Speaking of the QA for the app marketplace: The Android app market is suffering because of its open-source nature; anyone can develop on it, leading to a wide variety of bad software available for download.
I disagree with you on this: yes, "anyone" can develop Android apps. But "anyone" can write an application for Windows too. Actually, it's even easier to develop for Windows because you can just use VB or something. Does this mean that Windows is bad? Because there are too many questionable pieces of software available for download for it? Go to download.com or something, there are millions of crappy pieces of software.
I get that it's good that Apple QA's their apps, but they QA to screen out malware and things like that: they don't necessarily reject apps because their quality is questionable. Aren't their numerous iPhone apps that just play fart sounds?
To complain about the open-source nature of the marketplace is a little silly given that's essentially how the personal computing market has largely functioned for the past couple of decades.
And like any other open marketplace, the cream tends to rise to the top. I think Android's App Market does a pretty good job of presenting users with quality apps. And if you don't like that, you can use Amazon's App Store.
Nobody ever complains that books are dumb because any moron can get a book printed up...
Apple is controlled in most things it does. I visited its assembly plants in Asia and was impressed even in these remote sites how controlled the environment is compared to other manufacturers. Google Android is more embrionic at this stage but as it develops it will learn where to control and where not to. I believe the original article stimulated a very interesting response and both views have merit. Apple performance as a company is simply fantastic as it continues to roll out world beating desirable products. I wonder how this might change when CEOs change?
Yes, anyone can develop apps for Windows, but the difference between Android and Windows is that Android has one hub to download apps from. For Windows, users would go to the store and get whatever was on the shelf, as time progressed, CNET created download.com where you could trust that there were no viruses or whatnot. These online places developed over time, yet there is still no single hub where everyone goes to download software.
The open-source nature of the Android market is a problem only because thats the only place to get software. I can't trust the software I download from Android, but I can trust it from Apple. Thats affecting how people view the ease of use of these two different products.
There are numerous downloads that play fart sounds. I'm not talking about questionable taste, but bad software - ie, maleware, causes crashes, poorly written, bloated, etc etc.
Another problem with open source dev for android is that the fart apps on Apple only have 1 hardware set, but android suffers from the same problems that early windows programs do, Having to deal with multiple screen sizes makes developing more difficult, and with less QA the apps are even more lacking.
And offering to send me to the Amazon market place goes to show that these open source markets just aren't perfect yet. Is Apple? No, but its better. I'm not even sure that most people know there are a handful of much smaller market places out there.
And people complain all the time that books are dumb because anyone can print them out. Amazon's print on demand has caused quite a stir in the publishing world. Most people go through publishers, where they do QA testing. It just depends on who you're listening to.
We may not agree on this point, but thanks for the feedback! Hopefully it the future it will be a moot discussion.
I have appreciated your editorial Michell and your point of view in comparing Apple and mob apps market (and PC, speaking about what happened in the past). Just to keep alive the discussion, I was thinking we are still analyzing events and market as in the past, but scenario it could be quite different now. For example, according to experts it has been recognized cloud is the future, then endusers model won't be to download something or use tool inside a given platform, but require an app on demand and just for the time to satisfy a need. Personally speaking, it seems a dream. Am I wrong?
I think those numbers don't truly show the preference of consumers. There are so many more Android devices out on the market now than any other mobils OS. So that 50% might be a little misleading if you look at it from a macro level.
Hi pocharle, the graph is not about total market share for mobile OS, only a trend on recent purchases.The total market share would be a totally different graph, but this chart does highlight how popular Android is becoming.
As we are reading this article from the Apple vs rest point of view then we should also analyze this graph from this POV. Considering that rest of the companies (apart from let's say Nokia, RIM) do not have their customize software platform, the market share of iOS is impressive. Having said that, i do not know whether Apple should try to collaborate and make its iOS avaialble for others to experiment and power their smartphones. But by doing so they can for sure gain more momentum in making their OS more popular and grab more market shares.
Is this a case of glass half full versus glass half empty?
Thanks for the impressive stats that you shared. I am of the opinion that Apple's strategy of managing a modfied "closed system" is not a point of weakness and its tactics of buying up its suppliers to assure the quality of iOS is infact going to eventually help Apple eat into the Android market shares with time.
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