Android sucks. It feels like a budget, second-rate product. It’s not polished. It’s for nerds who like to customize everything. You open the web browser and it just seems janky. That’s my experience.
Why is this a problem?
Because google wants to make money.
I don’t see any problems
You will when apple inevitably deteriorates because they have no competition to keep them in check.
They already have
Nah, monopolies are never good for the economy. If Android market share continues to decrease drastically, Apple has free rein to increase prices for inferior products (think of Intel’s dominance over CPUs back in the day).
Huh??? O_o
It’s almost like all of the things that the anti-Apple bandwagon complains about are the things that everybody else likes about Apple. Simplicity. Design. Device interconnectivity. Social features that only work with other iPhones.
Call these things “gimmicks,” all you want. It’s not a gimmick if it works.
Social features that only work with other iPhones.
This is worded a little ambiguously, but are you saying the lack of interoperability is itself a selling point? I mean I like iMessage but I’m not using it because it doesn’t work with other phones. If anything I’m using it in spite of that issue.
Social features that only work with other iPhones.
Apple does this, they only allow you to communicate with other cult members.
People want to take pictures, text, call, and browse medias. Like that’s probably 95% of people. No one wants to switch platforms, and deal with porting over countless stuff, just to have 10% better geekscore or something other non realistic reason. It’s basically that Apple has won, and even as tech nerd myself, I’d rather give my money to a hardware company versus an advertising company. That’s really the bottom line.
Sure I miss google assistant, I miss having swiftype. I miss the ease of data transfer like music and movies to my phone.
But I like the rock solid quality of iPhones and the consistent user experience.
Apple has not won. It is winning in the US.
Android devices are still hugely popular in the EU, UK, Korea, China, India, Australia/NZ etc. I wish reddit would get that the US isn’t the world.
Just cause something works doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Remember blackberry
“But I need to have full customization and openess!!! ALWAYS!!!”
- Every android fan boy.
Being able to adjust your device to your own preferences is pretty great.
I’m guessing something like lack of competition for apple may stagnate innovation but in apples case I don’t think they react to external pressures like that anyway.
Literally not a problem for anyone but Google, a company.
Thought the exact same thing
It can be an Apple issue if Androids market share diminishes to below 20%
Google has the money to lobby congress for antitrust suits and Apple may have to pay Google to keep Android alive
Thats not how anti trust works in capitalism.
Android market share will never diminish below 20%, at least not worldwide.
Even in the US where iOS is the most dominant Android has a majority market share of 53.9%, iOS has around 45.6%.
When you look at it worldwide, Android has more than 2/3rd of the market with 70.5% market share, while iOS 28.8%.
Apple needs a lot more competitive pricing if they want to ever overtake Android, especially outside of the US. Sure they are popular among US teens who mostly care about what they see on TikTok or in the hand of their classmates, but the world doesn’t work like that.
Does Google do such a thing for Bing? Why did Yahoo search die?
They’ll just take it out of the Google search money.
I’m pretty sure Apple has more cash than Google and people seem to find Apple more likable.
It still boggles my mind that you can get in trouble because your competitors can’t keep up with you or have a worse product than you. I get that this doesn’t really happen often, but it’s both funny and sad.
iMessage is vendor lock in, not being better. Apple is just as bad as 90s Microsoft on vendor lock in and EEE.
vendor lock in is not what you think it means.
I know full well what it means. Did you also sleep through the docs where Apple said they use iMessage as a way to prevent people from switching? What Apple does here is no different than Microsoft making using anything but IE on Windows in the 90s miserable. Or how to this day they keep obfuscating Office formats while pinky promising for real this time they’ll support open document standards.
Being successful isn’t illegal. But using your success to stamp out the competition is illegal.
And one simple messaging app can kill Android? Then my point stands even more, Google is even worse at making products then.
It’s the only reason Apple even exists today.
It’s a little more complicated than that. It’s not just a question of market share, but whether you use your market share to make it impossible for others to compete against you.
