It seems like every month, we're treated to a new collection of reports like these: Google Android widens lead on Apple's iPhone in US smartphone market.These analyses are widely published and circulated because mobile computing is in a gold rush mentality, and data from today helps us understand where the industry is going to be in the future. The big question: who is going to be the new Microsoft and Intel, controlling the most profitable parts of the market and entrenching themselves as kings of the world? Lots of people are making bets, staking claims and indulging their natural human instinct for tribalism, which explains the excitement about the present and future of mobile computing. I don't mind any of that, it's thrilling to be a part of a revolution.
But I do think the discussions we have today are missing the point. Who cares about the smartphone market. Why is it considered so important? Mobile computing is so much more than smartphones! Tablets, mobile devices like the iPod touch, and even things like the Kindle are all mobile computers. Maybe an iPod doesn't have a 3G GSM or CDMA radio, but it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, and there's no technical reason why it should be treated as a separate class of device. You can already make and receive phone calls on an iPod touch, using software like Skype. The distinction between a smartphone and an device like an iPod is becoming less and less important with time. It's an old, outdated, obsolete characterization of the world based on the presence of a particular kind of radio, along with an expensive contract and service plan from a telecom company. In the future, none of those distinctions will matter, because there will be a huge proliferation of mobile computing devices of diverse shapes and capabilities, and most of them will have optional long-range connectivity options like today's cell phones. The distinction between a smartphone and an iPod will seem as quaint as a horseless carriage.
I'll keep watching for one of these market analyses which doesn't neglect the iPods, Kindles and Xooms of the world, because I believe the future of mobile computing is much broader than the current conventional wisdom. But it may take a while for the analysts to agree with me.
You're forgetting that all of these mobile devices have to run on an operating system. Almost every single one of them use an ARM processor. And all of these mobile devices use one of the few operating systems in the world that can run on an ARM device, and the popularity of those 3 operating systems are being measured by the smartphone markets. That i-closed-source-device runs on i-closed-source-os, whether its an ipod or ipad or ipud. The other mobile devices run on android OS or some windows mobile thing. What does this mean? It means the smartphone market is a good measure of every last mobile device out there.
ReplyDeleteOn top of all that, the 3G card that you put in your android pad or even your netbook PC gets it's data from a telcom, and that wifi router you have at home connects to an ISP, whichever telcom you choose. So whether it's wifi or 3g enabled, you're still looking at the markets of the smartphones for an indicator of the trends. Hope that helps.
Oh, I was linked here by Theric's buzz, so I thought I'd just weigh in.
Hi Aaron - this is Bryan. Welcome. =)
ReplyDeleteMy post wasn't actually about operating systems at all, I'm actually not that interested in the iOS vs. Android showdown. Or open-source vs. closed-source, for that matter.
However, since you brought it up: there is no Android equivalent of the iPod touch. Apple has been selling a lot of iPod touches, in fact, the iPod touch makes up a majority of their iPod revenue. There is also little Android equivalent of the iPad, although I'm hoping Honeycomb will make Android tablets succeed (especially since I work for Nvidia. =) Amazon has also sold a lot of Kindles, far more than the Android based nook. So, I do think the numbers would change quite a bit if devices other than smartphones were tabulated as mobile computers, as they should be. And therefore, the smartphone market is not that representative of the broader mobile computing market.
Would Android still be in front of iOS? Perhaps. The Android/iOS showdown, as I said, is really orthogonal to the issue I'm interested in, which is trying to get people to think of mobile computing without silly artificial blinders on.
Yeah I don't know why 'mobile' is locked in to meaning smartphone markets. Since the ipod touches are not weighed in with the other ios devices, that does seem like a huge imbalance of accounting, considering (if I remember from my time at Apple) the ipod devices comprise the majority of all Apple's sales.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it will actually be very long until the analysts are forced to take other devices into consideration. Many of the tablet devices that are coming out don't require 3G or data plans. Also, devices that aren't smartphones do require 3g and data plans, so that's got to muddy the waters for anyone who thinks that mobile must equate to smartphones.
Bryan, I agree with you about the market, as well as the example of making calls on non-phones via skype. People shouldn't freak out when I mention making phone calls from my ipad, but they do. And as long as I have an ATT phone, I will have no signal in my house, and poor signal in much of this metro area, and skype will be my remedy.
ReplyDeleteI'm itching to jump to verizon, but how will their netwok bear the weight of us all jumping ship?