These aren't the droids you're looking for…

Ain't that the truth. It's not just the interwebs; my IRL social circle is mostly people with similar opinions. Freaky prejudice Cliques and clubs have always existed, sometimes extending to entire towns and even countries. Consider Texas...


He's certainly a curious puss, but I wouldn't change him for anything

http://www.androidcentral.com/android-n ... rtphone-os

Pretty impressive considering first decent handset with android (HTC Desire) came out only year ago...

I know a fair few people who had Android handsets in the UK before the Desire appeared. I don't think the market only existed when the Desire launched, although that may well be a point where the growth curve took a surge upwards.

It's a good statistic but a fairly specific one and of limited use in any real sense. 'Smartphone' presumably doesn't include a lot of devices that you can still sell apps for and that will hopefully convince users to buy other devices using the same OS. No iPod touches and, presumably, no iPads (I don't think even a 3G tablet counts as a 'smartphone'). Equally, I wouldn't expect it to include Galaxy Tabs for example, let alone the £150 android tablets the likes of Maplin are selling. It's a nice piece of chest-puffing but it tells us little in the grand scheme of things.

Plus, as any genuine marketeer will tell you, it also matters who the buyers are, not just how many of them there are. I'd be very interested to see what the demographic breakdown of users on both platforms is - and, as well, the 'attach rate' in the various demographic groups - but I'd be surprised if anyone would be willing to give out that information, as it's actually valuable.

Jon

This is interesting - seems the large majority of Android users are running some version of Froyo. If I was developing an Android app, that's definitely what I'd be developing it to. Honeycomb doesn't really register yet.

Also The makers of Infinity Blade on mobile gaming. They don't seem to like the.. diverse population of Android much, and want Google to be a bit more like Apple. Given Google seems to be attempting to slide that way, maybe it's the likes of Epic that are actually providing the push? Epic (given the unreal engine's ubiquity) are probably the people most likely to have seen and coded at just about every games platform around, from the Nintendo DS all the way up to PCs that you could render Toy Story on live.


Jon

The problem isn't just Google, it's the the manufacturers and networks. Even when Google release an update, the manufacturers then have to test it and tweak it to fit their individual phones, then it takes networks ages to set it up for their system settings, test it and roll it out.
When I wanted to update my HTC Desire (supplied by Vodafone) from 2.1 to 2.2, it took Vodafone ages to get it from HTC, then set it up so it had all the right settings for their network.
2.3 has been out a while now but Vodafone haven't even mentioned the update becoming available for the Desire.

The real winners seem to be people who bought Google branded phones. That's because they can get updates direct from Google, whereas other people have to wait.

Does this also apply to people who buy unlocked direct-from-the-maufacturer phones from people like Expansys? No carrier subsidy, obviously, but you get the phone in a state where you can do whatever the heck you like to it, pretty much.

They're currently selling the HTC Desire for £344 at time of typing.

Nope. You'd have to get the update from HTC. They'd have to test and adapt any Google release before releasing it themselves.
So thre would be some delay, but not as much as if you got your phone from a network.

You get the update direct from Google if you have one of their Nexus phones.

Samsung got into trouble with its users in America. It decided not to update the Galaxy S, because they didn't want to pay for the update (something about having to pay the carriers to release the update), which backfired on them and the carriers.

Microsoft are having the same problem, they originally said WP7 would be released directly from Microsoft, but now it is down to the carriers. WP7 has had 2 updates so far, but T-Mobile has yet to release either update.

Huh? Surely the statistic shows in the UK Android is the most widely used OS on smartphones. Which is useful for those in the smartphone business. And I'm sorry but if this was an Apple stat I don't think you'd be as quick to dismiss it. I'm sick of reading Apple bias around here to honest, it's pathetic.

http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joya ... /1525.html

Totally. Many companies are going to be pleased by the growth of Android.

I know Panda Security is.

http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/vi ... -security/

Actually, that's the point. The point is hardly anyone is actually in 'the smartphone business'. Most people are in the 'mobile platform app business'. The number of people making apps for mobile platforms massively dwarfs the number of people actually making smartphones. As does the number of sales (I suspect revenue doesn't but that can happen when you're selling something that costs £500 as oppose to 59p).

I'm not going to make a smartphone, You're not going to make a smartphone. I know someone who works for RIM but even he doesn't actually make smartphones. But you or me or somebody else on this forum may in fact make a mobile platform app (and I believe at least one person is doing) so the important stat you, me and all the other software developers in the world have to pay attention to is not 'how many people in the world own an example of this arbitrary classification of device' it's 'how many people in the world can I sell my app to' (well, it's actually 'how much profit can I make selling my app on each platform' but I believe that's reasonably proportionate to the number of potential customers).

I'm sure the mobile phone company management care how many smartphones they and their competitors have sold but to everyone else it's not the number they should be interested in, because it's not what their business is about. I'm sure the stat is correct. I'm sure HTC are happy with it, because it is relevant to their bottom line. But to everybody else it's of peripheral use at best.

Note I've studiously avoided mentioning particular 'brands' of phone here where possible, because the actual brands are irrelevant. The important question is 'how is this statistic relevant to my life and how might I use it to improve my life?'. The answer I would venture is 'not very and with great difficulty'.

I refer you to the article link I posted above by the developers in Infinity Blade. It explains all this from the perspective of a high profile games developer.

Jon

On that basis then the statistic still has a use as knowing "how many people in the world own an example of this arbitrary classification of device" is very much tied into "how many people in the world can I sell my app to."