Is Apple about to lose its dominance in the smartphone/tablet market?

[WelshBloke]

... Galaxy S3? Super spotty GPS. ...

Whats the problem with the S3 GPS? Mines been rock solid, probably the fastest and most accurate phone GPS I've used (presumably because of the added GLONASS support).

 

[BenSkywalker]

There are great devices and great apps, but the overall is too much the Wild West for it to be appealing to regular consumers.

Yeah, I remember back in the 80s and 90s there was another company that had that same problem with this product they called Windows. Ended horribly for them..... richest man in the world..... hundreds of billions of dollars in profits, it was real ugly

 

[jpeyton]

Whats the problem with the S3 GPS? Mines been rock solid, probably the fastest and most accurate phone GPS I've used (presumably because of the added GLONASS support).

Ditto here, the GS3's GPS locks on in seconds for me, consistently.

And while I understand the HTC One X's camera isn't going to dethrone PureView, in real-world tests I don't see much difference between its camera compared to the GS3 and iPhone 4S (certainly not enough of a difference to declare the iPhone's camera good and the One X's bad):

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_...laxy-s-iii-camera-versus-htc-one-x-iphone-4s/

 

[Tom]

Yeah, I remember back in the 80s and 90s there was another company that had that same problem with this product they called Windows. Ended horribly for them..... richest man in the world..... hundreds of billions of dollars in profits, it was real ugly

There was one very significant difference, Windows had no real competitor. Apple computers were much more expensive, too expensive in comparison and Apple almost went belly up becasue of that. And another was that Windows on an HP was Windows on a Dell. And Windows apps pretty much worked on any Windows machine.

That's something Android needs, but doesn't have.

And Android has a very strong competitor in Apple which is price competitive in phones and tablets.

 

[WelshBloke]

Ditto here, the GS3's GPS locks on in seconds for me, consistently.

And while I understand the HTC One X's camera isn't going to dethrone PureView, in real-world tests I don't see much difference between its camera compared to the GS3 and iPhone 4S (certainly not enough of a difference to declare the iPhone's camera good and the One X's bad):

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_...laxy-s-iii-camera-versus-htc-one-x-iphone-4s/

I've not used the OneX so didnt like to comment on it, but stuff like the gyroscopes and things are commodity parts arent they?

I wouldn't be surprised if they were near identical across most modern smartphones. (iOS and Android included)

 

[BenSkywalker]

There was one very significant difference, Windows had no real competitor. Apple computers were much more expensive, too expensive in comparison and Apple almost went belly up becasue of that.

Uhm, Apple computers actually undercut a large portion of the PC market for many years. Their Macs were premium priced, but the rest of their offerings actually weren't that bad in relative terms. They also had Commodore, Amiga and Atari to compete with, all of which were viable alternatives.

http://jeremyreimer.com/postman/node/329

Actually, if you take them all into consideration, MS had more competition back then then there is now in the smartphone space(at least in terms of viable platforms).

And Windows apps pretty much worked on any Windows machine.

If that was remotely in the league of being accurate it would be a good point, but it is shockingly disjointed from reality. I'd say we were into the Win2K/WinXP era before MS started to get anything resembling a handle on that situation, applications failing to work properly on a given device were commonplace and mass cross system smooth operation was an extremely rare norm.

 

[badb0y]

Sell first pre-order batch in less than an hour.

Prepare for failure.

 

[Tom]

Uhm, Apple computers actually undercut a large portion of the PC market for many years. Their Macs were premium priced, but the rest of their offerings actually weren't that bad in relative terms. They also had Commodore, Amiga and Atari to compete with, all of which were viable alternatives.

http://jeremyreimer.com/postman/node/329

Actually, if you take them all into consideration, MS had more competition back then then there is now in the smartphone space(at least in terms of viable platforms).



If that was remotely in the league of being accurate it would be a good point, but it is shockingly disjointed from reality. I'd say we were into the Win2K/WinXP era before MS started to get anything resembling a handle on that situation, applications failing to work properly on a given device were commonplace and mass cross system smooth operation was an extremely rare norm.

I had an Atari ST, actually I still have it.., my recollection is all of those pretty much disappeared during the days of dos, not so much competitors to Windows.

