In the recent earnings call for Apple, Steve Jobs made an appearance and the following excerpted remarks (transcript from Seeking Alpha):
"Twitter client, Twitter Deck, recently launched their app for Android. They reported that they had to contend with more than 100 different versions of Android software on 244 different handsets. The multiple hardware and software iterations present developers with a daunting challenge. Many Android apps work only on selected Android handsets running selected Android versions. And this is for handsets that have been shipped less than 12 months ago. Compare this with iPhone, where there are two versions of the software, the current and the most recent predecessor to test against."
"We see tremendous value in having Apple rather than our users' be the systems integrator. We think this is a huge strength of our approach compared to Google's. When selling to users who want their devices to just work, we believe integrated will trump fragmented every time. And we also think our developers can be more innovative if they can target a singular platform rather than a hundred variants. They can put their time into innovative new features rather than testing on hundreds of different handsets."
Why I think he is wrong:
- Most of the users of the "244 handsets" and cheap tablets running Android are not particularly interested in integrated software apps. Data shows that most people only use 5-6 apps with any regularity. Also, users of Android phones and tablets are more interested in the integration to Google apps, such as Google Mail, which will work perfectly fine with the "100" versions of Android. It's the Google experience that the customers want and not "the customer experience" Job's refers to.
- A few weeks ago in Korea I saw the new Galaxy Tab from Samsung. It runs Android and the software integration showed that Samsung had paid special attention to this issue. There may be "100" versions of Android but this is just an early stage phenomenon. The world class manufacturers will all customize their devices for Android, garner a big share of the market and compete with Apple on price performance. Android will probably evolve like Linux, with a few dominant versions and a lot of versions with small, insignificant user groups.
- As the Android devices increase in popularity, if the software integration and downloaded apps lead to many customer complaints, the cellular carriers will impose discipline and standards to satisfy the customers.
I think that Jobs is worried about the Android phenomena, that he is ignoring the early stage status of Android devices and that the competitive tablets running Android coming in 4Q 2010 and 1Q 2011 will show that the real "innovation" in the iPad is the touch screen (which is not a sustainable advantage).
...Toujours de l'audace..Georges Danton
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