I’m going to put myself out there and say that over the next few week will be the start of the mass switch from OS X (iPhone) to Android as the mobile system of masses.
The first phase of the early Android has come to an end (HTC Hero, Motorola Dext, HTC G1) and Adriod had so far done a great job to get to its current position in the market; now the big players running Android are starting to land.
The new Sony Ericsson Xperia (Android) handsets are about to hit the stores. I believe that this will be the first range of handsets that will drive the similar cool, easy to use and geeky for the none geeks feel that drove sales in the iPhone. The collection of application that are available for Android handsets compared to the iPhone are not as much of an issue as it used to be and is only going to get better. Windows Mobile, now re-branded as Windows Phone with WM 7 is just too little, too late.
Sony Ericsson has some great handset designs (when they put the effort in) and once people have got passed the initial “Sony Ericsson handsets always have rubbish software on them” issue; and realise that its not Sony Ericsson under the hood; I think that we are going to see a lot of the new Xperia handsets floating around attached to the side of peoples heads. The X10 will be the front runner.
Do you think Android is going to be the front running in the mobile market?
Am I wrong?
What color are your pants?
It’s probably inevitable that as more manufacturers are putting Android in a greater variety of handsets across the mobile price range, it’s going to overtake the iPhone in terms of raw numbers. It’s likely that Android will replace the OS on a lot of feature phones because it won’t make much financial sense to make handsets that aren’t smartphones as hardware costs drop.
What I think is most interesting is whether, when the number of Android handsets in the wild is greater than the number of iPhones, will developers just ditch the iPhone to avoid Apple’s random app approval process?
Also, (and I don’t want to appear the Microsoft fan-boy here, because I’ve been very critical of Windows Mobile in the past) you don’t want to dismiss Windows Phone 7 too quickly. Microsoft have clearly done the right thing as far as the consumer market goes by doing a complete reboot of their mobile platform. That may not suit business users in V1 of their new mobile OS, but I expect they’ll grow it to fit all markets. They’re clearly committed to mobile devices and they have some very clever people and much deeper pockets than anyone else.
Palm, on the other hand, are totally screwed.
Oh, and my pants are white. 🙂
I totally take on board what your saying about WM 7; but the unless Microsoft work some magic with the manufacturer to encourage uptake on the OS for there handsets I think they are going to struggle to get many handsets out in the wind.
Once the Android market place start to hit the same kind of levels and buzz of the iTunes store App section people will be looking more that the fact that they can get there phone to fart or track sleep pattens via a cool app.
I would imagine a smart app developer would be looking at where the volume is users are. Look at whats happened to the web OS on palm. Great system but slow uptake on devices (only one) killed it/will kill it.
Microsoft are also not going to allow handset manufactures from sticking there own “skins” over the top of WM 7. Android are happy to allow this. Both networks and manufacturer love having the option of adding there own little tweeks (be that a good thing or not) to the handset they shift/make.
I’m not going to put my money on WM 7.