All I know is Macs of that day were things I would never consider buying, they were way too expensive, as was the software that ran on them. (I did have a Mac emulator for my ST but just for fun.) I think the same thing was true of most people which is why there was a huge market share for ms-dos and then for Windows.

So huge that it wasn't anything like the market share Android has, not even close.

And I don't remember there being much problem with Windows 98se, or even 95.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Unless you are a lunatic level fanatic, the iPhone5 isn't going against the 4S, it's going against the GS3, LG G, OneX etc. Even when speaking on a generational basis, it is going against the GS2-GS3; LG 4x-LG G; HTC Evo DRPMLFG- OneX upgrades as a baseline. Don't get me wrong, 4 to 4S was such a kick in the face to those devout in their iOS praise that by comparison the 5 must seem like a massive upgrade, but the world keeps moving, and for several years now it has been moving faster then Apple(sadly, it is hardware now that they are closest on).

Specs sheets don't tell the whole story. My app performs faster on an iPhone 4 running iOS 6 than on a Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean. And no. I'm not intentionally making the iOS version faster. I just can't make the Android version faster.

Android is getting there, but lack of manual memory management and over-reliance on the Garbage Collector (GC) is doing quite a number on hardware of this generation.

You can overclock your phone and tweak it so that Garbage Collector would not be that much of a bother, but as a whole, iOS would still be smoother and faster by far since developers can manually control how much memory is used and when to release. I wrote in another thread that I'd expect Android to eventually have the better approach as hardware will eventually make this GC process' impact on performance trivial, but... for current hardware, and even for next year's hardware, I don't see how things will get much better. It's the same Java vs pure C argument.

Whats the problem with the S3 GPS? Mines been rock solid, probably the fastest and most accurate phone GPS I've used (presumably because of the added GLONASS support).

When I wrote "spotty", I mean "unreliable". It doesn't work so fast and consistently everywhere, and if you are in motion, it can behave very weird. Look up "Galaxy S3 GPS issues" on Google for more details.

Also you may think sensors are made equal on all smartphones, but they are not. Even the touchscreens are not made equal.

And while I understand the HTC One X's camera isn't going to dethrone PureView, in real-world tests I don't see much difference between its camera compared to the GS3 and iPhone 4S (certainly not enough of a difference to declare the iPhone's camera good and the One X's bad):

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_...laxy-s-iii-camera-versus-htc-one-x-iphone-4s/

The HTC One X camera's flaws are slow focus and bad or no image stabilization. Comparisons don't really show that because they may use camera rigs to secure the phones and keep them super stable... even though the only intention for doing that may just be to make sure they take photos of the same spot.

Also One X is very horrible in low light. Focus doesn't seem to work at all.

 

[akugami]

The worldwide smartphone market is around 450 million units per year and growing. It makes perfect sense that Apple's unit sales and profits will rise even as their market share drops.

Apple can't maintain iOS as the "premiere" mobile ecosystem without developers, and developers aren't going to code for iOS exclusively if it accounts for 10% of the worldwide market.

Between the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, iOS is still very relevant right now. But the writing is on the wall; extrapolate Android's growth in the smartphone and tablet market out 2-3 years from now and iOS will be a much smaller blip on the radar.

There are other development platforms. I know a few guys who code for Android and iOS. They use Mono as a development environment. I believe there is also a couple of other development environments one can use for cross platform development.

Obviously this doesn't cut it for any app that requires every ounce of processing power. But for the vast majority of apps, it's fine. Especially considering that smartphones get more powerful every year.

So we don't need developers to code for iOS exclusively. Now it comes down to users. And from that perspective, almost every indication is that iOS users are more willing to pay/use an app they like. Probably because a lot of the lower end Android phones are sold as a replacement to dumb phones which skews the numbers negatively for the Android platform.

If it stays the same yes, IOS is starting to get long in the tooth. But the same can be said of any mobile OS. It just starts to get boring sooner or later.

I'm going to have to agree that iOS is getting long in the tooth. It's not that the jump from iOS 4 to 5 to 6 doesn't add functionality or changes but it just doesn't seem like a large jump.

