Prezi from my lecture last week on the battle between Apple and Google for the future of the mobile internet. I am drawing short histories of both companies, and then concentrating on the importance of the mobile internet, and the strategies of both companies for dominating it. I discuss Apple’s closed garden model, and Google’s attempts to keep Android an open system; the short OODA loop of open networks and why this will always be an overwhelming advantage; and the pluses and minuses of both systems in terms of security, user comfort, and freedom.
Oct 232011
Prezi from my lecture on the emergence of smartphones and the key battle for the future of the platform between Apple and Android. Some nice stats and infographics thrown in.
Feb 232011
This little graph from IHS Reseach has been making a lot of noise around the interwebs in the last three days. The message is that app store revenue is growing all over the board, in some cases quite dramatically, which is ultimately just another proof that the trend away from the desktop and towards the cloud is real and getting stronger. Android Market revenue grew 861.5% year-over-year – read that figure again. Of course the Android revenue is still puny compared to what Apple is making on its apps, but the other important figure is that the Apple App Store lost 10% of market share over the same period. With the three-way competition between Samsung, HTC and Motorolla for control over the Android hardware market only heating up, these figures can go only one way for Apple.
To make things even gloomier for Apple, Eric Schmidt just announced at MWC2011 that Android has 300 000 activations per day and rising, that YouTube apparently gets 160 million mobile views per year, and that ChromeOS is definitely coming this year. I will probably have another post with more on that speech.
Feb 012011
The 4th quarter sales figures for the worldwide smart phone market in 2010 just came out and according to Canalysis Google Android is practically destroying the competition. As the graph below illustrates, the Android platform seems to have attained a market leader position with roughly 33% market share globally (to Apple’s 16%). Whatever the current market share, the most impressive figure is the year-on-year growth in the last column – this is just phenomenal growth considering that Android is barely 2 years on the market and has had minuscule advertising compared to the iPhone. The growth generated by the Android clones should be the final proof that open access platforms beat closed gardens, and the impending explosion in Android-based tablets should make these figures even more one-sided.
Full text of the analysis below:
Cloud