The real and present reason why Android rules (for now)

roaspiras

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I have been wondering for quite sometime now on why Android is almost everywhere. True it is that widespread but popular? I'd say no. Just recently I went around and saw a handful of new 7" Android tablets selling for $40. Yes its is that cheap. Obviously its a China tablet called hug Tablet. Specs are: ARM Cortex A9 dual Core 1.2 ghz AML8726-Mx Android 4.0 Ice cream sandwich 8GB storage 1GB RAM 7" Capacitive 5-point multi-touch display with IPS 1280x800 display WIFI 802.11 b/g/n front and back camera 4000mAh battery.

The real reason is because it is free thus everyone is producing it at a very fast pace. Some customers do not bother performance since it is affordability that is the primary driver for this and this are being sold in the tens to hundreds!

I bought one to try for my self and it is below decent but usable. I gave it to my kid so they can play games and watch movies.

Windows Phone have a mount Everest to scale this is the true reality and one way they can challenge Android is to let some Chinese companies produce KO Windows 8 tablets at a very low price... sad but true. Unless Microsoft opens up Windows 8 and WP to a cheaper devices then Android is here to stay.

Got your own opinion? Post here.
 

a5cent

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I disagree. A race to the bottom never ends well. IMHO bottom feeding can be left to Android. Windows tablets do need to offer the best bang for your buck experience, but that offer doesn't need to extend all the way down to the bottom of the barrel.
 

MSFTisMIA

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Not trying to sound elitist here, but WP isn't for everyone. MSFT'S goal should be to allow it to be offered at all price points. With WP8 out now, what will happen is that you'll get the effect of a 920 getting cheaper as new high end hardware coming out. So, they don't have to take the Android approach and slap it on everything that can pass for hardware. There is more than enough business out there for MSFT to get "third place, or even second place".

Yes, the freeness of Android, makes it appealing to OEMs. That's why MSFT is better sticking to a limited number of partners who provide high quality hardware.
 

ChMar

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Who said is the price of android OS that makes it that popular around OEMs. Do you remember the days of windows mobile? Every Chinese clone was using it (and it was with money not free). All iphone clones were running on windows mobile 6 or 6.5 os with a custom theme on it. All dual-sim Chinese phones were made with windows mobile. Android is not free. But for most people open source means no money thus free. Actually is not free and you need better people (more expensive salaries per month) to create android devices(as opposed to windows ecosystem were for the money you pay for license you receive support from MS). So it's not about the cost of the OS it's about popularity and availability of apps.

Just curious that Chinese 40$ tablet was it running any google stuff? Did you had access to google play?
 

Muessig

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Honestly I'm not sure. Sure free is a huge incentive for a big company to take on the manufacture of smart phones for an OS and at the rate Android is even now still growing you're gonna have to be bold to ignore it. I'm pretty convinced that the 'free' and 'open source' thing is a big part of how Android gained popularity in it's infancy - it needed to attract developers that were firmly embedded in iOS and the best way was to provide an open platform they could literally play about in. This also attracted the more tech-savvy users who wanted the freedom to flash custom ROM's that would be much more regularly updated than iOS could be at that point. But having said all that now that Android is much more mature and the Android audience has still got it's tech-savvy users I'm willing to bet most people on Android aren't the people interested in custom ROM's. I'm willing to be most people on Android from day to day aren't even bothered about apps. It's more about freedom, I think. Android users have the freedom to change a multitude of things on their phone. They have the freedom to download the latest and greatest apps all their friends are using and the key point here is that they have this ability for pennies. There are so many Android handsets available in so many markets for very little money Android has become the go-to mobile phone OS.

So how does this tie-in to Windows Phone? Well we're getting there, too you know. Nokia and HTC and even Huawei are providing phones at much the same price points and selling a phone experience that perhaps is the middle ground. It's a closed-off OS that you can't really play with as far as development and custom ROM's are concerned but you have the freedom and incentive to provide apps that work with not only Windows Phone but also Windows 8 (it doesn't take a lot of work to get apps made for one working on the other, in comparison with the effort required to make an app from the ground up at least). I think we're on a good grounding at the moment and surely momentum is key - we're building up momentum in sales through cheaper handsets offered primarily by Nokia at the moment and people are starting to turn their heads. Don't get me wrong we've got a heck of a long way to go but I find it encouraging that more and more people around me even if they don't own a Windows Phone, they know what they are or can recognise one when they see one. Surely that's half the battle?
 

BIGPADDY

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I think it more due to advertisement if look how much money Samsung spend on advertising there galaxy range you see it on the TV all the time, promotions, better product placement in a store etc.

Mainly it Samsung that has made Android as big as it is now and seem to be the only company that making money off Android well that what I think.
 
