asymco

Recent data from admob shows that Android OS share is highly dependent on a single vendor (HTC). (http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/AdMob-Mobile-Metrics-Oct-09.pdf page 7) There is an implied message in Android advocacy that once more licensees join in, volumes will be distributed among a broad set of companies benefiting from a healthy rivalry. This broad licensing will be a [...]

In comparing two platforms like iPhone and Android, the question of addressable market for developers must come first. Apple has the advantage of an early lead plus its iPod touch devices which add another 40% to volumes. As a result, Apple created a 57 million units base with 100% yearly growth. It’s not a stretch [...]

Nice summary: Essentially, Android isn’t Google’s phone platform, it’s an open alternative for failing hardware makers to use in place of Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Linux to create the same type of convoluted, fractionalized, and poorly integrated products they’re already making. This is also why Symbian, Windows Mobile, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson are all failing [...]

Imagine that! http://blog.telephonyonline.com/unfiltered/2009/11/10/apple-beats-nokia-for-world’s-most-profitable-handset-maker/

…One of the main reasons why UIs are unequally inferior are not only the way you build apps (open vs. closed hw/sw system) and the SDK itself but also marginal to non-existing UI standards, no ready-made drag & drop UI items, variations in carrier- & device firmware, hard- & software input, screen sizes, international customizations, [...]

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/11/09/samsung.may.deal.microsoft.severe.blow This prediction says that WinMo and Symbian are out at Samsung. Not a big surprise there. The real news is some new “proprietary” OS is to take a majority share of the portfolio moving Android out of the picture gradually after 2011. You will infer from my previous comments that the reason any deep [...]

On April 9th, 2007 Apple announced that the 100 millionth iPod had been sold, making the iPod the fastest selling music player in history. The first iPod was sold five and a half years earlier, in November 2001. Three months after that 100 millionth iPod, Apple sold the first iPhone. My prediction is that sometime [...]

Insipid and irrational politics are symptomatic to a company trapped by rigidity of response to asymmetric attack (and you can quote me on that.) Nokia, the world’s leader in total mobile phone sales seems to be having new problems deciding on its OS strategy. There were some murmurings about embracing Android last summer, but Nokia [...]

That may be. Open only wins when the underlying service is a commodity for which improvements (other than price) will not be valued. In my way of speaking, openness is semantically equivalent to “modular” and that is in contrast to “integrated”. Integrated is the only way to develop systems when they are not good enough. [...]

The question of Android viability goes deeper than the app ecosystem. In fact the ecosystem is itself dependent on the network effect of the platform. That effect is weak because the platform is not “tight” and is prone to fragmentation and its value cannot be communicated to end users. That is due to the lack [...]