Column: Android Overtakes iPhone
Let’s begin with a quote. “Apple’s recent amendment to its developer agreement – which forces developers to write applications its way, using its tools – has done three things: isolated Apple even more from the wider technical community; wasted the time and money of companies and people who have invested in building iPhone-compatible developer toolkits (and the developers who have used them); and diverted industry attention to other smartphone technologies.”
This was the response I got from Mark Rodseth, Technical Architect at web design company Fortune Cookie, when I asked him for his take on Apple’s recent announcement that it is banning the development of iPhone OS applications using third-party compilers. The likes of Rodseth – and his clients – are responsible for the majority of apps that currently populate Apple’s App Store. And Mark’s isn’t an isolated opinion. I’ve had similar responses from the majority of developers that I’ve spoken to in the last few weeks.
Apple can’t be naive enough to have thought that this move would go unnoticed, and it clearly expected some kind of backlash, but – by the very fact that it included the new stipulations in the conditions for iPhone OS 4 application development – we have to assume that it was a risk the company was willing to take. I find this a staggering example of Apple’s arrogance, and – in the light of a recent report coming out of the US – I think that the company has made a huge mistake.
The report in question is a Mobile Metrics release from AdMob, one of the world’s largest mobile advertising networks (recently bought by Google). Whenever an ad is served to a mobile device via the AdMob network, the company stores and analyses handset and operator data to optimise ad serving. It also uses this information to highlight major trends, and hidden away in the report for March – well, it wasn’t really that hidden – was a very interesting nugget of information. As well as showing facts such as 54 per cent of Android traffic comes from devices with QWERTY keyboards (one of the ‘standout’ figures pulled out of the report for the press), there was a graph in the body of the AdMob report that should act as a serious warning to Apple.
According to the report, March was the first month in which Android ad traffic overtook iPhone traffic in the US: Android’s American OS share increased to 46 per cent, compared to 39 per cent for iPhone OS. These figures weren’t replicated in markets outside the US though, with the iPhone continuing to bag the top spot globally – it has 46 per cent of overall OS share– and Android OS a fair bit behind, with a quarter of the mobile OS market. But despite iPhone OS still being far and away the global leader, the figures released in this report should act as a bellwether for non-US mobile markets. Where America goes, the rest of the Western world tends to follow.
As we’ve already mentioned, AdMob is a company owned by Google – the leading company in the Open Handset Alliance, and the firm now responsible for the development of the Android mobile operating system. You’d be forgiven for pointing out the obvious here – it does seem somewhat suspicious that the first report produced since Google took over the company points to an advantage for the Google-backed OS for the first time. However, given AdMob’s previous pedigree, and the pains taken to establish the credibility of these figures, we have no reason to question their validity.
So, assuming that these figures based on advertising can – by and large – be extracted to represent overall web traffic from mobile devices, Android is now the top dog in the US. When the new iPhone launches this Summer, we can expect a spike in traffic emanating from iPhone OS-based devices – it’s happened after every major iPhone release so far – but the writing is definitely on the wall for Apple. With Android Market boasting more than 38,000 applications at the time of writing, and the developer community embracing this open platform for mobile development, Apple’s decision to kick developers in the face has never seemed more foolish than it does right now.
“While many developers watch from the sidelines and consider where best to invest their time and creative energy on smartphone platforms, I’ve picked my side already. It’s called Android and everyone’s invited,” Rodseth concludes.
