Microsoft's Surface plan means the world belongs to Android now Microsoft roared onto the mobile scene last week with the unveiling of its Surface tablet, but Acer is probably right to question why Microsoft would fight premium iPads with a premium Surface. After all, the next 10 million apps, and the next billion users, are not going to come from the developed, saturated markets of North …
You launch with a good product that people in the developed world like. Then use the momentum to produce budget options.
Releasing a crippled, low quality device as a way to launch a new platform is risky and hardly inspiring.
People love concept cars, even though the end product usually is different.
I quite agree. Notice the quote
"But the long-term choice for developers is driven by user populations, which are predominately everywhere except where the current mobile market is. "
Money is more of a driver than population. ten million people struggling to put food on the table will probably not be as lucrative a market as 5000 people who can afford to pay out of pocket to send two kids to Harvard and The Sarbonne.
Agree - its not about population at all, I bet the author of the article does not try to sell his products in Tanzania.. its about money and where is 80% of the worlds money in 20% of the people. that is a market rather than struggle with $1 profits market high and push premium product to those who will buy without thinking create a desire for poorer to desire the high end. And never launch a cheap crappy product or the same author who dished you for not doing it will dish you for a rubbish product on launch.
All in all the same reason or this article (generate hype and thus traffic for advertising) is how to make it.
Next will we see an article claiming Ferrari need to start selling in the sub $50,000 market to attain better profits sure in the short term until the name is mud and no longer desired.
I agree and I believe that's why Apple aren't terribly worried about the prospect of low end smartphones in the developing markets. They know very well that as these markets become wealthier that many who will then be able to afford a smartphone will choose the Apple brand; it'll be a status thing and that's largely where Apple's bread is buttered.
and thus elects to compete by lawyer, rather than by price or performance ? I suggest that, on the contrary, as Mr Asay writes : «... it [Android] gives underdog device manufacturers time to create dominant marketing brands, as Samsung has done». Apple is obviously running scared....
Henri
Android is a cheap and nasty operating system but alas it is the only game in town for poor people.
Poor people with no money are of little interest to the vendors that make half decent products.
Ironically, Google has an advertising model that is predicated on selling stuff to its users (well, selling its users personal data really). Thus these poor people with no money are worth nothing to Google either.
But Mr Assay seems to struggle with getting his head around the most simple business concepts so this has probably passed him by.
The two points that the author should perhaps remind himself about are:
1) He started by banging on about Surface. This is a tablet. Android is an utter fail in the tablet space.
2) The consumers in developing countries ASPIRE to Apple products (and probably MS when they ship Surface). So, as soon as they stop being poor people, they also stop being Android users.
"Looks like about 2/3 IOS and 1/3 everything else for tablets. Almost all of "everything else," of course, would be Android. Not a complete rout, then."
Yes it is when 5" screen phones are called tablets. Just look at Samsung, their GALAXY Note takes up 2/3 of all their tablet sales and if anyone counting was honest, it would be counted as a phone. In the real world the iPad is outselling the Kindle Fire 10 to 1 with the Nook in third place and the Nook is outselling every Android tablet combined.
Nobody buying them?
Considering that according to IDC, Android had 45% of the tablet market last year (vs Apple's 55%), and the fact that Apple's marketshare has shrunk for 2 quarters in a row, despite a new product launch, I have a feeling that very soon you are going to be wondering what the hell happened...
There are craploads of Android tablets out there sold, in user homes, but the cherrypicked Apple funded surveys taken outside Apple stores and coffee shops don't always allure to that.
It's utter failure of sales. Decent options or not, all none-iPad tablets have bombed.
Your most "successful" iPad tablets have:
1. Sold at fire sale prices so the companies can write off their loses--HP and RIM
2. Forked Google out of their own ecosystem while selling a cheap tablet at cost, selling a loss-leader service (Amazon Prime), selling razor-thin margin merchandise--Amazon and B&N.
3. Simply admitted the tablet market "sucks" --Android's poster child Samsung, which refuses to admit sales figures for tablets or cell-phones.
>Poor people with no money are of little interest to the vendors that make half decent products.
Those people may one day be richer people, and by then be accustomed to your system and Apps in their language. Android is not going away in the tablet space, and can only mature and improve.
Apple have no great interest in these developing markets - even by the time they are rich enough for tablets - the competition will have improved, lessening the perception of iPads being seen as 'premium' products. Instead, Apple are looking around for the next new product category, with a view to getting in quick to establish a lead and then raking in high margins.
>banging on about Surface. This is a tablet.
Er, why the oh-so-definite product categories? The author was writing on the assumption that for tasks not tied to legacy software or big storage requirements, one screen + keyboard is as good as the next screen + keyboard - irrespective of CPU or OS origins, or teh mechanism by which the screen is attached to the keyboard.