 

[WelshBloke]

When I wrote "spotty", I mean "unreliable". It doesn't work so fast and consistently everywhere, and if you are in motion, it can behave very weird. Look up "Galaxy S3 GPS issues" on Google for more details.

Also you may think sensors are made equal on all smartphones, but they are not. Even the touchscreens are not made equal.

As I said mine has been solid and I've driven across europe with it using it as an in car nav.

I'd be more convinced if you were giving out model numbers for the sensors, I cant believe theres that many manufacturers of gyroscopes for smartphones.

 

[cmdrdredd]

As I said mine has been solid and I've driven across europe with it using it as an in car nav.

I'd be more convinced if you were giving out model numbers for the sensors, I cant believe theres that many manufacturers of gyroscopes for smartphones.

The gps issues are due to the roms and firmware in use. With the latest jellybean leaks I have very good gps experience. Even better than an actual garmen gps unit.

 

[gotsmack]

the iPhone is not sustainable, because we are entering an era where smartphone technology is advancing too fast for a 1 phone platform to.work. You need multiple launches a year to keep the public's attention now. The iPhone 5 is nice, but if you pile enough new tech that isn't in the IPhone and you'll get converts.

The new tech doesn't even have to be something like NFC, it can be just a higher quality screen with better resolution, a better camera, wireless charging. something like this, except every 3 month's something new gets added that the iPhone doesn't have.

 

[cheezy321]

the iPhone is not sustainable, because we are entering an era where smartphone technology is advancing too fast for a 1 phone platform to.work. You need multiple launches a year to keep the public's attention now. The iPhone 5 is nice, but if you pile enough new tech that isn't in the IPhone and you'll get converts.

The new tech doesn't even have to be something like NFC, it can be just a higher quality screen with better resolution, a better camera, wireless charging. something like this, except every 3 month's something new gets added that the iPhone doesn't have.

Then how do you explain the fact that the main android makers have all turned their business model to the 1 flagship device per year, just like apple.

 

[Capt Caveman]

the iPhone is not sustainable, because we are entering an era where smartphone technology is advancing too fast for a 1 phone platform to.work. You need multiple launches a year to keep the public's attention now. The iPhone 5 is nice, but if you pile enough new tech that isn't in the IPhone and you'll get converts.

The new tech doesn't even have to be something like NFC, it can be just a higher quality screen with better resolution, a better camera, wireless charging. something like this, except every 3 month's something new gets added that the iPhone doesn't have.

Outside of a small number of users, most users don't upgrade their phones multiple times a year. And all updates nowadays are pretty much incremental and not must haves.

 

[MrX8503]

Unless you are a lunatic level fanatic, the iPhone5 isn't going against the 4S, it's going against the GS3, LG G, OneX etc. Even when speaking on a generational basis, it is going against the GS2-GS3; LG 4x-LG G; HTC Evo DRPMLFG- OneX upgrades as a baseline. Don't get me wrong, 4 to 4S was such a kick in the face to those devout in their iOS praise that by comparison the 5 must seem like a massive upgrade, but the world keeps moving, and for several years now it has been moving faster then Apple(sadly, it is hardware now that they are closest on).

Of which the iPhone 5 is at least on par or beats them all in performance.

Best display (according to display mate), great Lte battery life, fast CPU/GPU.

Ahh yes, incremental.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Then how do you explain the fact that the main android makers have all turned their business model to the 1 flagship device per year, just like apple.

Because one phone per year is much more profitable. All their shareholders are looking at Apple and saying "Why can't we do that?"

Problem is that the market expectations have been set, and if you don't crank out three flagships a year someone else will.

 

[tommo123]

At what point? When iOS marketshare hits 20%? 15%? 10%? I think my basic point is that if an average iOS user uses apps more than an average Android user, then the marketshare of Android needs to at minimum have that much of an advantage over iOS to make up for its users barely touching apps. That's at a minimum. But moreover, as an App developer, I think I'd rather have 10 million loyal fans using my app 1 hour a day than 60 million using it 10 minutes a day. It's clear who is using my app in a deeper manner, and I would work on adding new features to cater to those who actually utilize my apps features.

If you look at Twitter, how many people are tweeting from iOS versus Android?

If you look at Foursquare, how many people are checking in via iPhone vs Android?

