Android users over taking I phone users in the U.S.

[famousringo]

mrstickball said:

famousringo said:

To answer your first question, Apple limited themselves to AT&T because that was the price of entry into the US smartphone market. You can't succeed by just selling a phone in the US, you need the carriers to showcase, distribute, most importantly, to subsidize the handset. Verizon passed on the original iPhone because Apple insisted that they, not Verizon, would have absolute control over the software. AT&T was willing to concede software control in exchange for exclusivity, so they inked a deal with Apple. It's one of the best deals that either company has ever made.

Compare that to the Nexus One, which tried to ditch the carriers and, correct me if I'm wrong, failed to even sell a million units, despite having excellent hardware and better software support than any Android phone before or since.

To answer your second question, yes the iPhone uses a standard SIM card.

Nightsurge brings up an important point by mentioning the iPod Touch. While Symbian, Android, and others have been considering themselves to be phone platforms, Apple immediately started to position themselves as a mobile computing platform. It's a subtle, but important, distinction that Apple treats the iPhone as a computer that can make calls rather than a phone that can run programs. It's allowed them to leverage their MP3 player hegemony and recreate the tablet computer in support of their mobile ecosystem. No other mobile platform will really be a threat to iOS until its software market starts to be anywhere near as lucrative as the App Store.

Actually, Android has had iPod-like devices for quite some time. They also did tablets before the iPad came out through Archos.

As I understand it, Archos devices are locked out of the Android Market because they don't have a 3G radio. They run Android, but they're shut out of the heart of the ecosystem. That's why the Galaxy Tab has no WiFi-only version, and even that device ends up running a lot of software designed for 3.5-inch screens.

Google has yet to make a strategic move to expand Android beyond phones, even if a few niche hardware players like Archos try to take it there. Tablet-ready Android 3.0 will be the first step unless they grant WiFi-only devices access to the Market. 3.0 looks like it will be coming about a year after the iPad launched, while the iPod Touch has been a full-fledged partner to the iPhone for three full years now.

Still, at least they're moving in the right direction. Microsoft seems terrified that tablets running Windows Phone 7 might undermine sales of Windows 7 on tablets and netbooks. So instead, they'll let iOS and Android tablets undermine sales of Windows 7. Classic incumbent behavior.