Android now controls 59% of the world's smartphone market share; iOS at a distant 23%

mepper · 1 day

Samsung also claims to own the concept of a world clock on a phone :)

mepper · 1 day

Free on contract, yes. However, remember that contracts are far less common in Europe than the US. The majority of the Android phones I see in Ireland are things like the Galaxy Ace (100 euro prepay, without contract), while most of the high-end phones are iPhones (and almost all of those which aren't are the Galaxy SII).

mepper · 1 day

then uses patent law to bully companies that try to compete with the standard Apple sets in the first place.

Motorola, in particular, also does this; its suit against Apple amounted to a declaration that no-one but the then-current incumbents should be allowed to make phones.

mepper · 1 day

It also does not include the tablet market where Apple has the decided advantage.

Or the still substantial iPod Touch market. Apple's share of the ecosystem is much larger than its share of the phone market, which is all that really matters to developers.

mepper · 1 day

even with the lack of advertising at least compared to Apple.

I'm not sure that this is actually true. While it's hard to get per-product details, Samsung alone has a much larger annual marketing budget than Apple.

mepper · 1 day

I am still puzzled as to why every single fucking store has a 10 foot wall with i*hone accessories, yet I can't find a damn case/charger/screen protector/etc. for my damn Droid.

Because there are precisely three body configurations for an iPhone, and one of them went out of production five years ago. So, if you're making an iPhone 4/4S case you have a market of a couple of hundred million. If you're making a Motorola Droid/Milestone case you have a market of maybe 20 million (if that; the Milestone generally did poorly outside the US).

For things like docks and so on, these are also generally cheaper to make for the iPhone, because it has digital and analog audio out and I2C in the dock connector. For most Android devices, if you want a fully-functional dock you need to put a USB audio device and control system in it.

mepper · 1 day

Samsung's marketing budget is substantially larger than Apple's. They're not necessarily using it as well, though.

mepper · 1 day

Twinkies exclude off brand cream filled pasties. Coke excludes store brand colas. It's common. The iPad thing is the same, just on a bigger scale.

This is exactly the problem, and it's something Apple will have to be very careful about (Google has the same problem with the fake verb 'to google'). I'm not sure, but I suspect that Hostess, at any rate, has lost legal protection for the term 'twinkie'.

mepper · 1 day

They'll be getting a nasty letter from Apple, I suspect (much as Google sends legal letters whenever someone say "I googled something" in a TV show). Historically, when a given product utterly dominates a market, its name often becomes a generic term for things in that market, even long after its dominance has faded (gramophone, tannoy, heroin, phillips screw, etc). This is very bad for the manufacturer, as they risk losing their trademark this way.

mepper · 1 day

Can't Samsung afford marketing?

Samsung spend quite a bit on marketing; at $940 million last year, considerably more than Apple (though note that Samsung has a number of products in spaces where marketing is the only real differentiator, particularly televisions). They have trouble capturing the imagination of the media, though, possibly due to the vast number of different phone models they produce.

mepper · 1 day

where as gorilla glass is durable

Well, first, 'gorilla glass' is very hard, and thus difficult to scratch. It's not particularly shatter-resistant, though, no more so than ordinary high-quality glass. Glass which is both hard and shatter resistant is a bit of a materials science holy grail.

The iPhone certainly uses some form of aluminosilicate glass. Apple, of course, are not in the habit of promoting other peoples' brands (to the extent that their deal with Intel makes them the first OEM in a couple of decades not have to show an Intel logo on their products), but Corning has mentioned that Apple is a large customer, and Apple recently mentioned that Corning is a large supplier. It may, of course, not be gorilla glass branded aluminosilicate, but rather a different aluminosilicate glass, but that's really just the brand.

The main reason that the iPhone 4 shatters relatively easily is that the glass gets all the way to the border, increasing the probability of a direct impact. This is partly why edge-to-edge glass is somewhat unusual in phones.

necrosxiaoban · 3 days

Nonetheless, as an Android user I don't feel any need to proselytize to the masses, nor have I noticed it in other Android users.

/r/android used to be like this, back in the day.

LegionOfBrad · 3 days

Ah, I hadn't seen those; they don't seem to be in the earlier German complaint. Surprised they've bothered to use the h264 ones at all, then; they risk further drawing the ire of the regulators.

LegionOfBrad · 3 days

The patents in this case have nothing to do with FRAND

The patents involved cover aspects h264, and as such are subject to FRAND terms.

caliber · 3 days

Sony, notoriously, did the same with its 'Trinitron' CRTs for a long time; while these were of higher quality than contemporary consumer CRTs, they were much lighter, causing distrust. Sony responded by adding steel.

oldbaldfool · 5 days

Just as well, too; they're not electrically compatible (they provide most of the same things, but the Samsung one has a slightly different layout).

technopwn · 6 days

Given Google's performance in the Oracle lawsuit, it will be interesting to see if Motorola's strategy changes.

The patent part of that lawsuit hasn't even happened yet; still on copyright for now. Totally separate issue (and, in any case, no standards-essential patents are involved even in the patents bit).

technopwn · 6 days

If they have a reputation to protect, they shouldn't be releasing a poorly written product in binary form, either.

technopwn · 6 days

As a developer, no, I'm not really following you. I'd certainly far prefer to see a poor quality release of code than no release at all, and I'd certainly assume that poor quality code would lead to poor quality product (as turned out to be the case; Honeycomb was pretty awful).

technopwn · 6 days

But what would their hardware partners turn to? Windows phone?

For Samsung, potentially their own fork with their own app store. They're likely dominant enough in the market that they could make this work, and the Galaxy SII already shows some movement in that direction. And it's possible yet that Windows Phone could become acceptable; if Microsoft is more willing to give the OEMs what they want, and has a reasonable mobile OS, they'll drop Google like a shot.

technopwn · 6 days

Google more or less have to keep Motorola at arm's length, for fear of annoying Samsung. If Samsung were to fork Android right now, and use their own app store and so forth rather than the Android marketplace, that would be a pretty unpleasant position for Google, given Samsung's hugely dominant position.

technopwn · 6 days

I'd think that their concern is that Google might simply start making their own phones, cease releasing source, and abandon the OEMs. This would significantly disrupt the market.

technopwn · 6 days

They can't just officially throw out some poorly designed code without proper documentation.

And yet they could release devices running said code?

technopwn · 6 days

I'd say it's more a concern that Google could abandon the OEM model and just make phones without releasing the OS at all (similar to Apple). This would have the effect of screwing over their OEM partners.

technopwn · 6 days

For all practical purposes, large companies are not US or European or Japanese or Chinese or whatever these days; they are transnationals. In principle, sure, they could do it without the approval of the FTC or the EC or the Chinese regulators, with the result that said regulators would ban the sale of their products and their operation in the relevant territories.

rsynnott

TROPHY CASE

rsynnott

TROPHY CASE

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