NEW YORK: For the first time ever, sales of Google’s Android mobile devices have gone into decline — an astonishing defeat for a product that is given away free to manufacturers.
Google ought to be terrified at this news. Apple’s iOS operating system for iPhone and iPad is trampling all over the Android world right now. This isn’t just an incremental shift in market share.
This is, if left unchecked, an existential turning point for Android and its developers and manufacturers. After all, if you can’t win a battle against a product that costs about $US700/£550 with a product that’s equally good but free, then you’re screwed.
“Defeat” for Android is relative, of course. Apple sold 75 million phones in Q4, whereas Android sold 206 million. So Android is still King Kong to Apple’s Fay Wray. But Android has never seen a quarter of sales declines. Usually, market share shifts between Apple and Android, but Android always sells more phones. Now Android is selling fewer phones.
It has never been more depressing to be an Android fan than right now.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
In the official playbook, the iPhone is the phone of the rich, that handful of Western countries where $US700 isn’t a month’s wages. Android is for everyone else — the poor, the working class, the ordinary people. For years, 80% of phones sold have been Android phones. While it might “feel” like everyone in London, New York and San Francisco has an iPhone, the reality is that outside those wealth bubbles it’s an Android planet. In country after country, Apple could only muster market share in the single digits.
Strategy Analytics data smartphone market 2014
Android’s noble mission
Android’s mission is a noble one, too. Google didn’t just launch a new phone product. It launched a free mobile computing platform that would let everyone have access to the internet at almost any price-point. Google introduced the Android One in India and other countries for just $US100. Xiaomi launched a bestselling Android phone brand in China that looked and felt as cool as an iPhone but for a fraction of the price. While Apple rejoiced at selling 75 million expensive phones, Google wanted Android to get into the hands of the next 5 billion people. Developing countries are buying phones at a rate of 100 million units a quarter, and not because of Apple. That’s Android’s doing.
iPhone was for the 1%.
But Android was The People’s Phone.
The People, however, appear to have had other ideas.
It’s not simply the case that one product is better than the other. Android is arguably superior for users — you can do more with it in more flexible ways. Android had NFC payments years before Apple Pay showed up. And Android has a back button! iOS is great but it’s also boring — there is only one way to use it. And Apple is about to ship an update to iOS that is focused on “stability” and “optimisation.” In plain English, iOS is currently full of bugs and Apple wants to fix them. Remember when Apple shipped that iOS 8 update that prevented phones from making phone calls? That’s how “superior” iOS is to Android.
All that turned out to be irrelevant, however. In Q4 2014, Apple didn’t just sell a lot of iPhone 6 units. That was expected: Apple always sells a lot of its newly launched phones in Q4, right after launch. Rather, Apple went a step further and actually stole market share from Android that — according to the playbook — Google should never have ceded.