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Sanjay Chandra

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Not trying to sound elitist here, but WP isn't for everyone. MSFT'S goal should be to allow it to be offered at all price points. With WP8 out now, what will happen is that you'll get the effect of a 920 getting cheaper as new high end hardware coming out. So, they don't have to take the Android approach and slap it on everything that can pass for hardware. There is more than enough business out there for MSFT to get "third place, or even second place".

Yes, the freeness of Android, makes it appealing to OEMs. That's why MSFT is better sticking to a limited number of partners who provide high quality hardware.

And Yet they are not able to make good Trackpads (Use macbook's trackpad and compare) even in the most expensive models.
 

roaspiras

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Surprisingly yes. I was able to download some games. Once I synced my google account I was able to access the Google Play store.

Who said is the price of android OS that makes it that popular around OEMs. Do you remember the days of windows mobile? Every Chinese clone was using it (and it was with money not free). All iphone clones were running on windows mobile 6 or 6.5 os with a custom theme on it. All dual-sim Chinese phones were made with windows mobile. Android is not free. But for most people open source means no money thus free. Actually is not free and you need better people (more expensive salaries per month) to create android devices(as opposed to windows ecosystem were for the money you pay for license you receive support from MS). So it's not about the cost of the OS it's about popularity and availability of apps.

Just curious that Chinese 40$ tablet was it running any google stuff? Did you had access to google play?
 

roaspiras

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I beg to differ, Android was already mainstream even before Samsung because of the cheap phones from China being sold everywhere. Now what Samsung did was to dethrone iPhone and Android gained even more traction. I think Samsung had planned for this all along. Remember they create chips, memory, hard disk etc. and iPhone is ordering from them so it was a matter of time for Samsung and boy they did capitalize.

The selling point of Android was simple. Its cheap, you can browse the internet if you have WIFI or 3G. Facebook and twitter are another driver for smartphones which Android capitalized. Samsung spent a lot of advertising to dethrone Apple. They sent a powerful message that hey I'm better than iPhone suddenly somebody had the guts to pull Superman's cape.

I think it more due to advertisement if look how much money Samsung spend on advertising there galaxy range you see it on the TV all the time, promotions, better product placement in a store etc.

Mainly it Samsung that has made Android as big as it is now well and seem to be the only company that making money off Android well that what I think.
 

Laura Knotek

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I beg to differ, Android was already mainstream even before Samsung because of the cheap phones from China being sold everywhere. Now what Samsung did was to dethrone iPhone and Android gained even more traction. I think Samsung had planned for this all along. Remember they create chips, memory, hard disk etc. and iPhone is ordering from them so it was a matter of time for Samsung and boy they did capitalize.

The selling point of Android was simple. Its cheap, you can browse the internet if you have WIFI or 3G. Facebook and twitter are another driver for smartphones which Android capitalized. Samsung spent a lot of advertising to dethrone Apple. They sent a powerful message that hey I'm better than iPhone suddenly somebody had the guts to pull Superman's cape.
How much money are the other OEMs beside Samsung making on Android though? Android devices sure aren't helping HTC.
 

iBandar

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How much money are the other OEMs beside Samsung making on Android though? Android devices sure aren't helping HTC.

Pretty much this !!! No other company but Samsung is making any "real" profit from Android. HTC, Sony, LG all going down. Plus Google doesn't protect their OEM from lawsuits. So they pay millions and billions on that. I meet people everyday saying "damn Nokia should have gone Android way" But I can't even find a single reasy why Nokia should have choose Google over MS.

Selling hug quantity doesn't mean profit.

@lak61 that is a very good question. One more thing. How does Google make money out of Android?

The main reason for Android was, Google wanted to sell their services. They wanted people to use google search, mail, videos not just on their computers but everywhere they go.
Their search and ad engine grows stronger and stronger.
 

jlzimmerman

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WP8 needs better specs. Yes, WP8 is more efficient and is just as fast without higher-specs, but the average consumer isn't that intelligent to see past the smoke and mirrors. And most U.S. buyers want something that will do more than keep up during their 2-year contract. Bigger/better numbers sell. Period. Samsung is taking the lead in this department and it shows. When the S4 comes out you'll see iPhone-like zombie lines waiting for it. Samsung didn't create the Android beast, Motorola did. IMHO, Samsung has a vendetta against Apple and will do anything to crush them. In doing so, their razor-sharp focus and business sense have taken them past other OEM's.