MS think that people might want a device that is halfway between a tablet and a laptop... I'm sure that many people will, as it is an existing compromise (iPad with removable keyboard, Asus Transformer, Bluetooth keyboard for generic Android devices, the Lenevo Ultrabook where the keyboard rotates out of the way... etc. hardly new ground). The main criticism of Windows 8 is that it implies that MS thinks EVERYBODY will want a Tablet/PC transformer thing.
and why were they or more importantly did they make money. Yes a little for Amazon at sale but then they were all jail broken so people could do what they liked and then the profit factor hit zero and continued to fall.
Where people only want a cheap product sure they will buy but then the wallet closes and they start pirating and MS have no business model there.
!!! calling for someone with an Android tablet who has not jail broken and pays for every app to make comment!!!
With a probable Google IO launch tomorrow your timing isn't great. Furthermore, sir, from a software engineering perspective Android is probably the most integrated (advanced?) mobile OS ever built. iOS is beautiful silo working - how many iOS apps can be enhanced by functions never built at the time of deployment? Many criticisms of android are really directed at hardware manufacturers, which is where Apple has the edge.
>What about the license costs that MS is collects from 50% of Android makers?
They won't collect them in the new markets.
The current payees are also PC manufacturers who can't afford to upset MSFT and they sell so few tablets that they just consider it a small price bump on their OEM windows licenses.
When somebody in China and India starts selling N*100M tablets locally they aren't going to care what MSFT say
BRIC markets are not app saturated - Android is cheap - therefore BRIC is a source of App revenue growth.
Followed immediately by Android App makers find it much harder to monetise than iOS. (but the magic FOSS fairies will fix this some how.)
Contradiction much?
Honestly his pieces have moved on from blinkered to completely and utterly inconsistent within the same article.
On the plus side, at least his claim that "[In BRIC countries] it's all about Android" followed by a chart showing Android at 29% share versus iOS at 24% in South America and shares of 38% versus 30% in Asia gave the game away relatively early. By his reasoning it's all about iOS in Europe and America (spoiler: it most certainly isn't).
Way to contradict your own previous article.
Have you come to the conclusion that since nobody takes this "Open and Shut" bollocks seriously anymore, a controversial headline and a couple of nice pictures with 500 random words is sufficient?
Android has effectively failed on tablets already. El Reg keeps posting us Apple propaganda with this "news" as if we didn't already know. Arguing that Surface suddenly means that this highly closed source "open" project suddenly rules the world is even more bizarre than your usual tripe.
Since neither you nor I are paying to read El Reg, complaining that you didn't get your money's worth isn't going to win the sympathy vote. Doesn't matter which medium you're reading or listening on, something needs to fill up the vacuum that otherwise exists between the really good, original, entertaining or provocative highlights. Maybe you should tell us what those "midlights" ought to look like?
For myself, I say bring back Dominic Connor. And in his best and most forthright incarnation, like in his articles in November of last year. Not only acting as a cat amongst the IT pigeons, but wading into the commentards afterwards, and sticking it to 'em, with proper insults and name calling on both sides.
"Since neither you nor I are paying to read El Reg" but there was no mention of money just an expression of an opinion.
Does that mean that expressing an opinion is not allowed? Then why are you giving us the benefit of yours?
As for "midlights": Dear ElReg, can I have a job writing mediocre crap that Ledswinger likes to tolerate in between what he considers to be highlights? No? Thought not.
And by "mediocre", I'm being generous.
You flatter yourself. My comments were directed towards dogged, who put rather more effort into his/her/its epistle. However...
Maybe no money was mentioned, but the point remains - if you don't like something, and you haven't paid for it, then surely your best bet is to go elsewhere.
To go back to dogged's moan: "way to contradict your own previous article". All very well, but I'd guess the Register isn't aiming for some Jesuit or Morning Star level of internal coherence. Interesting journalism is perhaps about a varied set of articles, and the fact that they publish an article saying that Android tablets are the worst thing since sliced bread, and then an article saying they are the best thing since... well? So fucking what? You can read them if you choose to, and take a view about either. But to moan about the standard of the content in general, or the fact that two articles contradict each other? if that's a problem for you, it's usually an indication that you're reading the wrong book. Although even then I think you'll find a lot of journalism consists of a juicy headline followed by a few hundred words that are rather less interesting.
As for giving you a job of writing the mid (even low) lights, it's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it - however you won't be getting that job on the evidence here.
Now, Now Ledswinger...
"You flatter yourself. My comments were directed towards dogged, who put rather more effort into his/her/its epistle. However..."
That much was obvious - I felt the need to defend the idea of expressing an opinion (his and mine) against your petulant little attempt to dictate who posts what.
"So fucking what? You can read them if you choose to"
I would direct the same advice to you with regard to the comments. As for the language, it seems to run counter to the impression that you seem to be trying to give regarding your intellect.
"however you won't be getting that job on the evidence here"
Awww, again with the wilful missing of the point in order to score some. You might want to explore the meaning of sarcasm.
