they're starting to compete more directly with the Pixel, which is a truly high-end phone. But until they get meaningful sales numbers, it's still very much a niche product. I agree with the article that Google has made a phone with the _specs_ to compete. But I've heard this before and yet the iPhone still dominates the high end phone market.
> When you buy an Android phone you sign in to your Google account. Behind the scenes, Google starts recording a huge amount of data about you as a user, your preferences, your routine.
Some would say not accessing customer data is a feature. I am very careful who I share my data with and appreciate Apple's approach.