Within the tech industry, competition between manufacturers and developers is fierce. Three specific consumer technology outlets come to my mind: personal computers, videogame consoles, and smartphones. Think of these three industries and you’ll notice a common trend. Within each there are a small amount of contenders.
The PC market has a wider range of brands that manufacture laptops and desktops, but the common war is operating system based. Do you use Windows or Mac?
Within the videogame console realm, there are three prime players: Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony.
Now onto our prime focus for this post, the smartphone industry. Once again, like with PCs, the battle is primarily operating system based. The prime contenders are obviously iOS and Android, but Windows Phone 7 has made a dent and RIM is still lingering.
With fragmented user groups, debate between them is inevitable. And techies are some of the most passionate of people around. Fan boys run rampant, forums are filled with threads trash talking one another’s devices, and tears are shed (I’m dramatizing this slightly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the eyes of some fanboys out there have become misty).
Apple has a leg up in that they have unified control over their product line in almost every aspect. They develop the software and they create the hardware. Granted, they utilize third party manufacturers to help produce their products. But because Apple has this control they’re able to create products that “just work.” This is a major advantage in the PC and smartphone realm when trying to appeal to the masses.
Is Apple’s strategy for iOS working? Or has Android come out victorious in the current smartphone war?
We can look to iDownloadBlog.com to help answer these questions. Cody from iDownloadBlog decided it would be best to analyze hard data to determine who is currently the reigning champ.
Since iOS is only available on one smartphone whereas Android is currently available on 43 handsets, it’s kind of hard to pit the two in mobile operating systems in a true head to head battle. But we’ll summarize some of the intriguing figures that Cody found that help put the battle in perspective. Make sure to give his whole post a read. You can find it here.
In terms of customer demand, the iPhone is clearly coveted over any handset running Android currently available. The iPhone draws massive amount of people into retailers for each product launch. Not one Android handset has ever had the amount of attention the iPhone routinely receives at each release. And each year a new iteration of the iPhone is launched, more people flock to the device. As Cody mentions in his post, “the Cupertino company was able to sell over 4 million handsets during its opening weekend. That’s more than most Android-based phones sell during their entire lifespan.”
One of the main arguments behind who is truly the victor is which mobile OS has brought in the most amount of cash. Cody looked into which platform is making its manufacturers the most amount of money. With logical deduction and an educated estimation as to how much revenue the iPhone brought in to Apple in the last quarter, it’s obvious that Apple is the front runner. In Apple’s last fiscal quarter, the company’s revenue amounted to an unbelievable $28.27 billion. Some estimate that nearly 50% of Apple’s revenue is generated solely from the iPhone. The combined revenue over the last fiscal quarter for HTC, Samsung, and Motorola amounted to roughly $11.7 billion according to Cody. While we can’t be sure since we don’t have exact figures to analyze, it would seem that the iPhone is the victor.
I personally feel that the iPhone doesn’t bring in anywhere near 50% of Apple’s revenue and unless I see a figure direct from Cupertino, I’ll continue to be skeptical. Nonetheless, the iPhone does bring in a lot of money. There’s no debating that. Is it currently ahead of its competition? It certainly seems that way.