For example, Microsoft was getting itself into trouble in the late 90s because they essentially used their dominant position in the OS market to push Internet Explorer— making it next to impossible for other browsers at the time, like Netscape, to compete. For example, they made it difficult for other companies to install their software when their own competitive alternatives were included for free, and in some cases, impossible to remove (explorer was fully integrated into Windows at this time and you couldn’t remove it).
There are plenty of companies that essentially own entire markets. Google for example something like 85%. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Almost no one remembers you used to have to pay for Navigator, but they couldn’t compete with free and built in IE.
Heck with windows 95 you used to have to pay for IE, you had to get the Windows 95 plus package or you had to buy IE separately.
You cant. Thats just cause people dont understand anti trust law. You can absolutely have monopoly by competition. If you win the market the government isnt gonna stop you.
Antitrust measures are when you actively take away ways of competing. Like if apple paid carriers to not sell androids.
it still boggles my mind how people don’t understand how a company having a monopoly isn’t a good thing. prices go up, innovation goes down because you have no options.
How is it a monopoly tho? There are shitload of smartphone companies and Android still has more users worldwide than iOS.
We are talking about a hypothetical suit here, not an actual antitrust case
It’s not an issue of antitrust unless it can be shown that they used unfair/anti competitive “monopoly power”. People misunderstand that. Monopolies are not illegal per se, abusing monopoly power is.
no it’s a problem for ME!!!
MY identity is based on teh superiority complex that Andriod is a vastly superior cusomtization and hacker friendly
i need EVERYONE to understand how much better I AM to them
It’ll be a problem for all if Apple becomes a monopoly
No, competition is really important. Apple can be very consumer-unfriendly at times (see the ongoing raging about the 8gb ram Macbook Pros) and without competition, there’s nothing stopping them from being even worse.
Eh. With iMessage’s popularity among teenagers, it would be harder for Android users to make friends in school. That’s a real problem and while many will say “you shouldn’t want to be friends with those types of people anyway,” it’s hard enough to make friends in school without this barrier. At that point, you can go through the hassle of working around that, or give in and use a device/OS that you find less favorable.
I mean , yeah , it would be good to not be friends with people that judge others based on using an android for example.
Competition is very important. Two players is bad enough, having just one player reduces innovation and cost competitiveness.
See what happened with Intel and what they did when AMD finally brought some proper competition to the market again.
Competition is good for the consumer, a monopoly is only good for the company (Apple in this case).
It’s a problem for every other oem, and (more importantly) for current android users. If people stop using it Google are simply gonna stop making android.
Which also indirectly affects ios users, less competition (and Innovation) isn’t good for anyone.Worldwide 71% of smartphone users have an Android
In Europe 66% of smarthphone users have an Android . And as someone who lives in Europe I can say that I only rarely see Iphones.
Considering more and more people in third are beginning to buy more smartphones this number will prbably rise for Android.
And in Europe the consent is that Apple is becoming way to overpriced and you can get other flagships 1 year after release for half the price of an Iphone with the same specs
So I really doubt Android is dying. They just need to catch on to the US and some asian countries again
It’s a problem for all users if any one company essentially becomes the only player.
Look at how bad Internet Explorer was after Netscape died. Or how bad Internet providers are when they’re the only option.
This isn’t an apple issue and really doesn’t belong on this sub other than to be pedantic about apple being superior
Fear the green text bubble
I’m sure the list of things that have not been cool with teenagers but somehow carved out a profitable market for themselves is a lot larger than this author thinks it is.
But to play ball with the line of thinking, maybe the whole platform being so hit and miss when it comes to feature set, performance, price, ad infestation, etc has something to do with it. Cable TV isn’t cool with teenagers either, probably for much the same reasons.
It also doesn’t help that most Android OEMs fall over themselves to follow Apple in a great many ways instead of trying to create their own path.
Apple products advertise their features. Android phones, in my experience, specs. Teens don’t care about how much RAM their phone has. They also probably don’t want the half baked functionality Samsung throws in just to check a box.
