This is a great post from the understatement. Check out the chart below on the fragmentation of OS’s on Android devices:
This chart represents the manufacturers support of the latest OS for each smartphone device. And it doesn’t look pretty for Android devices.
So why don’t Android devices get updated?
According to Michael Degusta, “Obviously a big part of the problem is that Android has to go from Google to the phone manufacturers to the carriers to the devices, whereas iOS just goes from Apple directly to devices.”
“In other words, Apple’s way of getting you to buy a new phone is to make you really happy with your current one, whereas apparently Android phone makers think they can get you to buy a new phone by making you really unhappy with your current one.”
Mary Meeker made some interesting points at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday in San Francisco. One to note is outlined in the graph below.
Take a look at the acceleration of the iPad versus the iPhone and iPod, shown in shipments per quarter. Apple currently controls 74% of all tablets sold in the United States, said Tim Cook at a recent Apple Keynote.
I find this hard to believe, but facts are facts. I like my iPad, but it doesn’t seem as useful as a smartphone. My iPhone is always with me, my iPad isn’t. And I can’t replace my desktop with an iPad, I’ve tried. But maybe that’s because of what I do for a living.
Now, checkout this slide on Android acceleration.
When you compare Android and iPhone shipments, the acceleration of the Android platform dwarfs the iPhone.
This means that many of the companies that have popular iPhone apps have already implemented the iOS 5 Twitter features.
That’s what I thought at first. But after further investigation, I realized that most of these additional signups are probably coming from users simply configuring the Twitter settings that are now baked right into iOS 5. From the Settings app you can easily setup your Twitter account.
Additionally, from a developers point of view, Twitter’s single sign-on feature alleviates a lot of issues. Twitter integration is now a piece of cake. Check out this blog article on how simple it is to integrate Twitter into an app under iOS 5. This makes the older solutions look like a nightmare, using OAuth or packages like MGTwitterEngine.
Xyologic, a startup that searches and indexes through App Store data, recently published some interesting data regarding the App space.
According to Xyologic projections, by August 2012 there will be an equal number of apps available for the Android as there are for the iPhone, at roughly 680,000 apps available for both platforms.
Also, according to Xyologic, the total app downloads for Android will surpass the iPhone sometime in May 2013, at roughly 84 billion.
All of this makes a lot of sense with Apple’s 3 devices competing against Androids many manufacturers and many devices.
I wonder if Apple’s free iPhone 3GS will make any impact on these numbers.
I was all excited last night when I downloaded iOS 5.0 for my iPhone 4. I was really wired to use the new Siri technology, but to my dismay apparently Siri is not available for the iPhone 4, only the 4S.
I guess it makes sense for Apple to leave out this feature for “legacy” phones. Here’s a thread from the Apple support community on the topic. It makes me want to upgrade when before last night I was perfectly happy with my iPhone 4.
If your phone is jailbroken, there’s good news on the way. The popular iPhone hacker known as iH8sn0w and John Heaton (@Gojohnnyboi) have started to work on porting the Siri feature on iPhone 4.
Some are also saying that Siri won’t work on the iPhone 4 because it really needs the dual-core A5 chip.
Apple finally realized that the masses of newbie iOS programmers out there, most coming from the Java world, really don’t get it.
iOS memory management is just too difficult for most of these developers that have never coded in C, C++ or Objective-C, beyond maybe a college introductory course.
According to Apple:
Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) for Objective-C makes memory management the job of the compiler. By enabling ARC with the new Apple compiler, you will never need to type retain or release again, dramatically simplifying the development process, while reducing crashes and memory leaks.
They chose not to call it a garbage collector for good reason. It’s not a garbage collector. It’s a compile time, not a run-time, driven memory management model. Meaning the memory management is built into the binary code.
Apple was really forced to implement this feature. Apple must compete with Java on Android and this is a critical feature.
There’s a trend going on right now that doesn’t help RIM with their cherished Wall Street clients.
I’m seeing this all over the place. People are tired of carrying two mobile devices, a corporate Blackberry and a personal Android or iPhone. Many IT departments on Wall Street are incorporating technology from GOOD to solve this problem. And saving big $$$ for the company.
If you haven’t heard of GOOD, think of it as a self-contained corporate Outlook for your Smartphone. It’s a secure e-email / calendar / browser / contact manager /etc app. All data is encrypted, and if the device is lost the application data can be wiped remotely.
If your company supports GOOD, you typically have the option of disposing of your corporate Blackberry and installing the GOOD app on your Smartphone. Given the option, everyone I know is doing the latter.
GOOD isn’t the greatest technology, and will most likely become irrelevant with iOS 5.0 (more on that later), but given the option I would rather carry just one device and that would be a Smartphone, not a Blackberry.
