2) You can use an Apple on any of the carriers here. In the US Apple blames all problems on ATT. People here know better.

3) An Iphone (Which isn’t even the latest at the moment) costs at least 20% more then something like the latest Samsung. The people willing to pay that premium have basically all moved to Apple already. There is almost no room for Apple to grow here unless they slash prices. Problem is Apple needs to fund it’s costs while the third party Android makers obviously have no need to fund Android.

Now ask yourself this. If you’re a carrier what do you gain by subsiding the Iphone? You know the people who want one already have one. You know Apple will blame you for the problems in the phone. You know you can make more money selling something else.

Now lets assume Apple actually improves the Iphone/Ipad. How many Mac sales does this steal? How many of the people here would be happier with something like the Samsung P1000 tablet/phone instead of two devices? Apple can’t improve the Iphone/Ipad too much without hurting itself.

We’ve seen this movie before. Apple tried to force people to do things it’s way before. If you’re old enough you remember when Apple was the largest PC maker in the world. When it’s PC OS had a similar hold on the PC market that the Iphone has now.

Apple’s closed model always ends up with higher costs . It leads to openings for other companies to make something better.

To the comment that Apple is one maker versus many. That’s the whole point. Apple needs to be perfect 100% of the time. Android makers don’t. If the best Android phone this week comes from Samsung,LG,Sony, my maiden aunt it doesn’t matter. Apple is fighting with clubs when everybody else is using nukes.

Android at the moment seems like where Windows was against OS2 back in the 90′s. Limited deployment of OS 2 let MS take the initiative with NT and the Win32 architecture. They let anyone install it for a fee, and took over the world.
However Apple now are nearly as big as MS, the revenue is nearly the same, but completely different markets. MS has 90% with a 1% margin, and Apple have 10% with an 80% margin – or at least feels that way with their prices, but the product is perceived as good enough value it makes it worth while.

GOOGLE DIDN’T SELL A DAMN THING.

Their Nexus One failed – their Android OS is FREAKING FREE – THEY DIDN’T MAKE A DIME.

The point of a company is to make a profit and distribute the wealth among shareholders (using various strategies).

Yes – when you put a free OS on 100 devices, they will, absolutely, move more product than iPhones – a single device with a single OS.

To me – listening to the Fandroids logic goes something like this:

Did you hear Tostitos brand chips sold XX in the first 30 days?! WOW!

Fandroid: Yes but I read that _other_ chips _with salt_ are soon going to take over Tostitos sales!

…

China is making a custom Android build that won’t support the Marketplace, There are already 4 or 5 different versions of the OS on various carriers here in the US – you all say “Android” like it’s a single thing. It’s not – like Windows 95 is not 98 is not XP is not Vista – but they’re all “Windows”.

Who the f@#% cares how many phones _run_ Android? Why does running this OS matter? Are the companies who us it to make money actually profiting? Are they doing 15.7 billion in quarterly sales? Maybe some are and some aren’t – why don’t you all focus on the finances – the only purpose for a business to exist – instead of making apples to the sum of all other types of fruit comparisons?

WHEN Android takes over iPhone market share – and it will – what will you have accomplished? Not a damn company using it will be nearly as profitable as Apple is at handset sales and it’s subsidiary revenue from the App Store, iTunes music, magazine subscriptions, etc.

Android does not and will not ever have the smooth, tightly integrated user-experience of the iPhone – they CAN’T because they don’t CONTROL the OS anymore. They released it to the wild, three cheers for open source, now let’s see someone make a s@#% ton of money with it – then start flapping your tongues again.

…but hey, only the iPhone uses iOS while an army of trashy mobiles uses Android.

Keep in mind that half of the Android devices out there are stuck to versions 1.5 and 1.6.

while we could say that the figures discussed compare the android OS to the iOS, it’s an irrelevant comparison given that apple intentionally closes its OS to 3rd parties whereas google fervently proselytizes, so uptake is not reflective of how good the operating systems are.

so in the end, i don’t understand what argument, if any, is being made here. to compare ALL android phones to the iphone4 is rather weak and fanboi-ish.