Another prediction. Yawn. It's right up there with climate change, father christmas and the whole world crapping its pants because only 6 months ago ZOMG teh Micro$oft is doing HTML5 and won't allow native code on Windows 8. Some of the comments on The Reg at the time were priceless.
We know how that particular panic panned out.
When I/you/we don't know what a company is bringing to market articles like this are 100% conjecture. My "feeling" is that W8 will destroy Android on tablets (to be fair there's not much there to destroy). But that statement carries as much weight as this article. None.
I've read those comments by Horace Dediu in three different locations this morning.
There's a couple of things to remember. BRIC economies cannot generate money. Anything aimed at them will have to be low priced with low profit margins in orger to generate serious sales and serious profits. So why bother? With the exception of China, none of the others have the purchasing power to warrent developing for. If MS were to develops a cheaper alternative, it'd be seen as shoddy compared to the premium apple products that are on sale in the first world and it probably wouldn't make the money in the developing world. It's better to go head to head with apple. Develop a premium product and hope that the device integration will entice users.
If I were to go by the bank balance Apple has then yes completely. And if there is a market in the future how many decades till it reaches the same profit already generated in the past 3 years by Apple.
My guess by that time BRIC will be lusting after something new that costs too much and trying to make cheap version of it. That's how the economies in 3rd world work.
So if there's all this fragmentation which makes it harder to develop for why is Android still much cheaper to develop for then iOS?
Fragmentation is v overrated as an issue - surely due to fragmentation windows apps need to run on well over 3000 different devices if not more? Yes this causes issues and increased development time over a closed system like iOS but no way insurmountable and in some ways can be considered almost negligible.
I don't doubt Apple have the top end of the tablet market sown up but like graphics cards that is not where the real money is mid to low range is where the profits and the real battle will be - shame surface seems to be aimed at the wrong part.
So if there's all this fragmentation which makes it harder to develop for why is Android still much cheaper to develop for then iOS?
Because it doesn't require you buy a Mac which is overpriced to start with, and then spend yet more money on the requirements to develop software on that Mac.
Apple make way more than their 30% protection money from iOS developers.
With me paying EUR 200 a year to a certificate authority for Symbian Signed, and getting 30% from the sales price on Handango, Handango keeping the 70%. Oh, and I forgot that I needed to buy a PC every two years, while my macbook is now doing fine in its fourth, albeit with a SSD card. And the EUR 40 OSX upgrades instead of the EUR 200 Windows upgrades.
No, it is n't. Eclipse worked well on my four year old, 2GB Macbook. Now I've added 2GB of memory, it runs phenomenally fast and it is rather nice to have a true UNIX (BSD) underneath and all the mainstream scripting and programming languages, LAMP etc. there without having to scrounge around the internet and hope I've got a compatible set of libraries and tools. I have got an old Thinkpad, that I greatly appreciate; but speeds are not comparable and the last time I tried to update the Linux installation (UBUNTU, automatic) on half of its disc space, it refused to boot into Linux again and, having got OSX/BSD on the mac, I could not be arsed to sort it out.
I've worked on (and still do) almost every variety of Linux, most UNIXes, including several BSDs and a couple of other operating systems. Spare me the vagaries of the average Linux/GNU release and the time wasted seeking and installing the necessary software (yes, I know about the wonderful interfaces now and the automatic updates; but too often they feel and work like bodged-on afterthoughts, with the command line versions being even worse). Of course, one can pay Redhat, SUSE and others for a proper release with some support; but even then there are oddities and then this "free" OS is not so free. Odd: it's so good Dell and others are remarkably reticent about their Linux offerings, despite the "consumer" programmes (word processors etc.) becoming almost acceptable. My employer (many thousands of servers, virtual and physical around the world) is moving to Redhat. Not bad; but response time, reliability, blade servers etc. make the old Solaris systems look rather wonderful. Sometimes, the network services make paint drying seem like Formula 1 and almost make me like Windows, almost.
As for the Google Chrome idea of a laptop that needs the network to say, "Hallo world": I travelled with a friend across various parts of Europe, lugging his Chrome machine (present from his loving, "techie" son) and experienced the delights of being unable to install Skype in any form, total uselessness when away from a wi fi service etc.. My mobile was more useful, infinitely so. Yes, it is an iphone. But even his ageing Nokia "smart phone" was more useful and has a decent camera to boot.
Did some FOSS programmer kill your cat or something? I mean I know you know that half of what you wrote about 'Linux' is an outright lie, so I wonder why you would post it at all.
Ah yes, the debian package system is such a 'bold on after thought' that the entire operating system requires it for even the most simple NAS installations. *roll eyes*
yes but you don't see nvidia launch on the budget card do you.First you need to launch the premium and work on the process to make it cheaper.
Also fragmentation is a problem for Android due to its nature. windows has hardware fragmentation but uses the same OS to keep things working. Android is open and the HW manufacturer can modify alot of code causing problem for developers. Also HW fragmentation. so there lies the issue no solid ground for Android be it in hardware or software.
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