If you look at Facebook, how many people are posting photos via iPhone vs Android?

In all 3 categories, what I can see is it's iOS.

At work when I see people checking their phones during meetings more than half of those are iPhone users. Amongst the whole manufacturing engineering group at our office, with ages 20-early 30s, ALL had iPhones. This is a target audience that uses phones and apps actively. I can bet you these guys use their phones far more in terms of apps than 50 year olds.

Honestly, looking at those statistics if I wanted to target an audience that will use my app more, I think I would do iOS first. Even if my app is free. You want to be popular? Get an iOS version out. Even my friends who develop for Android, they desperately find an iOS developer ASAP to help them out and launch as soon as they can. Meanwhile I see iOS developer friends take their sweet time. Wait 6 months even before actually starting to port over. It's just not a big priority.

heh, going by that i am about 2/3rds in the iOS camp but use android and have a PC at home

 

[cl-scott]

I think a rather large number of people here are kind of missing the forest for the trees. The iPhone 5 is not going to be the end of Apple, but it will likely be looked back on as the BEGINNING of the end.

There have been a number of significant missteps by Apple... Maps, cosmetic issues... Then there are external factors: For the first time since the dawn of the iPhone era, you're seeing much more mainstream press outlets failing to act like a teenage girl at some boy band concert. Apple isn't doing itself any favors in keeping up it's facade of this friendly and helpful company when it's stepping up its efforts to go after the competition in court the world over. -- Anyone who's ever dealt with Apple on the business side will already know that is a total farce -- You even have one of the company co-founders giving a number of interviews where he very publicly disagrees with the way the company is being run.

None of those things on their own are probably that big a deal, but each one is a portent of what is to come. If Apple doesn't manage to somehow correct those, and a dozen other minor issues, they will continue to fester and there will be a slow but steady bleed of users who decide to go with an Android or Win Phone device rather than the latest iPhone. It might be the iPhone 7 or 8 before you really start to see the culmination of these effects, but it will happen.

Also, on a side note... Take a look at Microsoft now compared to Microsoft of 2000. It's a pale shadow of its former self, existing almost entirely on momentum and the constant rejiggering of licenses for large enterprise customers to try and milk a bit more money out of them.

 

[gotsmack]

Then how do you explain the fact that the main android makers have all turned their business model to the 1 flagship device per year, just like apple.

I don't have to. My point wasn't that each manufacturer has to crank out a new flagship every month, but some do, like Samsung. The have the Galaxy, Note, and Nexus (dunno if you want to count that last one but they branded it as a Samsung). That is 3 major launches a year.

My point before, was that looking at Android as a whole there are Multiple new launches of different features a year from different.vendors, so even if there is only 1 flagship from.each vendor there are enough vendors to launch many new.features.

Outside of a small number of users, most users don't upgrade their phones multiple times a year. And all updates nowadays are pretty much incremental and not must haves.

yes, but these people aren't blind to what new features other phones have that they don't. By the time their contract is over a lot of envy for new features has built up inside them and some of these people are going to say "I NEED to have X feature and if the iPhone doesn't have it, I'll switch"

 

[Red Storm]

Then how do you explain the fact that the main android makers have all turned their business model to the 1 flagship device per year, just like apple.

Huh?

Razr, Razr Maxx, Razr M

One V, One S, One X

Galaxy S, Galaxy Note, Galaxy ____ (their value brand, smaller/cheaper)

 

[Mopetar]

I think a rather large number of people here are kind of missing the forest for the trees. The iPhone 5 is not going to be the end of Apple, but it will likely be looked back on as the BEGINNING of the end.

I strongly doubt it. It'll be another two years before we start to approach saturation in the worldwide smart phone market. Apple's going to keep selling even more smart phones, and hauling in even more money. It's also still early to really know where tablets are going to go and what the potential market is there. Will they eventually take over most of the PC market? Hard to say what the potential is there. Apple is also continuing to sell more and more desktop and notebook computers (Yeah, they still make those ) so they're still slowly growing there as well.

