Arguably, the most valuable portion of the article:

    Evidently, there’s always the question whether this matters at
    all. After all, the bulk of applications that are available for
    both platforms don’t see much traction anyway, so how relevant 
    it is whether there are 100,000 apps or 200,000 apps that are 
    rarely, if ever, downloaded by anyone?

Quite true; what good are 100,000 choices if none of them solve my problem?

A second problem: 50 apps look like they might solve my problem, but how do I know which suits me the best?

Yes, and you would think that Google of all companies would be uniquely suited to solving the second problem, but it hasn't, inexplicably, at least not yet.

It feels like a useless metric to me. Would knowing the number of websites on the web tell you anything useful about the web? Beyond a certain point it's just a lot of noise and I personally think both app stores would be better with a lot less apps.

Meanwhile, true low-latency audio is still not possible on Android. Anyone developing precisely-timed musical tools and games (like myself) will be forced to stick with iOS, and there still isn't a single decent synthesizer for my Droid.

I'm honestly surprised it took this long. Considering anyone can submit "Hello World" to the Android store in 1 minute by getting a $25 dev account, and the Apple approval process is an exercise in bureaucracy....

I feel like I've seen a lot of metrics about how Android /will/ be the platform of choice, and little that suggests the vast majority of consumers buy Android phones for anything other than price reasons.

There was a study a while back that said that Android is now the most desired platform: http://www.androidcentral.com/nielsen-android-americas-most-...

I don't believe that in that study "desired" was supposed to be inclusive of price.

It wasn't a real study, it was some sort of survey done by The Nielsen Company (the ones who measure TV viewership):

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-smartp...

It doesn't describe the selection method, the numbers of interviewees or even the margin of error. And the "desirability difference" is 1%.

I believe "desired" in that report means intends to purchase in the next 12 months. So devices that are priced to sell would have an advantage. Whether that's an unfair advantage is a bit of a philosophical conundrum, particularly as people might "desire" something more if it's less attainable.

It reminds me of the TED talk by Benjamin Wallace where he sought out ridiculously expensive steak, champagne, jeans etc. to see if they were worth the price:

http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_wallace_on_the_price_of_ha...

The other problem with the desirability standard is that iOS and Android in the survey are pretty much even (30% and 31%).

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-smartp...

If you look at their other graphs, however, they show that "recent acquirers" have favoured Android (50% bought an Android versus 25% who bought an iPhone).

I particularly like how they handwave the discrepancy between desirability and reported purchases by saying "Those dynamics are already translating into sales."

If one assumes their numbers are accurate, they point to other factors besides "desirability" behind the purchase of a smartphone.

>If one assumes their numbers are accurate, they point to other factors besides "desirability" behind the purchase of a smartphone.

This survey was(presumably) from October/November 2010 to March/April 2011. There was a major Android release, and new phones during that time. The iPhone 4 was released in June 2010, so it's no surprise that sales were lower at that time, especially considering the early upgrade discounts AT&T gave out at launch. While the Verizon iPhone release certainly is in those numbers, I'm pretty sure the holiday push outpaced it by quite a bit.

The real question is whether or not that kind of growth is sustainable. I personally don't believe that it is, and that we're just seeing Android get it's initial chunk of the market, after which it will settle down to more reasonable growth.

"Desired" doesn't say anything more than "plan to purchase" in that article, which doesn't immediately include or exclude price (though it's clearly important to purchasing plans).

On the flip side, when given a choice without considering purchasing and the burden of a contract, this is an interesting microcosm: http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/04/07/clorox.shows.s...

Local information......

Now that Verizon has the iPhone, the people I talk to locally (quite a lot actually) are only getting Android (which going with Verizon's ads they only know as Droid) if they cannot afford the iPhone, are not a Blackberry user, or don't want the free LG / Samsung feature phones. I suspect the last category would disappear if Verizon had the $49 iPhone 3GS.

The Blackberry people (sure are a lot here) seem to be going iPhone if work isn't buying at about 50% rate.

In other news, Wal-Mart stocks a lot more clothes than Armani Exchange.

Haven't we gone past that analogy yet? Apple isn't always high-end, Android isn't always utilitarian for the masses.

If anything, it's two competing bazaars. Apple's just been able to attract more artists to sell in theirs.

It's more than that though. Apple attracts more customers that are more willing to spend money on their platform. In doing so, they attract more high quality applications and developers that can make a living off of that ecosystem. Android is doing that as well, but more slowly, in no small part due to the difficulty people often face with the Android Marketplace.

How do you define high end? Because to me, and people in general out there, Apple is (always) high end in the sense that they're about as high quality as you can get as far as these kind of devices go. They don't charge "high-end" prices for some of their devices, but price isn't the metric you judge something to be high end or not.

Of course, if high end for you means diamond studded or gold plated, then we have a different case here.

It's not actually that there are more artists, it's that the Apple bazaar has attracted customers who are willing to pay money for the art.

They do cost a lot, but my Armani fart and flashlight apps are simply divine.

I didn't know Wal-Mart sold the same brands as Armani Exchange. Seems like a good deal to me...