They would need to completely revamp the branding if they want to market towards younger non-tech interested individuals. Simplify the hardware/software and boost marketing with a cool and luxury focus. I don’t think feature improvement is required for this problem in NA, you need to change the nerdy alternative image people have in their minds when they think Android.
But they basically own the rest of the world so idk if this is even an issue.
They are popular outside US because they are a cheap alternative.
Offer Google and Samsung for similar price as iPhone and then check the stats again. (which is becoming reality; most of their flagships already cost similar to iPhone of that tier)
They could probably flip the ‘Mac Vs PC’ script by this point.
Mate, the real reason is iMessage
I’m not a teenager, but I’m tech interested and I still prefer ios over android. It’s just simpler and I prefer this. I don’t work on my phone, I’m just using it for very basic things.
As someone who converted from droid to iPhone, they need to completely revamp how they (android phone makers) do updates. Most of the time, Google makes a new version of android, and the Pixel phones get that.
For Samsung, they take it, add Samsung bloat and a UI reskin, then it’s handed to your carrier that adds more bloat. This pushes your software and security update out by months.
With my iPhone, it can be locked or unlocked, and when Apple releases the latest security/minor update/ major OS update, I get it the day they say they’re going to release it.
And androids need to just work like iPhones do.
Simplify the software? I just switched from a galaxy to the 15 Pro and I’ve never had as many head scratching moments trying to figure out an UI.
100% agree. Everyone’s phone is running a different cobbled version of Android (world wide). Who wants to spend hundreds of dollars to play roulette with an Android phone when you can get a new iPhone and know how the experience is going to be and have updates for years.
I know Google is “working on it” but they’ve been working on it for years.
Rebrand the software on the higher end phones to Pixel OS or something to make it different and stand out.
I don’t like iPhones and prefer Pixel devices and just see the different ecosystems as right brain vs left brain.
I work with teenagers everyday and I literally cannot remember the last time I’ve seen an Android phone. It’s unheard of- basically, Android is like the kiss of death if you’re a teen.
the nerdy alternative image people have in their minds
Yeah that’s not the image most people I know have of android users.
A lot of it comes down to the messenger too. The younger people that I know prefer iMessage, green bubbles are like repellant to them. If android could get their shit together and make a similar app without doing the typical Google thing of fracturing it into five apps later on, then they might actually win some of the younger market share.
There’s literally nothing Google can do about green bubbles, which based on my younger relatives is an unironic downside to Android. This is the kind of thing consumers care about, and it’s out of their hands.
If android could get their shit together and make a similar app
At this point if Apple stops being such an annoying ass company weaponizing iMessage and adopts RCS or if the EU forces RCS adoption, that’s the first step to loosening Apple’s grip on the US market.
Until people can send HD images, videos, gifs, and stickers irrespective of device/platform, Google or Samsung can’t do anything. Once teens see that their classmates and friends with Androids aren’t sending low res compressed pictures over text, they’ll have one less gripe about texting “green bubbles”. There’s a lot of other things that Google and Samsung can do after Apple adopts RCS to make the texting experiences even more seamless.
Personally I switched to the iPhone 12 after 3 years of owning a Pixel 2XL predominantly because the widgets and App Library features brought iOS on a day to day level on par with Android. Less customization and tinkering sure, but overall experience was a simpler and seamless one. I’ll switch back to a Pixel once RCS is adopted by Apple, and Google implements the necessary features to alleviate the green bubble vs blue bubble bullshit.
Again imessage is ery NA specific. Rest of the world uses 3rd party apps anyways
Teens don’t care about having a cohesive messaging app. The green vs blue bubble stigma has nothing to do with the usability of the app. It has everything to do with blue bubbles being a signifier of status because Apple = more expensive in people’s minds. Google has to penetrate that first.
In Europe depending on the country people use WhatsApp or Telegram. Nobody uses any Message, iMessage or SMS app here.
So RCS. Every Android device has it. Google has been attempting to put pressure on Apple to support it. Serves a similar purpose to iMessage and is integrated into the standard messaging app.
RCS was crippled from the start. It was intended to be implemented by the mobile carriers but none did at first. Then a handful did but they didn’t make it interoperable with each other.