There have been a number of significant missteps by Apple... Maps, cosmetic issues... Then there are external factors: For the first time since the dawn of the iPhone era, you're seeing much more mainstream press outlets failing to act like a teenage girl at some boy band concert. Apple isn't doing itself any favors in keeping up it's facade of this friendly and helpful company when it's stepping up its efforts to go after the competition in court the world over. -- Anyone who's ever dealt with Apple on the business side will already know that is a total farce -- You even have one of the company co-founders giving a number of interviews where he very publicly disagrees with the way the company is being run.

People make this same argument every new product generation and it turns out not to be true. Eventually the problems get fixed and no one really cares about them or the tech press latches on to some new sensationalism to drive page views and stop writing about whatever latest -gate scandal is plaguing Apple and will spell their doom.

None of those things on their own are probably that big a deal, but each one is a portent of what is to come. If Apple doesn't manage to somehow correct those, and a dozen other minor issues, they will continue to fester and there will be a slow but steady bleed of users who decide to go with an Android or Win Phone device rather than the latest iPhone. It might be the iPhone 7 or 8 before you really start to see the culmination of these effects, but it will happen.

Given their past history, they seem to be pretty good at fixing problems and getting things smoothed out. Of course they'll run into some new problems on the next go around and people will jump all over that as though it somehow spells doom for the company.

Also, on a side note... Take a look at Microsoft now compared to Microsoft of 2000. It's a pale shadow of its former self, existing almost entirely on momentum and the constant rejiggering of licenses for large enterprise customers to try and milk a bit more money out of them.

That's what happens when you completely tap out your existing market and don't grow into anything else. That's why Apple isn't going to have any problems for at least another two or three years. Their two biggest markets are still growing rapidly year-over-year. When they get their, they'll need to find some next big thing for the company if they want to keep expanding.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Specs sheets don't tell the whole story. My app performs faster on an iPhone 4 running iOS 6 than on a Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean. And no. I'm not intentionally making the iOS version faster. I just can't make the Android version faster.

Android is getting there, but lack of manual memory management and over-reliance on the Garbage Collector (GC) is doing quite a number on hardware of this generation.

You can overclock your phone and tweak it so that Garbage Collector would not be that much of a bother, but as a whole, iOS would still be smoother and faster by far since developers can manually control how much memory is used and when to release. I wrote in another thread that I'd expect Android to eventually have the better approach as hardware will eventually make this GC process' impact on performance trivial, but... for current hardware, and even for next year's hardware, I don't see how things will get much better. It's the same Java vs pure C argument.



When I wrote "spotty", I mean "unreliable". It doesn't work so fast and consistently everywhere, and if you are in motion, it can behave very weird. Look up "Galaxy S3 GPS issues" on Google for more details.

Also you may think sensors are made equal on all smartphones, but they are not. Even the touchscreens are not made equal.



The HTC One X camera's flaws are slow focus and bad or no image stabilization. Comparisons don't really show that because they may use camera rigs to secure the phones and keep them super stable... even though the only intention for doing that may just be to make sure they take photos of the same spot.

Also One X is very horrible in low light. Focus doesn't seem to work at all.

Unless you are developing games or particularly intensive apps you are doing something wrong if you need manual memory management.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Unless you are developing games or particularly intensive apps you are doing something wrong if you need manual memory management.

Games are only intensive on CPU + GPU, and I'd argue that most phones have enough CPU and GPU power to handle many intensive games. Even the iPhone 4 can do games.

No... it's loading too much data from online databases that causes those memory problems. It's less of an issue on iOS since I can delete the last set of data pointers to display the current one. No issue. Very efficient.

On Android? It's not as clear cut. I have to signal that the last data pointers need to be deleted (set it to "null"), and either wait and confirm that it's already deleted before moving on, or ask the OS for more memory and hope that it has enough to allocate. First case causes lag. Second case causes unpredictable behavior... and it'll more than often crash the app if the user decides to exit out of the app while it's trying to query the data.

 

[oznerol]

I don't think innovation is quite done yet in the mobile ecosystem, and I still think Apple has the talent to continue to lead that innovation.

If anything, I just think the increased competition will speed up the innovation. Unfortunately, just basing this on the iOS6 release, it looks like it's resulting in sloppy software.

I'm really curious what they have in store with television, and how that will inevitably tie into their mobile OS.