Apple iPhone vs Google Android - Part 1
For those of you that haven't heard of the Apple iPhone yet I can only wonder what distant corner of the internet you've been inhabiting for the last year, because there are probably pygmy tribesman thousands of miles from civilisation, in deep comas that haven't been able to avoid the media buzz surrounding the device. But just to recap, last year Apple, after years of denouncing the rumours they were working on a phone, surprisingly did release their unique mobile phone on to the market and the new 3G version of it is very close to being officially available here in NZ. I could forgive you for not knowing anything about Google's new mobile phone platform "Android", but for sure you'll be hearing more and more as the first phones running Android are also made available later this year.
So what's the big deal? Mobiles have been around for years, and although pretty handy, they're not the most exciting of gadgets, right? Well, that's all about to change, and if the fact that two of the worlds biggest players in computing are pouring huge investments into surprisingly similar mobile projects doesn't convince you then let me try...
First lets look at some stats. Apple came out with the first mass market personal computers over thirty years ago and today there are around 850 million computers in use around the world. That's a pretty huge number, but it pales in comparison to the number of active mobile phone subscriptions which passed 3.3 billion at the start of the year. With 6.6 billion people in the world that's a mobile for every second person, and that includes infants through to the elderly. Mobile phones are not only for the first world either, their usage is high in developing countries too as cell towers are much cheaper than landline infrastructure and the devices themselves are relatively inexpensive. China and India add 6 and 7 million mobile phones every month respectively. It is projected that over the next five to ten years 90% of the worlds population will own a mobile phone. Crikey!
So the mobile market is huge and growing and due to Moore's law and miniaturization the devices themselves are getting smaller, cheaper and more importantly, smarter. They're getting so smart that we may as well forget about them as phones and start thinking of them as mobile computing platforms, and that's where Apple and Google get involved. They have realised that mobile phones will soon take over the desktop for many tasks that are simply more suited to handheld devices. In fact "phones" may become our most used computing platform and naturally act as a hub for all the other web enabled smart devices we'll have around us, but even by themselves there's no reason why they won't take over the following and more:
- Camera and Video
- Web Browsing & Email on the go (or from the sofa)
- Music
- Note taking
- Voice recording/ dictation
- Calendars
- Alarms
- Address Book
- Instant Messaging/ SMS/ Video Conferencing
- Presenting video and photo slideshows/ powerpoint (outputting to projectors and the like)
- Widgets for weather, maps etc.
- Gaming - handhelds have always outsold the consoles, in the current generation the Nintendo DS has outsold the Wii, PS3 and XBOX 360 combined
So the stage is set for an epic battle to see who will own the mobile space and the stakes are huge. Of course with so many current players already in the game the likelihood of one company taking a huge majority share is unlikely. But then Apple have accomplished the unthinkable before by crushing the Walkman and achieving a 75% market share in the portable music player space with the iPod. Even if Apple were only able to get a 10% share of the future mobile phone market it would be selling far more phones than Macs. From Apples perspective the big players such as Nokia (like Sony before them) have squandered their opportunity by releasing more and more unintuitive devices year after year that have failed to evolve in to real computing platforms and aren't winning the hearts of the mass market.
It's time for some new blood in the ring and for someone to shake things up a bit. Apple is poised to do exactly that and are quietly preparing their attack. With their ability to create fantastic user experiences by marrying stylish hardware with user-friendly software they are more likely than most to pull it off. Their iTunes software is already used by over 100 million iPod users out there and so they are uniquely positioned to leverage this large installed user base to market to first. It also gives them a great distribution platform for the newly announced iPhone App Store which will be the one-stop-shop for applications and games developed for the mobile platform.
It would seem that Apple has it in the bag. They are certainly going to take a huge chunk of market share away from RIM's Blackberry and the Windows mobile platform, but if we've learnt anything over the last few years it's to not underestimate Google and it's ability to develop and market quality products for the masses. We'll look at their offering in Part Two (as well as deciphering all the juicy announcements likely to come out of Apple's Developer Conference on Tuesday*)...
Stay Tuned.
- Just for the record I'm gonna stick my neck out and predict that along with a 3G iPhone they announce a "iPhone Nano" - smaller & cheaper, aimed at all of us that can't justify spending over $700 on a cell phone. I'd love to see a "iPhone Shuffle" as well, but that wouldn't make much sense unless you're really into making random prank phone calls.