The s23 series low key looks better and more elegant than the current iphones
“In my opinion…”
It dominates the rest of the world due to cheap android phones being available there and many of them can’t buy Apple phones for cheap.
For example: India , where I come from, people can’t afford iPhones so they buy the cheaper android phones. But literally every single person buys an iPhone as soon as they can afford it. iPhone market was really low in the past because you couldn’t even buy it there. Now that the used iPhone market is growing there, a lot of people prefer buying a used , relatively cheap and reliable iPhone over a new cheaper android phone.
Market penetration is the issue. Not that people over there love android over iPhones.
Everyone there loves iPhones over android.
this is bang on right. In south america, everyone rocks the chinese androids, but if they can afford or get an iphone during a visit to the states they jump on it.
As an Indian, I was going to give the same example, but you already covered it. I live in the US now, whenever I go to India during vacation, I get request to bring at least one or two iPhone(s) from US to India. LMAO.
Considering iPhone’s are supported for twice as long as android phones I’m not sure if they’re much more expensive in the long term.
I’m 100% convinced that if you started to give away free iPhones and free Android phones around 90% of people would choose the iPhone. All the people hating it do it because they cant afford it, not because they really dislike the OS. Its a completely normal behaviour
That’s something Android will never have – the iPhone signals to others you are a storyteller, part of the top 5% globally in wealth, etc. An Android phone, fair or not, signals you are likely to be carrying a Discover card and use ad-supported Pandora for your music. Its not something the brand will shake.
They would need to completely revamp the branding if they want to market towards younger non-tech interested individuals. Simplify the hardware/software and boost marketing with a cool and luxury focus.
That’s impossible, as Google cant control what people do with Android. If some OEM wants to make a $50 Android phone, they cant stop them.
As you pointed out, Android still outsells Apple globally, but it should be obvious that most of those phones are budget devices, not flagships.
Android will never be a premium brand, but there can be premium brands or lineups within Android. This is probably why Google completely killed the Nexus brand, which used to sell very cheap decent devices, now Pixel is more of a mid-high end brand.
Hence why you’ll rarely (if ever) see “Android” in Pixel marketing material.
Google desperately wants people to think “iPhone vs Pixel” instead of “iPhone vs Android”
Hell, that was already the case with “iPhone vs Galaxy.” Samsung presented themselves as “the brand” to purchase if you’re not getting an iPhone and it’s been working out for them so much that they’re more-so the “Android phone” when you think of “Android phone” than Pixels are.
I’m a tech-interested individual and Android realistically just doesn’t offer much for me; the Apple ecosystem is so convenient and I use my phone to scroll on Reddit, text my friends, take photos, and occasionally watch YouTube. For techy stuff… I’d use my computer.
I think what a lot of people who are gung ho about Android’s supremacy because of its “increased freedoms” fail to realize is that for 99.9% of people, they don’t care about their phone having x feature when in reality they just wouldn’t use it even if they did have it. Even when my phone was jailbroken I never used a repo that Apple just didn’t add as a feature later on. Then on the average consumer’s phone use case… iOS is just smoother and better looking. Simple as.
Even the branding inside Android itself. “Material You”, or anything Android 12 and up, seems specifically designed with old folks in mind.
Software sells hardware. You wanna see a folding-phone gimmick take off? Just wait till Apple makes one.
I’ll take one at $2499 with a 512GB drive.
Probably would still be 256
My 11 year old has a Samsung s23 because I wasn’t impressed with Apple parental controls. Android works much better with the Bark monitoring service. She will get an iPhone when she turns 16 and I start loosening the reigns a bit. So far no bullying although she has expressed she wants an iPhone, but she knows why I chose android and doesn’t fight me on it. She’s had an iPad forever and I just upgraded her to an Air 5 with cellular, she wants a career in digital art so I want to support her in that to the best of my ability. Her best friend only has an iPad so she can communicate well with them. I’d love for her to have an iPhone but it was just not possible for me to monitor appropriately at her age.
It’s not cool with anyone
Why does a phone have to be cool though?