I may be biased but I see Nokia taking similar foot steps. :smile:

Microsoft needs to market WP8 better. There are advantages to the phone that they need to advertise. There are too many entities that ignore/do not like Microsoft, including the very salespeople who are supposed to be selling these phones.
 

odin09

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I am in agreement that advertising has been the key. Verizons droid ads forced you to take notice. Samsungs galaxy ads are also everywhere and are awesome. Im not an android fan but the ads made me want to see the galaxy in person. When I did it felt like a cheap piece of garbage but the ads for me there. Multiple handsets at different price points is also a key for android. It will be tough for WP to fight their way into the mindshare wars. They need to keep building slowly until enough people realize how easy smooth and unique the os is.
 

ChMar

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Windows mobile was more used than android before MS decided to kill it. It's not about open source it's about the ability to license it and how difficult is to integrate it in your device. And frankly it was a pure pleasure to use WinCE builder to prepare your windows ce image. You did not needed to be a programmer or a Linux power user. With android you need to put more effort in to building your OS image(getting the sources making drivers compiling etc). But since there is no other OS you can license (with people knowing how to do it so webOS or meebo do not count).

I strongly believe that if windows phone would not have hw restrictions(a lesson learned since windows mobile times) more OEMs would use windows phone in their devices because of support and the ability to reduce costs and save on the OS updates. But windows phone has strict hw restrictions and so it's hard to gain traction with OEMs wanting to develop cheap devices(and dual-sim kind of smartphones).

And android is open source not free. You pay fees to google to use google play(the app store) or any of their apps(maps, latitude, gmail, etc). And you won't sell an android device without those google apps to most people in most countries.

Beside that android is an ideal platform for service providers. For all those companies that sell services or content. They are not in the business of making software or selling software. So for them a platform with lots of people who can use their services is ideal. Also it's the only platform were you can have a chance to make some money building apps with adds. Iphone users don't care that much about those apps that resemble blogs with adds and windows phones have live tiles that reduce the usage of apps(you can see what is new on the live tile so you will open the app less frequently and close it faster so you won't serve as much adds). So it's the ideal platform for google. They get users on their ecosystem and they serve adds even when you use other persons apps.

Since people hate to pay for software and only care for social and news apps nowadays android will rule forever.
 

tgp

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And android is open source not free. You pay fees to google to use google play(the app store) or any of their apps(maps, latitude, gmail, etc).

That's true, Android is not free, but the manufacturers pay Microsoft the fee for using Android. Google does not directly make any money from the Android OS, but Microsoft earns a lot of money on royalties from every Android device sold. In Q2 2012 Microsoft was paid $800 million in royalties from manufacturers of Android devices.
 

a5cent

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Google does not directly make any money from the Android OS.

You and ChMar are both correct. Goggle asks nothing for the OS but does license services like Google maps. So, via service licensing, Google does indirectly make money on Android, just nowhere near as much as it costs do develop the OS.
 

FinancialP

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How much money are the other OEMs beside Samsung making on Android though? Android devices sure aren't helping HTC.

heard of Xaomi(I know I spelled that so wrong), Huawi, and a bunch of others are pulling in profits.

Is windows phone helping HTC? HTC makes terrible decisions and terrible timing, HTC is just terrible right now.
 

Ridemyscooter86

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$$$$ CHEAP !!!!!!!!!

No seriously, at my work , unfortunately, we sell a ton of 100$ craplets (crappy + tablets). They don't work well, they are poorly built with bad screens, and usually can't access the google play store, but they are 100$. I'm not an apple ****** but if there is anything I give them is that even their cheapest product is a good product...

While many people prefer quality, many people prefer price, and don't care how awful it is. I had to tell a woman once that I wouldn't recommend a 100$ android tablet and she kept saying "well it has 1gb of ram, it should work fine"...people don't realize the difference between specs and the overall product. Samsung is great with the former, they know the spec game better than anybody. I'm sure you've had a friend thats like my GS3 has a quad core snapdragon 2 GB ram, super High Def screen and NFC (I'm exaggerating on the specs) but in any case, have you really heard much iphone users doing it? Or WP users? Its because while not as much specs, they have a much better functioning overall package and its something many consumers fail to under stand is that a lot of it matters how the overall product come together...its shame many android manufactures and consumers don't get this.

Also android is popular because the OS can be modified. The problem with phones and tablets is that they are hard to make them look distinctive, I mean the only 2 phones I can say right off the top of my head that really look different than most other phones are the iphone 4/4S and the nokia lumia 920. Its hard to make one black slab look different from another black slab. They easier way to differentiate yourself is with software, which is why touchwiz (samsung) and Sense(HTC) and stock android all look so different. You know what an HTC phone looks like more because of sense ui than the body, Same with windows phones, my focus s looks nearly identical to a GS2 except for the ui. That is another reason OEMS like android, more creative control.
 

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