Google is taking the shotgun approach where Apple is taking the sniper approach. Either can hit the target.

If my toaster did run Android, that wouldn't make the HTC EVO any less appealing. The apparent lack of focus on the Android front isn't because Google's unfocused -- it's because there are a lot of companies besides Google working to make Android happen (Sense UI in particular has been great for Android).

With the rapid releases of Android 1.5, 1.6, 2.0 and 2.1 in the past year, I'd say Google has been kicking it up a notch. The problem is that the carriers wait for way too long to push the updates out to their users. What use is progress if many Android users still can't check out Google Goggles?

There is tons of real competition. There will probably be 50 Android smartphones on the market by the end of the year, if not sooner. RIM and Symbian are still ahead, even if you see them as waning.

Yes consumers have no idea what any of this means. But that actually works in favor of Apple's competitors. When an average consumer looks at the smartphone market, Apple may stand out, but the iPhone is still just one among hundreds of smartphones. There is tons of competition on features and price.

Finally, Google doesn't need to kick it up a notch. Android is doing extremely well. Keep in mind that Google doesn't need Android to make money. Google doesn't care if Nexus One sales are sluggish. They are in the market to change the game. And I'd say they are succeeding with that.

  There is tons of competition on features and price.

That's exactly the problem. Apple does not compete on features and price, they compete on user experience.

I don't understand why that's a problem.

It's easy to optimize product to cut costs, or put more engineers on the project and add features.

What's truly difficult is reduction. Removing "features" and simplifying the product. The success of the iPad and iPhone is not about what it-- it's about all the things it doesn't do.

Yes I've heard lots of people toe the Apple company line on simplifying before. But I thought we were talking about whether or not there is smartphone competition.

If you want to believe there is nothing that can truly compete with the iPhone because of its magical UI or lack of features or whatever I can't prevent that. Yes, it's true, the iPhone is the only iPhone in existence. But in that sense nothing can compete with Android either. Nobody else is producing an open-source smartphone os even close to its quality. If you get specific enough, everything is in a category of its own without any competition.

My original comment has nothing to do with whether Apple has produced the perfect mobile os by reducing and removing features. It has to do with the statement that Apple has no real competition.

"If you get specific enough, everything is in a category of its own without any competition."

Of course. The problem the parent is describing is that the smartphone market, the person on the street with an iPhone, who doesn't have a clue what "objective see" is, has his/her own specific criteria for buying a phone, and so far they seem to line up with Apple's criteria pretty well.

Android can compete on features, price, openness, open-source, goat-teleport-count, or any other metric they can find. It won't be "real competition", in this sense, until ordinary people find reasons to actually buy it in large numbers.

Good thing Android sales are on track to surpass the iPhone.

http://industry.bnet.com/technology/10005344/android-unit-sa...

+1 for openness.

You're taking Apple's domination for granted. How did they get it? There were half a dozen smartphone platforms before iPhone OS, but all of the devices had lousy quality, lousy user experience, and a lousy marketplace for third-party apps.

If you read the rebuttals to the complaints, you'll see that there are several practical, quality-oriented reasons why 3.3.1 was a smart move. It's just one of hundreds of quality-improving measures that Apple has done to make the iPhone "have no real competition".

I don't know why you're talking in the past test ... like those platforms are dead or something.

They still exist, but the situation is no longer the same as it was when the iPhone was announced. I believe that RiM and Symbian have improved since then.

Argh, accidental down vote... someone move that eject button!

It's really not that big a deal. No need to explain yourself.

> ...devs are forced to develop for it.

No, you're not.

This is what I don't understand from all of the developer "outcry" over this: you're not forced to develop for this platform. If you don't trust it anymore, then stop developing for it.

There were ways to make money as a developer before the iPhone came along. There are still plenty of ways to make money as a developer that don't involve dealing with the iPad or the iPhone.

These counter-arguments sound so much like the web developer hatred for IE 6 years ago, where everyone was bemoaning having to develop code specifically for IE 6, and everyone was saying that they had to keep developing code for IE 6, because that's what the users are using. But, years later, it has finally become OK to abandon IE 6 altogether; it could have happened a long time ago if developers had just quit supporting garbage.

Android/Google are looking for good applications developers. Go work with that instead.

Otherwise, it's just noise.

Well, I guess everyone is hoping that if the outcry is severe enough, Apple will take it out of the agreement. We can be pretty certain that if there is no backlash, the clause will definitely stay.

Ummm, I'm working on a site that still generates 20% of its multi-million revenue from IE6 alone. In the same vein, lots of developers will be developing for iP* for years to come: we have to be where the customer is, and unfortunately that customer has locked himself into the platform with his AppStore purchases.

I think you're absolutely right in saying that Apple has no real competition, but it's interesting to look at the trajectories of the various elements of the smartphone market and consider what things might look like in 5 years (remember, the iPhone was first available 3 years ago). Android doesn't compete at the same level as apple today, but it is far more likely to start progressing exponentially at some point when the conditions are right. At the same time the barriers to entry for building hardware are quickly falling, so we may yet see some new entrants.

Apple's new policy won't cause their developers to leave immediately, the market is just too big. What they have done is sent a clear message to developers that if they don't want to do it "the Apple way" then they should be keeping their eyes open for other opportunities. Apple has essentially made a huge gamble that they can be the smartest guys in the market forever. I think that's unwise.

Devs are not forced to develop for it. You can go develop for Android. You can go develop for RIM. You can go develop for non mobile phones. Devs develop for the iP* because they want to sell to that market. It wasn't too long ago though that we saw a whole bunch of articles on HN about the myth of the get rich quick AppStore apps. Apple is skating on thin ice because if the developers leave then the iPad loses big. The pain may not have crossed the average developers threshold yet but Apple still has to play a dicey game with how far they can go before they do cross the threshold.

In my city Vodafone has said it's going to start shipping Droid and Nexus One. They are already shipping some Android-enabled LG model.

And they have a big marketing machine ready ... its competitor (Orange) has been shipping iPhones for a while, but I haven't seen many around (mostly because people haven't jumped on the smartphones wagon).

And I think it's the same situation in the rest of Europe. It's the carriers that make it happen ... and Vodafone is a huge player.